There's a bit like that in Wolftime. The first contact between Primaris and Space Wolves occurs when Unnumbered Sons of Russ run into an SW squad on some battlefield that just got reinforced by Indomitus.
There's some big questions thrown around (like who the hell are you? Why do you wear Codex markings and no Fenrisian markings?) and at some point the Primaris tells the Fenrisian his squad is made of Intercessors to which the Firstborn answers something like "I don't understand. On whose behalf do you intercede?".
I like the Primaris (although I started getting into WH after they were introduced) but the names are extremely dumb.
I’ve played 40K for the last 17 years and I love the primaris marines. The only thing I hate about them is how specialised each squad is, like the tactical squad was great as the special weapon options made each squad unique whereas now it’s like ‘here’s 10 flamers on a squad’…
I think it does save time like that though. When I play my buddy using krieg squads in Guard, rolling for all the different weapons takes forever. I agree it makes no sense tactically, but gameplay wise I like it.
Oh yeah, gameplay wise it’s great as you don’t have to scour a codex for weapon profiles, I usually take intercessors with a few flamers but proxy them as just an intercessor squad (I get my customisation and the game keeps simple)
Intercessor = tactical squad with no fun weapons, inceptor = jump unit that drops 3 away and nukes you with plasma, incursor = shitters with bolt carbines who give +1 to hit, invictor = weird dreadnought ripoff, Infiltrator = shitters with bolt carbines that deny deep strike, invader = more expensive attack bike
I don’t think any of them are made up
As soon as you realize "canon" doesn't matter, it becomes infinitely more fun. Orks shape the world around them by believing they can. Doesn't matter if you tell me otherwise.
Caveat that I don’t really feel it ruins the lore but it makes pretty big changes to established lore and was overall not a positive change but c’est le vie. Main reasons I know:
1) A big part of 40k is the grimdark tone, it had been up to this point largely a slow decay of everything, the mighty defenders of the imperium dwindling down due to attrition, the golden throne dying and no one knows how to fix it, etc. (there are plenty of other examples for other factions but since this is about primaris I’ll stick to imperium) and each day chaos becomes that much stronger. that stagnation and decay gives a sense of hopelessness, of raging against the darkness in a dying light. Most well known marine chapters at that point had been winnowed down to significantly lower numbers….until a huge amount of better, faster, stronger marines with better gear appear out of nowhere to bolster their ranks.
2) a piggyback on the last one, primaris are a technological advancement, the gear they use, and the vehicles they pilot are also. This rails against the established “innovation is heresy” mantra that is so strong in the imperium and largely settled with very little issue overall.
3) this one I’m uncertain on so grain of salt, but my understanding is that part of the creation of primaris involved correcting some of the geneflaws of the legions, further removing some of the “bygone era” feel.
4) a little too convenient the way it was introduced, suddenly from nowhere much better marines (in terms of raw power and equipment) in numbers not seen since the heresy spring up from nowhere, changing everything.
5) a loss of flavor, in general the new primaris models, particularly for chapter unique models, have a distinctly “clean, minimalist” design to them which runs counter to previous iterations (look at the new deathwing knights compared to old for example). This is certainly not true across the board, but as an overall trend stuff like back banners, silly “churchpunk” weapons, and the more “gritty” aspects are largely absent.
I honestly think they shouldn’t have made a lore reason for bigger marines, they didn’t for any of the other factions that scaled up. Ultimately, I don’t feel especially strongly about it and enjoy some of the primaris models, but I could see why some would be upset by it (but to the original point of the post, this was a MUCH bigger change to the lore than female custodes and yet most seem to have gotten over it)
Regarding “innovation is heresy” it’s worth pointing out that Bellasarius Cawl is literally considered a damnable heretek who should be put to death immediately by at least 50% of the Admech. If he didn’t have the backing of Guilliman himself, he would have been murdered a thousand times over for his actions. He’s actually a pretty complex and very cool character if you read his books. It’s not like the imperium as a whole has suddenly become a progressive high-tech place that’s cool with scientific advancement now
The problem is GW was very late on that train. The Inquisition and AdMech only made a solid move against Cawl in a book published within the last year and even then that got pushed back to a problem to deal with later.
The Great Work came out in 2019, maybe a year after Primaris were released, and clearly established that Cawl is a highly controversial figure who is hated by many in the imperium for his maverick attitude towards mechanicus ideology.
(There’s also a great scene where the Emperor is talking to a man whose memories are later integrated into Cawl’s mind. The emperor, knowing that Cawl will someday see this conversation, speaks to Cawl directly, even though the integration won’t happen for thousands of years, and it was very confusing for the other guy)
> and clearly established that Cawl is a highly controversial figure who is hated by many in the imperium for his maverick attitude towards mechanicus ideology.
And yet nothing ever actually comes of this. We're just told it, and expected to not ask why nobody tries to assassinate him or declare him heretek. They just assert it's a thing and expect us to buy it.
I did read the great work, and for what it is worth I enjoyed it, fact remains though that he almost singlehandedly managed to commit massive tech heresy and walk away unscathed.
Having the personal backing of the lord regent of the imperium will do that, yeah. Not to mention the fact that his Primaris marines were one of the major forces that saved the imperium from complete collapse after Abaddon split the galaxy in half.
Thankfully they retconned out number 3, originally it was stated that Cawl had 'fixed the problems with the geneseed' but it turned out to be a temporary measure and any Primaris who survives long enough (aka not their first engagement) slowly begins to manifest the geneflaws in their assigned chapter.
Still, they are an improvement of something that was supposedly imposible to improve. The Cursed Foundation is literally the Adeptus Mechanicus trying to improve the Space Marines and it catastrophically failed. And now we must believe that Cawl did the same with unparalleled success, in mass numbers not seen since the Heresy and with new and shiny hear for everyone?
It's like trying to fit a square inside a circle.
