Is 40k Grimdark, Noblebright or have we just grown-up

[Calgar 2.0]

I got into 40k back in 2005 when I was like 10, due to reading a family member's rulebooks and codexes going back to 2nd Edition. I will say that, whilst I don't 100% mind the direction that GW is taking 40k, I do dislike that it feels somewhat soulless. Personally, the artwork in the new codexes is much too clean for my liking. What got me into 40k was the "weird pictures of space men" drawn by the likes of John Blanche and Wayne England.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually the Emperor was originally portrayed as a completely heroic and noble figure, the modern stuff about the Emperor being questionable is actually the aberration by trend. Judging by Priestly's intentions in Lost and the Damned, it wasn't supposed to be nightmarish from the start at all.

 

Been in the Hobby 26 years, in my time in the Hobby, a genocidal regime created on the foundations of his bloodshed definitely was still in the cards by the time late 2nd, early 3rd edition rolled around, so I've never seen him as noble, or heroic, personally.

By the later actions sure, but the original descriptions of the Imperium's birth and literal first example of the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy lore mentions none of that.

 

As far as I know, the horrendous side has always been there. I mean, the original image of him on the Golden Throne was inspired by HR Giger, and the part about psykers being sacrificed to him every day was most definitely there, albeit in smaller numbers than what the lore stated starting in 3rd edition.

[Ishagu]

The setting is categorically grim-dark, but in a less comical and satirical way than in past editions.

 

You also need to look beyond the surface, which is something that a lot of people are unwilling or incapable of doing, unfortunately.

 

I see complaints about Guilliman being a noble-bright hero, but as he has objectively failed to save the Imperium or to push Chaos back he cannot be given that title. He has many personal victories, of course, but the setting is the same as always- Imperium backed up against the wall, drowning under a tide of Xenos, Heretics and Daemons. He even admits to himself that everything his Father and brothers set out to achieve has been an utter failure, and death would have been a better outcome.

The greatest commander in the Imperium's history, who made plans to combat chaos Thousands of Years ago, is simply delaying the inevitable and has been un-able to re-claim a full half of the Galaxy.

 

How is this Noble-Bright again? To claim it as such is wilful ignorance.

 

The Primaris are not victorious over all threats in the galaxy. They simply represent an escalation on all sides of the 40k universe that maintains the "eternal stalemate" of the setting. Chaos has invaded real space, more aliens are causing trouble, the Primaris are a stronger breed of Astartes and all they have done is allowed the Imperium to endure.

 

 

So yes. If you skim the surface and read about some heroic victory in sector XYZ of the Segmentum Obscurus, then you might think that the situation has improved for humanity. You are wrong, of course. The Imperium has lost half of it's Territory and untold billions of lives have been claimed by the enemies of mankind.

 

It is also entirely possible to have real heroes in a grim dark universe. To say otherwise would take it further into the "Comically grim dark" territory. They can claim many small victories and personal successes, but they will not defeat Chaos or eliminate all Xenos threats. Grim Dark endures.

 

PS:

 

You should not expect any narrator to judge the characters of 40k by our real world standards, nor should you expect the characters to abide by our standards of right and wrong, morality or normality. To do so is to lack any real imagination. It's all about the context of the setting, and in 40k Exterminatus is part of the package!

Edited July 16, 2020 by Ishagu

[MegaVolt87]

Yeah if I were Bobby it would be easier to be dead I agree, than see how the Imperium declined due to no small part of the abolition of the Legions, his decisione etc. I would even argue his surviving brothers wouldn't have gone AWOL if they were allowed to retain + re-build their legions. By the time they did, would have been enough convalescence to bounce back. But then 40k wouldn't be 40k and there would be no primaris either. I just want a wider meta point of when Fulgrim comes back, it was intentional RG was on the edge of death so he could maybe one day return for sure and see the consequences of his decisions or stay as bubble boy, either way its no good for him. 

[Elzender]

After reading the post from The Unseen, I think it kinda makes sense why are we seeing this focus on stories and characters instead of the setting as a whole. For years a lot of people argued that the setting had become excessively stagnant and unmoving, as nothing really changed the status quo while more and more events were just added to the brink of the end of the 41st millenium without furrther progress. So Gw finally decided to pull the trigger and change the setting. However, to do so, they felt it was necessary (and profitable, probably comparing it to the Horus Heresy success, as The Unseen said) to tell the story of how that happened. The difference with how it was in the past is that, when this universe was first published, the setting was already on the 41st millenium. The HH was just part of the background, so as long as you had the basic elements that justified the Imperium's situation, it was good enough, and the details just gave it some more flavour. However, now GW had to transition to setting 1 to setting 2, and just some background story would likely not be enough to satisfy the fans (again, the HH series might have to do with this perception, as developing and detailing the story seems to have been generally well received by the community).

