Growing weary of the 8th edition lore

[Guest]

Just watched and read a few articles the new DA codex and I am growing extremely weary of the 8th edition lore. It's had some awesome climax only to come down to the same motion. I am going to boil it down to the basic structure.

 

UM/Codex Chapters- Attacked by chaos, heavy losses, Chapter Masters have to deal what to do next. Time for epic decisions and chapter changing ideas? Nope, Primarch Guilliman is revived by *Inquisition erased information* and is namd Lord Regent. Then fortifies all chapters with Primaris. Controversy about the Primaris is talked about, before ordered to use them.

 

BA- Attacked by Tyranids, nearly dedtroyed, Dante now has to deal what to do next. Time for some epic decisions and chapter changing ideas, right? Nope, Lord Regent Guilliman comes in with Primaris and fortifies them. Controversy about the Primaris is talked about, before deciding to use them.

 

DA- Attacked by fallen/daemons, nearly destroyed, Azrael now has to deal what to do next. Time for some epic decisions and chapter changing ideas, right? Nope, Lord Regent Guilliman comes in with Primaris and fortifies them. Controversy about the Primaris is talked about, before deciding to use them.

 

Everytime I see a point to see some serious decisions made by prominent characters in the story it results in "Lord Regent Guilliman comes in with Primaris and saves the days". I know they want to sell the Primaris Marines but GW, you can do that by giving them good rules (not overpowered), good models, and decent weapon options. Maybe I am reading to deep into the story but it feels like it's just boring if everytime we are just saved by Guilliman and his Primaris. I thought it was going to be great to have a Primarch back, but now it feel so worn out how he just shows up around the whole Galaxy saving everyone. I somewhat wish the loyal primarch didn't return.

[Ishagu]

I think all these events have taken place quite close together, in the 40k sense anyways.

 

The Primaris are a massive change to the lore that come alongside something else: the end of technological regression and the start of technology exceeding the limits of what was possible during the age of darkness.

 

Once this status quo is fully established we'll return to the cool inter chapter politics and inventive story progression. Also, a second loyalist Primarch is around the corner to shake things up.

[Wargamer]

It's Horus Heresy syndrome to me.

"What's going on? Space Marines fighting Space Marines? Impossible!"
"Oh yeah, they really didn't see the Heresy coming."

"I'm hearing reports of Space Marines fighting each other. There must be some mistake!"

"Okay, still getting surprised by that, huh?"

"The Word Bearers have betrayed the Ultramarines? Preposterous!"

"That happened FIVE BOOKS AGO!"
 

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

In addition we really don't have that much to go on yet. That and to be blunt they had cornered themselves with BA, and DA needed to be in dire straights to even consider them.

 

BA's defense of Baal has been foreshadowed for quite awhile pretty sure the 7th book mentioned it was coming, and with all the successors being there they either had to win, or be saved. If they won they'd be decimated and cut off with a lot of enemies that would want to take them out so largely still in the same situation. The option that they went with was being saved, and really there is only crusade force out there that is capable of it.   

[Guest]

Let's not get this wrong Guilliman and his Primaris are nothing but a Deus ex machina. I don't blame the writers as I can almost guarantee this is coming from GW. I am no writer, but even I remember in high school being taught you can't use the same Deus ex machina for multiple events, which is what is going on. It is bad story telling.

 

That said they could have used any number of deus ex machina events to save these chapters. Tau being in BA land could have made a Tyranids killing virus. Mephiston could have found a way to break the hive mind synapses. DA could have simply not been written into that corner.

[battle captain corpus]

Guilliman....the Lord Flashheart of the new 40K. :(

 

I concur the new fluff is meh.

 

BCC

[Scribe]

You have to leave it to BL to fill out the Primaris stuff. Expecting greatness from the Studio is...something about hope, and a first step.

 

Once ADB drops some goodness on us, all will be well.

[Stofficus]

One of my chief frustrations with 8th has come from the lore, but it's less from "Primaris save the day," but rather a fairly pronounced tonal shift. 

 

In that regard, prior to 8th, or rather, the Gathering Storm campaign at the end of 7th, 40k was a setting where everything was utterly beyond the control of an individual, even one of immense power. Abaddon, arguably the most powerful single person in 40k ultimately had to fight his own battles against the manipulation of the Chaos gods against his own goals, and against him stood the monolithic might of the Imperium of Man, and under him stood countless squabbling warlords looking for any potential weakness. 