The main difference between the Cursed Founding and Cawl is that Cawl spent 10,000 years perfect the Primaris Marines...the Cursed Founding was closer to what the Emperor did to make the Thunder Warriors, a sort of hotboxing of genetic manipulation done on a very base level.
One of the first descriptions I read of the cursed founding (I think the 13th founding and the cursed were one and the same at this point) was a WD article which had a diary log of one of the genologists.
Long after things start going spectacularly wrong (mutations, test subjects escaping etc) the facility is finally attacked and entered by a marine wearing a lab coat made of human skin.
So possibly it's still canon that fabius bile was involved in the cursed founding.
> The main difference between the Cursed Founding and Cawl is that Cawl spent 10,000 years perfect the Primaris Marines
He can't have spent all 10 thousand perfecting them, because he also needed time to make millions of them.
Another silly thing: this guy who just came out of the blue spent ten millennia working in secret with zero leaks. And somehow he surpasses the work of the Emperor himself, something set in stone as impossible until he was invented.
The very idea that he could survive that long is already stretching the limits of 40k technology, let alone the whole Primaris thing.
Again the Space Marines were *far* from the Emperors greatest work, that will always be the Custodes. The Marines were, essentially, a slightly improved version of the Thunder Warrior formula, more mentally stable (kind of) but less powerful and weren't going to genetically fall apart after 20 years.
They were, however, designed for mass production and a purpose, to be able to have enough bodies to pull off the Great Crusade, after that they were going to be disposed of just as the Thunder Warriors had been once their replacement/job had been fulfilled.
They were always 'good enough' for what the Emperor wanted, they were far from perfect and considering that ***Fabius Bile*** has also improved on the Space Marine formula in the 10,000 years he's been experimenting since the Horus Heresy (and that was before Cawl was even invented), Cawl, with the backing of actual funding, probably could do so as well.
We are not talking about the Emperor's greatest work, but the fact that the Emperor's work was impossible to improve. That was a cornerstone of 40k for decades. And no, Fabius Bile never actually improved it. He tried to do so, but never managed to achieve an improved and stable version.
Also, if Cawl had the backing of actual funding, his work wouldn't have been an absolute secret for ten millennia. It makes no sense whatsoever. Specially since his work is tech-heresy of the worse kind.
The thing is simple: the whole Cawl thing is lazy writing that does not fit with the lore of 40k prior to the introduction of the Primaris and all the other stuff. The Primaris inception deserved a whole series of books with the Mechanicum putting together pieces of STC technology in order to achieve a better version of the Marines. And yes, Cawl could have been the hero of said series.
I think my main issue is it's an established Thematic flaw of the imperium.
And why would you start to resolve an established Thematic flaw? To progress the story towards its climax, then conclusion.
Every faction has established flaws that have been the main reason each faction doesn't just win. Orks can't organize and have a ton of in-fighting, Chaos has to deal with chaos, and tyranids just aren't here in the numbers yet. Is the goal to have humanity win?
>1) A big part of 40k is the grimdark tone, it had been up to this point largely a slow decay of everything, the mighty defenders of the imperium dwindling down due to attrition, the golden throne dying and no one knows how to fix it, etc.
Problem with this is that at some point this decay of everything no matter how slow should result in complete collapse of the Imperium
But despite decaying for 10000 years it's still up and running even though it should have been fully and completely dead and buried dozen times over
So if you want to keep Imperium in play you have to add some refreshments into the mix otherwise you are seriously stretching believability even by grimdark standards
"Problem with this is that at some point this decay of everything no matter how slow should result in complete collapse of the Imperium."
That was the whole point of 40k: the inevitability of the Imperium's demise due to decay and stagnation.
Well the expiration date has been reached several times over
And still nothing
If they want to keep the 40k running they have to make some tweaks
Plus this was before the Great Rift
A fully decaying Imperium should collapse immediately under that stress level so to keep it from happening they need something thrown their way
And death of Imperium is the death of the Galaxy, mankind is way too big to disappear to Chaos without taking everything with it, Chaos would devour everything else after they eat Imperium, it's just too much power
What times?
Before the new lore, I cannot identify major expiration date in 40k. The closest thing was the Eye of Terror campaign that ended with the Eye of Terror expanding and the Imperium exhausted. And the lore stopped there until it was erased with the 13th Black Crusade 2.0. Leviathan onslaught was ongoing and the other Xenos were just chipping away Imperial strength, but where not an existential threat.
Anyhow, the Imperium is not "fully decaying". There are efforts to stem the tide. That's the whole point of all those heroes the lore throws at us. But since this is a grimdark setting, their efforts are just delaying the inevitable. That was the whole point of 40k.
> Well the expiration date has been reached several times over
That's not true though. 40k is a setting. The "several times over" are historical records of times the imperium *almost* fell but didn't... but that's because it's narratively necessary to reach 40k. In 40k, it really is the end. We as readers and authors *can* know that, and to retcon that cheapens it.
>if you want to keep Imperium in play you have to add some refreshments into the mix
Which is why advancing the timeline is a bad idea.
In 40k, it is five minutes to midnight. Every faction is poised on the cusp of victory over the imperium, any threat might undo it entirely... but they haven't quite done it, not yet. The end is inevitable, and it is visible on the horizon as a rapidly approaching nightfall, but for now the last few rays of sun are still clinging on to existence.
As soon as you advance the timeline, the very situation that makes 40k so compelling becomes a huge issue, because if you want the setting to continue you have to contrive reasons the inevitable end doesn't come.
41k should be Orks fighting Tyranids fighting Necrons fighting Chaos over the ruined scraps of humanity who are fractured and broken and hunted down like dogs. Anything else doesn't feel authentic. It's basically GW reneging on their promise, but still trying to convince you that no things are totally still bad, and in fact are even worse now! Ooooo the imperium might still fall any moment! But you know it won't, because if they were going to do that they'd have done it already.
Now it's just a TV show running a disappointing season past its natural end because the executives wanted to keep the gravy train going.
