Warhammer 40,000 is a bleak setting

They brag about it

“In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war”

I think that quote is actually the source of the word “grimdark”

Humanity is ruled by a tyrannical government that constantly enacts horrible war crimes and atrocities against the rest of the galaxy, which is in turn enacting horrible atrocities against humanity

And there’s a certain kind of 40k fan who just

really revels in this grim darkness

Their favorite thing to do is to bombard non-fans with the most awful and depressing parts of the setting until they go “what the fuck is wrong with you why do you like this????”

And then the 40k fan goes “WELCOME TO WARHAMMER BABY”

This behavior is really annoying

But it’s also not really what I like about it

And I think it’s disingenuous about what the strong points of the setting are

The lore states that the imperium regularly massacres alien populations, as well as its own citizens if they’ve been exposed to Chaos or alien ideologies

But the games, which are my main point of interaction with the franchise, never really focus on this kind of behavior

There’s no level in Space Marine 1 or 2 where your commander goes

“Titus! Someone in this hab block is a chaos traitor!”

“You need to kill everyone in it including all these sick children to make sure the traitor doesn’t escape!”

“Here’s a flamer. Get to work”

Because that would make most players viscerally uncomfortable

Including a lot of the fans who claim that they like Warhammer because “everyone is the bad guys”

I like the orks

The games mostly focus on the more heroic exploits of whichever faction you’re playing as

Because most people would rather save the day by fighting the bad guys rather than massacre civilians

My favorite Warhammer stories are the ones where even if the system is irrevocably fucked, there are good people within it doing their best to do good within it

And if some guy is like “I LIKE WARHAMMER BECAUSE EVERYONE IS A BABY EATING MONSTER”

That guy is a prick who’s goal is to make you uncomfortable

He does not speak for me

I’m here for transhuman cyborg killing machines struggling to hold on to their last shreds of humanity in an increasingly dark and complicated galaxy

And for cool armor and big guns with skulls on them

The actual sauce of Warhammer's grimdarkness, to my mind, is that this entire system is fucked from top to bottom but it's humanity on a galactic scale being pushed by a threat they have almost no hope of dealing with if it TRULY gets out of control

and so you set the stage for truly over-the-top heroics, because anything less would be simply insufficient

Exactly

Desperate times set the stage for the greatest of deeds

Serendipitously, some streamers I enjoy played through all of the 40k Space Marine 2 campaign

which seems to understand this VERY well

last night, I mean

I'm outside this fandom but I deeply appreciate this plurk for the point you're making

The last level of Space Marine 2 has a bit where you’re holding up an Ultramarine chapter banner while your buddies form a firing line pointing directly into a portal into hell

It’s fucking ridiculous and it RULES

I don’t want to commit atrocities against helpless targets. I don’t want to revel in ignorance and fear

I want to rip a daemon in half with my bare hands while screaming

(This is also why I like Doom Eternal)

I think you would very much enjoy this story about a reformist Inquisitor

https://forums.sufficien...

Seems worth checking out

This is a wild-ass addition considering I was talking about ripping daemons in half 5 comments ago

sorry, was supposed to go in the previous one, but I misposted it. I can move it.

Eh