 

For every other faction, they are much more "faceless," there are heros the settings focuses on - either in game with their named characters, and the BL-specific characters of note, but there is a constant; powerlessness. The Imperium is a bloated mass, powerful but unwieldy and so byzantine as to beyond the will of any individual - even the High Lords can only offer the most broad direction for the Imperium, and are creatures of their office/organization. The Eldar are stuck in their ways, hidebound by tradition - the Necrons are much the same, Orks are Orks and so on and so forth. 

 

In short, the setting of 40k was one where individual agency is meaningless in all but the most restricted sense - it is a setting governed by factions, empires and armies, not of a single or  band of heroes. 

 

Then came the Gathering Storm. 

 

The new narrative largely does away with that past precedent, where events unfold often in spite of the characters' own efforts, and instead the cast of characters have thrown off the shackles of fate and an uncaring universe, and bend the flow of history to their will. 

 

The faceless, hopelessly conservative and distant Adeptus Mechanicus are replaced with Archmagos Belisarious Cawl, a living relic of the Great Crusade, with a legion of personally-designed advanced technologies to turn the tide. 

 

The distant rulers of a byzantine imperial system so complex as to be incomprehensible and impossible to change are replaced with the Lord Commander Guilliman, son of the Immortal God-Emperor, Primarch of the XIIIth who does what no one has done before in Imperial history - streamlines administration, takes to the front lines of battle and personally directs the fate of the Imperium itself. 

 

Guilliman and Cawl are the most egregious examples of shifting the core elements of the setting from own of disempowerment and an uncaring universe to almost Marvel-esque masters of the flow of history, but the more recent fluff has only doubled down on this concept. The Fallen are a force largely unified behind Cypher, not a shadowy, loosely aligned group which ranges from full on Chaos marines to those seeking to hide and dissapear, the story of the BA and DA being so heavily tied to their named game characters, rather than serving as examplars and so on. 

 

At its worse, we get stories where all these leaders of, quite literally, billions or more troops are engaging in fisticuffs for the fate of the universe in some hamfisted attempt to replicate the Primarch duels in the Heresy. 

 

I, for one, strongly dislike the emphasis on a few individuals who dictate all events in the universe to a degree unfound even in traditionally hero-centric settings like Starwars and Star Trek, bordering on the lines of traditional comic book heroes. It cheapens the setting, whose preface in every publication has gone out of its way to emphasis how beyond the individual this setting is in its cruelty, breadth and complexity. 

[Felix Antipodes]

Have to agree with Scribe here - the studio team ain't whT they used to be from a lore-making perspective. The days of yore when you had people of the calibre of Chambers and McNeill directing the fluff spoilt us all IMHO. This has led to BL taking the lead with the advancing storyline; the new BRB and codexes don't go anywhere near where novels such as Dark Imperium or Devastation of Baal take us in the new setting. Strange days indeed...

[Guest]

You have to leave it to BL to fill out the Primaris stuff. Expecting greatness from the Studio is...something about hope, and a first step.

 

Once ADB drops some goodness on us, all will be well.

 

The issue is that the end result is there and the writers, as great as the are, must follow it. It like asking them to polish a piece of :cuss I do not envy the writers of BL and their job at this time. I only pray that they can make a decent story with what they are given.

[Scribe]

Thats assuming Caldersson, that those various points are what people decide to expand upon.

 

The studio writing, is hardly even relevant to me at this point. Its all 'loose canon' and they have intentionally devalued even the codex entries.

 

I mean honestly since 5th, the Codex's (outside of a few gems like Dark Eldar reboot, Genestealer Cults...) have been full of just trash writing.

 

So rejoice. Its loose canon, its all 'whatever' and just ignore it until an author of quality comes around to save the concepts. 

[Volt]

I think all these events have taken place quite close together, in the 40k sense anyways.

 

The Primaris are a massive change to the lore that come alongside something else: the end of technological regression and the start of technology exceeding the limits of what was possible during the age of darkness.

 

Once this status quo is fully established we'll return to the cool inter chapter politics and inventive story progression. Also, a second loyalist Primarch is around the corner to shake things up.