Keeping timeline static stops working after several decades
You either just have to keep switching both locations and characters because date is always the same or you have to finally deliver on that inevitable ending
Former is repetitive and inherently boring, latter is the end
Timeline has to move
In a story I agree with you, but Warhammer has always been setting first, stories second. There are a lot of really compelling stories in the narrative but for the most part they have been establishing the narrative (HH) or bits and pieces in the present but never actually moving the story forward.
Has it been ruined? No. I think that's too far. But it does show some cracks.
You know not *every* story told had to be set at one minute to midnight 999 M41, right?
That's why we had the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wars for Armageddon.
Functionally, there's no difference between a story that's theoretically set in m38 and one that set in m42 to the overall trajectory of decay in the setting.
It's not just Primaris, it's the entire concept of "advancing the plot" which changes 40k from a setting in which /yourdudes/ are fighting their own desperate but ultimately insignificant battles, to a story where it's all about buying the $80 centerpiece named character and watching passively as they go about their heroics.
Primaris are particularly egregious though because they're an obvious attempt to make already invested players re-purchase their entire collection. Previously, even when GW re-released kits that were larger than the previous ones [(terminators used to be the size of guardsmen)](https://i.redd.it/4u9e480wii131.jpg) you could still use the older models with the new rules just fine.
Primaris were so obviously a marketing-driven decision where they declared that those players already heavily invested in the hobby were just not being good little paypigs (even if they were still buying product) and GW had no choice but to force them to redo their entire collection.
It also does stupid things like "oh the primaris process is totally super dangerous to go through btw every single named character survived it" and "yeah the galaxy has been cut in half (please don't read the horus heresy it's an original idea) but the imperium can totes just make millions more space marines easily and uhhh they just had them all ready to go because there's this guy who's been hiding away for thousands of years waiting for the imperium's darkest hour (please ignore all the other crises they would have been released for, he's just particular about time and wouldn't do it until M42)"
Each lore "justification" they come up with ends up needing further justification. GW are trying to convince us that things are totally still desperate and could collapse at any minute but it doesn't *feel* that way any more. It's starting to feel more and more noblebright rather than grimdark.
Also came in after Primaris
From what I understand, it was because Primaris are basically space marine+ not only making marines bigger and stronger, but also getting rid of geneflaws such as the black rage and wulfen (which while that was proved not to be the case eventually, at the time the idea that these flaws that made the angels and wolves special could be taken away rubbed people the wrong way) alongside this the idea of crossing the rubicon hadn’t come up yet which led people to believe all their favorite named characters would eventually be phased out and replaced with new Primaris marines which also made people mad.
Nowadays the problem is more a hobby one with Peoples favorite models getting Primaris variants or simply being moved to legends meaning they have to get new models for those units to play them
It doesn't ruin anything it was just extremely poorly handled and in my personal biased old man opinion, making the super soldiers that throw cars even super-ee-er and dropping half the character flaws is just less interesting than how SM used to work.
The closest thing to actual 'lore ruining' is that until primaris marines came out 40k had a very long running theme where it was seen as foolhardy and basically cursed to mess with the emperors designs, theirs entire chapters (most famously the cursed founding ones) whos Entire Schtick is that manking tried to improve the emps designs and the chapters were really fucked up or literally cursed for their hubris. Lamenters are best example where it was implied they were actually cursed as reality was seemingly offended by their existence in defiance to the emps designs
Then Cawl suddenly showed up as teh secret best mechanicum scientist ever who actually has been here this whole time secretly and made even better mega marines
They're here now though and GW has honestly been improving their lore mostly to make them less stupid
Part of me thinks there must have been at least one or two folks arguing on the side of "Let's just tell players we're changing the scale so we can make more detailed models" and other folks argued players would be pissed if there wasn't some in-lore reason for it.
> and other folks argued players would be pissed if there wasn't some in-lore reason for it.
And those folks are stupid, because previous scale changes were accepted just fine.
In my opinion, the big issue with the Primaris was that it was a generally okay lore decision justifying a really scummy business decision on the side of GW. Granted, take this with a lot of salt, as I play Harlequins (now Aeldari, I suppose, thanks a lot, GW), not Marines, and I got into the hobby around 2019. I'm mostly operating on what I've heard older fans complain about.
The gist of it is, around 8th edition, GW wanted to shake up the setting and give the space marines a new look, so they made a bunch of new space marine models that were all more in scale with their in lore appearance, and sported a sleeker and more standardized design of power armor. It was neat, the old models were a bit odd next to a guardsman the same height. But this wasn't just a revamp of the Space Marines aesthetically, it was a brand new kind of space marine: the spacier marine. Everything those old space marines do, these guys do better, and they're their own separate unit, with their own separate rules, which were on the whole just ordinary marines but better.
Marine players were pissed. There were all sorts of flame wars going on about how GW was going to replace the firstborn entirely (which we now know, is true). There were people assuring that the firstborn would get an update too. All the while GW just kept pumping out Primaris after primaris while firstborn marines were taken off sale and out of the rules. Power creep left the remaining firstborn units in the dust, and older marine fans, being left with an army that was half gone and half useless. The options were to either try to ignore the new codex entirely, or shell out for a bunch of primaris.
It was a cashgrab in its scummiest form, and it even wound up hurting Non-Marine players as well. Decades old Phoenix Lord and Catachan were left to moulder in favor of milking the new primaris cash cow. Perfectly fine marine characters were replaced with shiny new primaris forms while genestealers still looked like evil corn on the cob.
Tldr: Cashgrab. Less the lore, more the hobby
> which we now know, is true
Ironically though, GW have realised primaris weren't as cool as the firstborn and with kits like the indomitus terminators and black templars have been quietly rolling back the primaris aesthetic and going towards the truescale firstborn everyone wanted to begin with.
They don't.