 

And yes, they could have probably handled it better (to be fair, I haven't really read much of the new background directly from the sources, so I'm not going to judge further as I'm not really qualified), and they might have focussed too much on Guilliman's efforts. But then again, if you look at it, the Horus Heresy as a general story does not have that many key characters either; even some of the primarchs have a limited impact on the story, so in the end, it comes down to a couple dozen of key characters at most, with the Emperor and Horus as the top dogs. In this case, the top Imperium character for the main story is Guilliman, so it is logical that most things revolve around him and his decisions, as the setting is Imperium-centric (and probably has always been). However, now the Imperium is not only facing the Chaos rebellion like in the HH, were it basically carried all of the weight of the opposition, but multiple xenos species too. As a result, the change from a 1vs to a 1vs6? (Chaos of all flavours, Necrons, Tyrannids+GSC, Orks, Eldar of all stripes, Tau, sorry if I miss something ) leads to the weight and protagonism of the antagonists getting divided and "diluted" among them, making the Imperium stand out even more as the protagonist, and consequently their leader. Let's hope that GW is able to give enough gravitas to the different faction leaders to avoid strengthening this perception.

 

The current Horus Heresy story was built upon +20 years of background material that settled the main structure, but left plenty of gaps to be filled, and even then a lot of it has been changed to fit better with the 40K setting and its own development. Now GW are trying to build a new setting, but they are trying to give us both the stories that lead to it and the general background. Hopefully, in the following 3-5 years, they might have been able to ground the new setting properly, and also given us enough stories and details to make it believable when compared with the previous one.

 

This makes me wonder whether GW might have been better off inverting the release of the Primaris waves; while the releases aligned with Jes Goodwin's ideas regarding the design philosophy he followed for them, 8th edition main focus was on the aftermath of the Indomitus Crusade and Guilliman's return to Ultramar for the Plague Wars. Thus, we would have expected to find the Indomitus veterans already integrated in the chapters after +100 years of service. This jump served to present the setting with the Imperium post-Cicatrix Maledictum, but left many holes in between,. These have started to be filled by Psychic Awakening, and now we're getting the details of the Indomitus Crusade. However, here we would actually expect to have the Primaris much less experienced, not being integrated yet with their parent chapters and held in mistrust by some of them, so they are more likely to look plain, unadorned, as they have not taken yet the traditions and symbols of their forebears.

 

As for Cawl, while his successes in enhancing marines and creating a whole new arsenal seem quite outlandish, there are two things we have to consider: first, he is one of the few Adeptus Mechanicus followers that seemed to pursue technological progress (or at least, one of the few that escaped being branded a heretek/exiled/servitor'ed/burned/defected to Chaos); second, that he spent ten thousand years doing so, and likely with a big, if clandestine, team behind (after all, he had the initial approval of Guilliman during the post-HH/Scouring era, so likely he got a lot of resources available). There are very few Imperial characters that old and that actually have taken an active role all throughout the years (Custodes are secluded in the Palace, Bjorn is a dreadnought, Primarchs are missing/dead/mostly dead, the Emperor is a psychic spooky skeleton on a chair too busy fending off daemons on Terra, directing the Astronomicon and snacking on psykers...). And it could be argued that it is impossible that someone managed to do that by himself (itself?), but then again we don't know of how many failed trying, or how many ended up absorbed by Cawl's multi-conscience (which seems to be the opposite of Fabius Bile; a body with multiple consciences vs. multiple bodies "sharing" a single one, and both working tirelessly for ten thousand years to improve the Imperium/Human evolution, respectively).

Edited July 16, 2020 by Elzender

[Lord_Caerolion]

I would even argue his surviving brothers wouldn't have gone AWOL if they were allowed to retain + re-build their legions.

 

Would they have, though? Corax was broken by the actions of rebuilding his Legion after the Istvaan Massacre, Dorn was determined to atone for his "failure", Russ didn't split his Legion but ran off anyways, Khan went on a field-trip to Commorragh, the Lion had his "family squabble". The only other is Vulkan, and he didn't split his Legion but still left for unknown reasons.