I don't get why people keep repeating the meme of technological regression when that isn't really a thing. The Admech certainly hasn't regressed, it wields just as much or even more power than it did in the heresy and still has access to wunderweapons- it simply refuses to use them due to not caring enough unless it's a test run like Mont'ka's conclusion. Power armor, bolters, and plasma guns are just as/more advanced than what was available in the Great Crusade/Heresy, and the equipment of the "Army" has progressed as well considering the Guard largely uses DEWs and not KEWs like the Imperial Army did. Ships haven't really been lost, and the Imperium actually still builds moon and planet-sized gigantic battlestations which outmass any of the old battleships of the GC era, and ship combat overall is favoring more rapid vessels over the older heavy bruisers which are slowly dying out. 

 

Things like Volkites or Vortex weapons didn't die out because of regression, but because they were not logistically feasible, and is akin to saying that the US has technologically regressed because it doesn't want to adopt costly 6.5mm ammo even though it has superior performance to 5.56mm and 7.62mm. The only area I can think of where the Imperium actually suffers technologically is in anti-grav plates... except it doesn't because civilians have access to flying cars which could be easily converted into sorta-grav bikes if anybody had the motivation. Knowledge hasn't really been lost, it's just either been stagnated or moves very, very, slowly due to the necessity of ensuring that new tech won't result in a warp portal that unleashes a buttload of Damonettes on the poor sod that tried to turn it on.

 

I mean sure if we compare the Imperium to DAOT humanity we can say they regressed, but the Great Crusade? Eh, that's a real tossup considering the equipment of the average soldier or even the elite has drastically improved.

[Ishagu]

Some of you are unhappy with the developing story but I personally couldn't be happier.

We used to say that 40k was simply a setting. Now it's a setting and a story. Updating and moving things forward leads to exciting new models, armies and stories.

[Volt]

Some of you are unhappy with the developing story but I personally couldn't be happier.

We used to say that 40k was simply a setting. Now it's a setting and a story. Updating and moving things forward leads to exciting new models, armies and stories.

Please do show me exactly where these new "exciting models, armies, and stories" are: all I see are the creations of corporate stooges for mass appeal with abysmal quality control with writing surpassed by young adult authors.

[Ishagu]

Oh c'mon. You're holding the 40k lore in too high a regard. The most realised and convincing plots came from Forgeworld.

 

The general stuff has always been roughly the same in terms of quality. The settings has always been filled with silly quirks and developments.

 

The new black library stuff, Devastation of Baal for example, is pretty darn good.

[Kizzdougs]

I was planning to start a new 40k army for 8th Edition (I was considering Black Templars, Black Legion, and Dark Eldar), but the new fluff has put me right off. I got about half way through Dark Imperium and then put it down and went back to the Heresy. 

 

I'll definitely still paint the odd 40k mini here and there, but fluff is a massive part of what inspires me to collect an army so I can't see myself starting a new army anytime soon.

[Volt]

Oh c'mon. You're holding the 40k lore in too high a regard. The most realised and convincing plots came from Forgeworld.

 

The general stuff has always been roughly the same in terms of quality. The settings has always been filled with silly quirks and developments.

 

The new black library stuff, Devastation of Baal for example, is pretty darn good.

Only if we're counting from sixth edition, which I'm not. There's no reason why we can't go back to the days when Codices had legitimately decent writing in them such as what was included with 3rd or 4th edition codices for various factions- sometimes even including very small short stories. Instead we get the modern codex, which is crammed full of pointless images of models that are a waste of everybody's money- both ours and the printers: and have both bloated font and depending on the 'dex might have horrible art also taking up space that rightly belongs to text which could add far more depth than any image. 

[Corswain]

8th Edition fluff is a low point for me and it probably boils down to two things - hope and sales.

 

With the Rise of Guilliman, Cawl and the Primaris, there seems to be an injection of hope into the setting. We’re not two minutes to midnight anymore, we’re having Sunday brunch with the whole day ahead of us. That feels completey jarring and contrary to the themes of the last 25 years of 40K history. Hope, for me, is the Death of the Grim-Dark.

 

The second part is sales and it’s pretty much tied to Guilliman, Cawl and the Primaris again. At no point in my 40K (since 4th Edition) experience have I really felt like the setting was secondary to the product - it was a story and you could buy models from it. Now it feels like the opposite - we have these models and we wrote a story about them.

Now more than at any point it feels like the lore has only been written to attempt to create sales.

The examples of the OP are perfect. Primaris are saving everybody, why wouldn’t you want to buy them!?!?

(I know that GW is a business and is and always will be product first, but at least they used to try.)