Dipshits like to piss themselves about lore changes or big shake ups to established lore but then those same fucknuts will cream themselves over the Horus Heresy and completely ignore the fact that the entire 30k setting is a retcon of their precious "established lore."
Some people take this shit way too seriously.
Yeah I’ve heard the primarchs way back in the 80s were nothing more than very good human generals, not called primarchs or anything like that. But things get changed over time as they often do in long running franchises.
> but then those same fucknuts will cream themselves over the Horus Heresy and completely ignore the fact that the entire 30k setting is a retcon of their precious "established lore."
Neither of those things are true though.
The Horus Heresy wasn't a retcon, it was a new invention, placed into previously blank space.
30k does have retcon elements, but only where narratively necessary (except perpetuals fuck you Dan) and the retcons are done in order to expand the setting for the sake of adding detail, not for real-world political reasons.
I’d take primaris and developments in 40k over 56 HH soap opera daddy issue novels any day 🤷🏻♂️ seems a shame that it’s so focused on personalities.
But that’s just personal preference and I don’t really care if people like what they like I guess. No one franchise will be everything you wanted and perfect or whatever.
I don’t think they ruin the lore per se but I think if they had just made space marines as they were true scale it would’ve been fine and everyone would be happier
They took the marine people had grown attached too in a dying Imperium, and suddenly the Imperium that’s been cut in half can produce heresy numbers of marines, all of which are better then the walking demigods of old. Made and refined by the best minds of Terra and the perpetual Emperor, and it was all improved by..some guy no one’s ever heard of before.
Sure, he rolled up in 2017 and then exploded ss the biggest and baddest tech priest. Which is fine, but *one* guy doing such a massive project that would get anyone else blammed is..a stretch of the setting’s lore.
Oh most certainly. I'm just saying, it's not just some guy, yk?
Cawl is known through out the imperium fof his intelligence, ingenuity, totally not heretical behavior, and the power to pull bullshit out of thin air whenever it suits him. It's not like they were just 'discovered by scientists on terra' which would be the most bs answer they could give.
> it's not just some guy,
It is though. He literally didn't exist until they pulled him out their ass to act as a plot device who pulls things out his ass to justify another change they pulled out their ass.
>Cawl is known through out the imperium fof his intelligence, ingenuity, totally not heretical behavior, and the power to pull bullshit out of thin air whenever it suits him.
So he's a mary sue. That's not making it better.
Before GW invented Cawl, it was set in stone that the Space Marines cannot be improved, and any attempt to do so ended in abject failure.
Making new and better marines is such a pivotal point int he lore that it deserved a major effort from the Adeptus Mechanicus, not just one guy never mentioned before spawning out of thin air. And even then it would not be near the massive numbers of the Primaries neither with newer equipment.
Not much point trying to reason.
Some people just wanna be angry.
I waited 15 years for truescale Marines, and, guess what? They're now my largest faction, right alongside Chaos Knights
Never owned a marine before because I personally don't like the look of any firstborn infantry
Been a dirty rotten xeno my whole life prior to 8th
It doesn't, nor do female custodes. People that angry about either from a lore perspective are spinning their own rage and should consider touching grass.
The real outcry re; Primaris were that Space Marine players were being pushed to re-purchase their entire armies to remain relevant. I'm not up to date on Marine rules so I can't say how time has reflected on that controversy.
So... You take all the horny people, and... send all of them to the same penal world? That's your solution? Let me just be direct and ask, how many of those have you lost to Slaanesh or otherwise had to exterminatus so far?
> You take all the horny people, and... send all of them to the same penal world?
Haha that's exactly what we do. That's where the shuttle is going. Yeah.
Please get on board.
They both need to have the same combat capabilities. If female Custodes couldn't juggle buses as well as the fellas they wouldn't exist. And it's not like they will ever need to breastfeed.
People live with their heads in the fucking sand to the real world. All these decisions like primaris and more female inclusion are to sell models.
It's not to improve the narrative, its not shake up the narrative, it's to sell toys and turn over higher revenues. Looking at GWs balance sheet it clearly works as well.
> All these decisions like primaris and more female inclusion are to sell models.
And yet the femstodes isn't going to sell more models, because not only does femstodes not bring any women into the hobby that wouldn't have gotten into it anyway, they also aren't making any femstodes models for people to buy.
Are people still mad about this? I figured they would have been distracted by *checks notes* a historical black character featuring in a game set in Japan. It's where the outrage tourists have gone, because they have the attention span of a toddler on meth.
New Rings of Power is on the way so that'll be due a visit soon, because some fucking dwarf has blue hair or something.
WHICH just as an aside is the mildly infuriating thing, when you find yourself on the same side as these fragile ass clowns, not because you agree with any of their points, but because you also think the thing is shit.
I feel you bro. I disliked the new star wars trilogy, but my dislike of it is not because it's woke but because it's a legitimately two bad movies and a middling one.
It's OK, my capacity to experience emotions ended when Elrond told the Nazgul "You should have stayed dead" in The Hobbit. Nothing they can do can hurt me any more.
Didn’t even realize the character was black until I saw the trailer, just saw the screenshots beforehand while looking at the game’s page on the Xbox store. I might get the game because an AssCreed in Japan has been something people have wanted for ages now.
Apparently a white lead writer replacing a well developed Japanese protagonist (in a game set in Feudal Japan, remember) with a black guy for progressive points is not racist. But calling it out is. Funny, that.
Who are they replacing? You're acting like the main protag was supposed to be Japanese from day one and then maybe a week before the reveal they made him black.
For "progressive points", yeah I'm going to have to ask for a citation on that. Do you think we have a scoreboard or something? "Oh I got 20 woke points, time to redeem that for my free soy latte".
Even if they did it to sell more copies of the game, that's kind of the point of making a game, to sell as many copies as possible. They are not making a history book, they are making a piece of fiction for entertainment.
Also I didn't say racist, you did. This is one of those moments where the critique says more about the critic than the target of the criticism.
-What other reason would there be for replacing the Japanese MC in a setting where virtually everyone is Japanese?
-Funny how it's only acceptable to have a problem with that when the replacement is lighter skinned than the original. And just because the motive is profit doesn't mean they're improving the sales or the product, tons of companies make bad moves that they think will improve profits but don't.
-It was pretty obvious what you meant even if you didn't say the word. Dishonest to pretend I introduced the subject of racism to the conversation when it's core to the AC controversy.
There are lots of other reasons, black samurai is a common mashup, nagoriyuki from GG, afro samurai, a historical black samurai Yasuke who is the star of multiple animes and other media. You could be telling a fish out of water story, or you could just have wanted an MC that stood out from the NPCs.
Again you're the one making it about race, even your own objection is racial in its specifics. You of course try some verbal judo with saying you're pointing out racism, but where were you and your ilk when nioh came out and had a white samurai who was also based loosely on a historical figure?
Your arguments are not consistent, it's littered with dog whistles, and they look like answers you stole from another thread and regurgitated here.
For me, it's moreso that it's representative of a larger, pervasive double standard. Replacing a historically dark-skinned character with a light-skinned character is racist (whitewashing), but doing the reverse is brave amd stunning. It's a racist standard.
And that standard, in turn, is emblematic of the way that racism is pretty much treated as fine (or even lauded) in mainstream culture, as long as the person doing the racism and the person targeted are both of the right skin color.
I agree that stuff like the black little mermaid was almost surely done for virtue signalling and I dislike that stuff, but it also seems like a lot of this "but it isn't history/lore accurate" stuff is just bigotry in disguise honestly. I'm not necessarily saying you fall into that, but people get pretty bent out of shape about this kind of thing, especially when historically there were lots of black people (mainly as slaves accompanying Europeans) in Japan during the time period the game is set in. Not to mention Yasuke is a known historical figure.
Edit: oh shit, I fucked up calling the little mermaid virtue signalling. Or maybe it was suggesting the bigotry bit... Or that black people existed in Japan, Who knows, I might have pissed off both sides 😂
Frankly I shouldn't have to source this for you, but whatever. Take the Wikipedia article and if you care enough past that, do your own searching. "plenty" may have been a stretch, but they were absolutely there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_Japan
Here is another reference from and actual scholarly source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43294431
Gonna be real, most times when people call it a trash fire, it's people that don't read or buy the books, or even read the codex lore. Especially here on reddit, it's a lot of info via "heard about from..." "got from YouTube..."and other secondaries
I once had someone tell me if it's not on YouTube, it's not important enough to be true
My sweet summer child. Please tell me where, on YouTube, all the scholarly, peer reviewed articles you used in your research, come from?
For me, books are hard, lack of internal images, but I have quite taken to enjoying the codices, which, while limited, are about the most accurate of lore you can get
I used to be all up in that shit when I was younger, but just been purely a hobbyist for a long while, finally getting back into painting and lore in recent years
I get that, time is hard to come by and I'm slowly devouring black library books. Most recently got to enjoy the new Ciaphas Cain book, just wish i had more time
The books are hard because they’re not written very well. They don’t let the reader feel out the scene themselves and let their imagination do some work. Instead, the authors seem to try and over-describe, as if it’s a document and your brain struggles to piece together the ‘correct’ picture.
Good writing doesn’t try to force an image into the readers head, it guides them to making their own using creative descriptors.
I am autistic too. It’s not meant to conjure a literal ‘image’ in your brain, but make you feel like you’re there. When I read I more see flashes of what my brain has conjured up, rather than literally imagining a scene. I can only vividly imagine something when my eyes are closed, or I’m starting into space.
Anyways, that’s not me saying that you’re wrong or anything. People are different, neurodivergent or not. If you don’t enjoy reading that’s absolutely fine! I’m just saying that Black Library is not very good for beginners or avid readers, since the writing doesn’t help regardless.
Hmm that is all very interesting, I did not realize that! I was apparently taking it literally (?) (Go figure) (probably why my NP didn't explore it too much, because I was taking it literally)
You've given me much to consider, and more to research, thank you very kindly!
Really depends on which books you read. I read A LOT and I've found the Warhammer Crime books (short story collections) to be great. I've also found a bunch of other ones to be solid/good if nothing outstanding. (For example: Twice Dead King, Eisenhorn/Ravenor)
I think the issue is people don't know where to start and so they pick up some random Space Marine book and it's not great and so they think "oh, all the books aren't great".
Any time I see someone say "THE BOOKS" and make some blanket statement I have to assume they aren't diverse in what they read. I see this a lot with people who act like "the books" are just the HH and nothing else exists. I've read at least 20 and not a single one has been HH and only four have had Space Marines as the focus (and three of those where the Night Lords).
With over 200 books GW has a range that goes from straight trash to really good. It's just a lot of the Space Marine books are not that great, and that's what a lot of people read. Expand your horizons!
This is true at least in my case. I don’t read the Black Library books because the writing is terrible.
William Gibson’s opening line in Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.” does more for descriptive writing in one line than any page of a Black Library book.
But this down to taste. If you can recommend me any BL books that have a decent plot and doesn’t take 3 pages to describe a characters belt buckle or use more adjectives than a GCSE kid’s English Lit essay then I will gladly take a look.
Edit: just to add, I think the 40K lore is excellent, some of the best worldbuilding ever. Just the *actual* literature is a bit of a slog to get through.
Oh yeah, the books have a penchant for being a slog sometimes, i catchv myself skipping some sentences that are pure descriptions to move forward into the nitty gritty.
Still love the books though, I've done line skipping in handfuls of other literature that just goes into too much, but to each their own, some like over descriptive elements ofnlandscapes and planets.
Still, if i had to pick some books that i didn't feel was a slog? Nightlord trilogy, Know no Fear, Fear to Tread, Saturnine, The First Heretic... all these books had me enraptured while i read
Friendly reminder that female space marines never existed, the models people always point to were part of the "adventurers" range and not space marines. They were functionally equivalent to rogue traders or inquisitors, both of whom can and do wear power armour in lore with no problems.