 

Take away Guilliman, Cawl and he Primaris and you take away both of my problems. Everything else is good for me fluff wise, the fall of Cadia and the splitting of the Imperium, the last minute saving of doomed Space Marine Chapters (a staple of the lore long before 8th) and the creation of a new Eldar god - all fine.

 

Just give me back my grim-dark and stop trying to sell me unasked for and unwanted Mary-Sue SuperDooper Marines and I’ll be happy.

 

The cat is out of the bag though, so I guess we just hope that the survey got some good attention and GW make moves to up their fluff game.

[M@verik115]

Honestly I dont think its the hope and sales. 
I am fine with both. 
Just because there is hope, does not mean that lore cannot be good. They are not mutually exclusive. 
The story doesn't need to be dark and gloomy for it to be good. 
I believe the problem lies in that 40K has gone back to targeting preteens and teens. 
Those 2 groups are not groups which can usually appreciate a brilliant story and setting with content matter which will appeal to adults. 

[Ishagu]

 

 

Oh c'mon. You're holding the 40k lore in too high a regard. The most realised and convincing plots came from Forgeworld.

 

The general stuff has always been roughly the same in terms of quality. The settings has always been filled with silly quirks and developments.

 

The new black library stuff, Devastation of Baal for example, is pretty darn good.

Only if we're counting from sixth edition, which I'm not. There's no reason why we can't go back to the days when Codices had legitimately decent writing in them such as what was included with 3rd or 4th edition codices for various factions- sometimes even including very small short stories. Instead we get the modern codex, which is crammed full of pointless images of models that are a waste of everybody's money- both ours and the printers: and have both bloated font and depending on the 'dex might have horrible art also taking up space that rightly belongs to text which could add far more depth than any image.

I was getting bored and exasperated with the grim dark, everything is in decay lore that GW had created. It was starting to feel like the whole Imperium worships Nurgle.

 

GW know that they pushed that style of narrative as far as it could go. I'm glad it's changed in this regard.

[Corswain]

Honestly I dont think its the hope and sales. 

I am fine with both. 

Just because there is hope, does not mean that lore cannot be good. They are not mutually exclusive. 

The story doesn't need to be dark and gloomy for it to be good.

You’re absolutely right but when there is a fundamental tone shift after 25 years, it’s not gonna sit well with a lot of people.

And I guess I could have worded it better but I feel like GW has prioritised the lore as a vehicle to push sales, rather than tell a story. It’s not impossible but it is unlikely that we will get good storytelling out of that kinda mindset.

 

As much as this is a social hobby, it’s very individual and personal though, so I know that some people are going to completly disagree with me. What I find interesting, is that there are so many people who have problems with 8th ed. lore for so many different reasons. That indicates a problem.

[Ishagu]

It's the first time it has moved forward in 4 editions, so people will always complain.

 

Star Wars gets abuse as well with the new movies, doesn't mean they are bad :-P

 

Edit:

 

The novel Dark Imperium personally made me fully accept the Primaris.

BL authors have said they'll be expanding on the template of the story in Gathering Storm and the 8th edition books and the overall quality will rise once capable authors have had a chance to work with the new setting.

Right now we mostly have summaries of events.

[Kinstryfe]

I'm not sure that anyone saying codexes used to have top notch writing in them isn't just looking thru nostalgia fillers. It was mostly always unfleshed little blurbs about this character or that battle, same as always. And I get some of the primaris hate, but really, does anyone really read about primaris and think "wow, looks like the Imperium is going to win this after all!" If you've been raised on 20+ years of grimdark and cynicism, the proper response is "oh man, those seem like a good idea now, but I can't wait to see how Primaris end up being a colossal mistake that bites the Imperium in its tushy!" You can't keep grinding the "heroes" down over and over and over and still keep any meaning behind it. You've got to let them think they're getting ahead now and then before grinding them back into the dirt...

[toaae]

I've found Primaris fluff to be poor from the start. It doesn't fit in with the setting. But I was also never one who thought the story had to move on. So I'm obviously not the target audience for this narrative. I echo Stofficus's points; the fluff since the Gathering Storm has weakened the setting, not strengthened it.

[Sete]

Don't get me started on the Last Jedi Ishagu. It was :cuss.

God Emperor of Mankind do you people see the same thing I do? Do I live in an alternate reality?

 

This debacle could have been avoided if Guilliman just ordered a new founding of space marines with a new armour mark and some fancy new tech. But nooooo let's tune it up to eleven! Super Space marines omega Z!