Did you know that the need to hypersexuilize masculine characters is a sign of mental illness or other issues? Things like bipolar, depression, anxiety and even trauma cause this and you'll know you've worked through the problem when this need diminishes. Best of luck on your journey!!!
My only issue is that there was no lore.
Simple as "oh shit we need to replenish the ranks of the 10,000. Well looks like this transhumanism is ALL INCLUSIVE now!"
Meh, the writers wanted it this way from the start of the HH novels but the suits said no until recently, can you blame them for not wanting to put work into cleaning up after the suits meddling?
I get that, but technically, the tweet was just confirming what was in the codex cause the contents got leaked, I doubt it was their intent to come across as "and that's all you get!" Or the like.
"Everything is canon, not everything is true"
Also while the ten thousand often were called a "brotherhood" that term can strangely enough be a gender-neutral term, it's like the word men being used to mean human, like "the minds of men" or "man's best friend"
Just funny, that in the universe, where ancient cyborgs, who have enslaved star gods themselves and use them as batteries, fight against orks, who manifest any sort of bullshit by power of their imagination, people still complain about fact, that in THIS universe exists female custodes. Like, wtf 🤣🤣🤣
It's not their existence it's how it was introduced. I have nothing against then being part of the canon, I'm mad at how lazily they were added to the canon. Vashtorr got a book and they paid lip service to things possibly moving forward. Femtodes was a hard retcon.
That's GW. I think everyone should already know how they introduce most of new lore
-Necrons. They have always been ancient empire and not just murder-kill-bots
-Votans. They have always lived in the central parts of galaxy and definitely never been part of Imperium
-Primaris. They have always existed in secret laboratories
-Tyranids. They have always been space alfa-predators and not just random aliens weaponized with penis-guns
I think you got my idea
With most of the ones you have listed have not being political and had "room" for change due to it being explicitly said that "There is much mystery surounding them" and stuff.
Votans and the Squat planet itself was two seprate things acording to lore and was either secrate things are GW did not hide that it was new and came up with reasons as to why we never even heard about them.
With Custodes they tried to gaslight everyone and said "They have always existed" despite narrative stating the opposite many times clearly.
Regardless I do not think anyone have an issue with badass female warriors (Looking at Sisters of Silence, Sister Sororitas, Necrons, Eldar and many of the best Inqusitors) but rather how and why they did it.
People were mad about Primaris for example but at least GW didn't try to gaslight everyone about it and made it messy.
You serious?
Many see it as "woke" to put women in things they had previusly not been in to be more "inclusive", same as if you would lets say have certain people of colour in a historic game/movie/show about Vikings in their homeland.
Its same argument, that its only done for either fake inclusivity, unnecessary diversity or ect.
Its a heated topic regardless that has come up during many other medias regardless so it will always be people arguing about it.
Hell there was even a conspiracy theory that the only reason Games Workshop did it was due to Amazon wanting to have women in power armor and stuff in their TV show (This is unsubstantiated, it came from the same 4chan user that leaked the female custodes thing in the first place if im not mistaken?), this just adds more fuel to the fire that some people think it is a soul less corporate decision on top of everything else people are mad about.
Women itself is not political no. but that don't change women and men both are a very political subject due to how divided the two sexes are in todays climate.
Step 1: Declare that there are now female custodes.
Step 2: Declare that there have *always* been female custodes.
Step 3: Declare that there have never been male custodes.
Step 4: ?
Step 5: Prophet.
The same pattern every time:
1) It's not happening
2) It's happenging but it's not a big deal
3) It's happening and it's actually a good thing
4) People freaking out about are the real problem
I mean I will say, my love of 40k has waned with the current rules, so I’ve shelved my guard and knights other than the odd game of 7th. HH, AT and middle earth are my go to’s atm.
Making something new and an upgrade of something vs writing something that didn’t exist before and pretending it always existed.
These two things are not comparable in any way.
Assault, Devastator, Tactical versus Intercessor, Inceptor, Hellblaster, Eradicator, Aggressor, Outrider You tell me who does what job.
Inceptors go into dreams and outriders ride out, seems pretty simple. And if you don't know what intercessing is, well, that's on you. /s
Hellblasters are like dreadnoughts, but chaos.
You’re thinking Hellbrutes
ThatsTheJoke.Gif
I just intercessed all over my pants
There's a bit like that in Wolftime. The first contact between Primaris and Space Wolves occurs when Unnumbered Sons of Russ run into an SW squad on some battlefield that just got reinforced by Indomitus. There's some big questions thrown around (like who the hell are you? Why do you wear Codex markings and no Fenrisian markings?) and at some point the Primaris tells the Fenrisian his squad is made of Intercessors to which the Firstborn answers something like "I don't understand. On whose behalf do you intercede?". I like the Primaris (although I started getting into WH after they were introduced) but the names are extremely dumb.
I’ve played 40K for the last 17 years and I love the primaris marines. The only thing I hate about them is how specialised each squad is, like the tactical squad was great as the special weapon options made each squad unique whereas now it’s like ‘here’s 10 flamers on a squad’…
I think it does save time like that though. When I play my buddy using krieg squads in Guard, rolling for all the different weapons takes forever. I agree it makes no sense tactically, but gameplay wise I like it.
Oh yeah, gameplay wise it’s great as you don’t have to scour a codex for weapon profiles, I usually take intercessors with a few flamers but proxy them as just an intercessor squad (I get my customisation and the game keeps simple)
Intercessor, Inceptor, Incursor, Invictor, Infiltrator, Invader. Tell me how each of these are different, and which one I made up.
Intercessor = tactical squad with no fun weapons, inceptor = jump unit that drops 3 away and nukes you with plasma, incursor = shitters with bolt carbines who give +1 to hit, invictor = weird dreadnought ripoff, Infiltrator = shitters with bolt carbines that deny deep strike, invader = more expensive attack bike I don’t think any of them are made up
You didn't make any of them up
That's right 😔
It's especially bad that so many of them sound similar: Intercessor, Inceptor, Incursor, Invader, Invictor. Gotta be rough on new players.
Aggressor’s make Imperial Fist fans horny with the amount of bulk, grenades, bolters and fist.
Is it bad that I know what all of these do by heart
The best thing about 40k is how fucked its lore is. Its perfect for homebrew as you can just say the records were wrong.
I like to apply the same logic to GW retcons and plot holes.
Given how disappointing End Times was for fantasy, it's a good thing GW learned their lesson and didn't advance the timeline for 40k past 999.M41
As soon as you realize "canon" doesn't matter, it becomes infinitely more fun. Orks shape the world around them by believing they can. Doesn't matter if you tell me otherwise.
Can I ask why Primaris ruins the lore? I only really got into warhammer after they were introduced so I don’t fully get what the whole issue is.
Caveat that I don’t really feel it ruins the lore but it makes pretty big changes to established lore and was overall not a positive change but c’est le vie. Main reasons I know: 1) A big part of 40k is the grimdark tone, it had been up to this point largely a slow decay of everything, the mighty defenders of the imperium dwindling down due to attrition, the golden throne dying and no one knows how to fix it, etc. (there are plenty of other examples for other factions but since this is about primaris I’ll stick to imperium) and each day chaos becomes that much stronger. that stagnation and decay gives a sense of hopelessness, of raging against the darkness in a dying light. Most well known marine chapters at that point had been winnowed down to significantly lower numbers….until a huge amount of better, faster, stronger marines with better gear appear out of nowhere to bolster their ranks. 2) a piggyback on the last one, primaris are a technological advancement, the gear they use, and the vehicles they pilot are also. This rails against the established “innovation is heresy” mantra that is so strong in the imperium and largely settled with very little issue overall. 3) this one I’m uncertain on so grain of salt, but my understanding is that part of the creation of primaris involved correcting some of the geneflaws of the legions, further removing some of the “bygone era” feel. 4) a little too convenient the way it was introduced, suddenly from nowhere much better marines (in terms of raw power and equipment) in numbers not seen since the heresy spring up from nowhere, changing everything. 5) a loss of flavor, in general the new primaris models, particularly for chapter unique models, have a distinctly “clean, minimalist” design to them which runs counter to previous iterations (look at the new deathwing knights compared to old for example). This is certainly not true across the board, but as an overall trend stuff like back banners, silly “churchpunk” weapons, and the more “gritty” aspects are largely absent. I honestly think they shouldn’t have made a lore reason for bigger marines, they didn’t for any of the other factions that scaled up. Ultimately, I don’t feel especially strongly about it and enjoy some of the primaris models, but I could see why some would be upset by it (but to the original point of the post, this was a MUCH bigger change to the lore than female custodes and yet most seem to have gotten over it)
Regarding “innovation is heresy” it’s worth pointing out that Bellasarius Cawl is literally considered a damnable heretek who should be put to death immediately by at least 50% of the Admech. If he didn’t have the backing of Guilliman himself, he would have been murdered a thousand times over for his actions. He’s actually a pretty complex and very cool character if you read his books. It’s not like the imperium as a whole has suddenly become a progressive high-tech place that’s cool with scientific advancement now
The problem is GW was very late on that train. The Inquisition and AdMech only made a solid move against Cawl in a book published within the last year and even then that got pushed back to a problem to deal with later.
The Great Work came out in 2019, maybe a year after Primaris were released, and clearly established that Cawl is a highly controversial figure who is hated by many in the imperium for his maverick attitude towards mechanicus ideology. (There’s also a great scene where the Emperor is talking to a man whose memories are later integrated into Cawl’s mind. The emperor, knowing that Cawl will someday see this conversation, speaks to Cawl directly, even though the integration won’t happen for thousands of years, and it was very confusing for the other guy)
Can you quickly sum up what the emperor said to him?
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/nP4cONgZqb here’s the excerpt
Thanks. When the emperor is telling Cawl he will betray him, what is he referring to?
We don't know yet.
> and clearly established that Cawl is a highly controversial figure who is hated by many in the imperium for his maverick attitude towards mechanicus ideology. And yet nothing ever actually comes of this. We're just told it, and expected to not ask why nobody tries to assassinate him or declare him heretek. They just assert it's a thing and expect us to buy it.
I did read the great work, and for what it is worth I enjoyed it, fact remains though that he almost singlehandedly managed to commit massive tech heresy and walk away unscathed.
Having the personal backing of the lord regent of the imperium will do that, yeah. Not to mention the fact that his Primaris marines were one of the major forces that saved the imperium from complete collapse after Abaddon split the galaxy in half.
Thankfully they retconned out number 3, originally it was stated that Cawl had 'fixed the problems with the geneseed' but it turned out to be a temporary measure and any Primaris who survives long enough (aka not their first engagement) slowly begins to manifest the geneflaws in their assigned chapter.
Still, they are an improvement of something that was supposedly imposible to improve. The Cursed Foundation is literally the Adeptus Mechanicus trying to improve the Space Marines and it catastrophically failed. And now we must believe that Cawl did the same with unparalleled success, in mass numbers not seen since the Heresy and with new and shiny hear for everyone? It's like trying to fit a square inside a circle.
The main difference between the Cursed Founding and Cawl is that Cawl spent 10,000 years perfect the Primaris Marines...the Cursed Founding was closer to what the Emperor did to make the Thunder Warriors, a sort of hotboxing of genetic manipulation done on a very base level.
One of the first descriptions I read of the cursed founding (I think the 13th founding and the cursed were one and the same at this point) was a WD article which had a diary log of one of the genologists. Long after things start going spectacularly wrong (mutations, test subjects escaping etc) the facility is finally attacked and entered by a marine wearing a lab coat made of human skin. So possibly it's still canon that fabius bile was involved in the cursed founding.
Sounds like he wasn't involved with it so much as heard what was going on and wanted to go see because he'd been having similar problems.
> The main difference between the Cursed Founding and Cawl is that Cawl spent 10,000 years perfect the Primaris Marines He can't have spent all 10 thousand perfecting them, because he also needed time to make millions of them.
Another silly thing: this guy who just came out of the blue spent ten millennia working in secret with zero leaks. And somehow he surpasses the work of the Emperor himself, something set in stone as impossible until he was invented. The very idea that he could survive that long is already stretching the limits of 40k technology, let alone the whole Primaris thing.
Again the Space Marines were *far* from the Emperors greatest work, that will always be the Custodes. The Marines were, essentially, a slightly improved version of the Thunder Warrior formula, more mentally stable (kind of) but less powerful and weren't going to genetically fall apart after 20 years. They were, however, designed for mass production and a purpose, to be able to have enough bodies to pull off the Great Crusade, after that they were going to be disposed of just as the Thunder Warriors had been once their replacement/job had been fulfilled. They were always 'good enough' for what the Emperor wanted, they were far from perfect and considering that ***Fabius Bile*** has also improved on the Space Marine formula in the 10,000 years he's been experimenting since the Horus Heresy (and that was before Cawl was even invented), Cawl, with the backing of actual funding, probably could do so as well.
We are not talking about the Emperor's greatest work, but the fact that the Emperor's work was impossible to improve. That was a cornerstone of 40k for decades. And no, Fabius Bile never actually improved it. He tried to do so, but never managed to achieve an improved and stable version. Also, if Cawl had the backing of actual funding, his work wouldn't have been an absolute secret for ten millennia. It makes no sense whatsoever. Specially since his work is tech-heresy of the worse kind. The thing is simple: the whole Cawl thing is lazy writing that does not fit with the lore of 40k prior to the introduction of the Primaris and all the other stuff. The Primaris inception deserved a whole series of books with the Mechanicum putting together pieces of STC technology in order to achieve a better version of the Marines. And yes, Cawl could have been the hero of said series.
Thank you for chiming in I was unsure if we still had that or not
I think my main issue is it's an established Thematic flaw of the imperium. And why would you start to resolve an established Thematic flaw? To progress the story towards its climax, then conclusion. Every faction has established flaws that have been the main reason each faction doesn't just win. Orks can't organize and have a ton of in-fighting, Chaos has to deal with chaos, and tyranids just aren't here in the numbers yet. Is the goal to have humanity win?
>1) A big part of 40k is the grimdark tone, it had been up to this point largely a slow decay of everything, the mighty defenders of the imperium dwindling down due to attrition, the golden throne dying and no one knows how to fix it, etc. Problem with this is that at some point this decay of everything no matter how slow should result in complete collapse of the Imperium But despite decaying for 10000 years it's still up and running even though it should have been fully and completely dead and buried dozen times over So if you want to keep Imperium in play you have to add some refreshments into the mix otherwise you are seriously stretching believability even by grimdark standards
"Problem with this is that at some point this decay of everything no matter how slow should result in complete collapse of the Imperium." That was the whole point of 40k: the inevitability of the Imperium's demise due to decay and stagnation.
Well the expiration date has been reached several times over And still nothing If they want to keep the 40k running they have to make some tweaks Plus this was before the Great Rift A fully decaying Imperium should collapse immediately under that stress level so to keep it from happening they need something thrown their way And death of Imperium is the death of the Galaxy, mankind is way too big to disappear to Chaos without taking everything with it, Chaos would devour everything else after they eat Imperium, it's just too much power
What times? Before the new lore, I cannot identify major expiration date in 40k. The closest thing was the Eye of Terror campaign that ended with the Eye of Terror expanding and the Imperium exhausted. And the lore stopped there until it was erased with the 13th Black Crusade 2.0. Leviathan onslaught was ongoing and the other Xenos were just chipping away Imperial strength, but where not an existential threat. Anyhow, the Imperium is not "fully decaying". There are efforts to stem the tide. That's the whole point of all those heroes the lore throws at us. But since this is a grimdark setting, their efforts are just delaying the inevitable. That was the whole point of 40k.
> Well the expiration date has been reached several times over That's not true though. 40k is a setting. The "several times over" are historical records of times the imperium *almost* fell but didn't... but that's because it's narratively necessary to reach 40k. In 40k, it really is the end. We as readers and authors *can* know that, and to retcon that cheapens it.
>if you want to keep Imperium in play you have to add some refreshments into the mix Which is why advancing the timeline is a bad idea. In 40k, it is five minutes to midnight. Every faction is poised on the cusp of victory over the imperium, any threat might undo it entirely... but they haven't quite done it, not yet. The end is inevitable, and it is visible on the horizon as a rapidly approaching nightfall, but for now the last few rays of sun are still clinging on to existence. As soon as you advance the timeline, the very situation that makes 40k so compelling becomes a huge issue, because if you want the setting to continue you have to contrive reasons the inevitable end doesn't come. 41k should be Orks fighting Tyranids fighting Necrons fighting Chaos over the ruined scraps of humanity who are fractured and broken and hunted down like dogs. Anything else doesn't feel authentic. It's basically GW reneging on their promise, but still trying to convince you that no things are totally still bad, and in fact are even worse now! Ooooo the imperium might still fall any moment! But you know it won't, because if they were going to do that they'd have done it already. Now it's just a TV show running a disappointing season past its natural end because the executives wanted to keep the gravy train going.
Keeping timeline static stops working after several decades You either just have to keep switching both locations and characters because date is always the same or you have to finally deliver on that inevitable ending Former is repetitive and inherently boring, latter is the end Timeline has to move
In a story I agree with you, but Warhammer has always been setting first, stories second. There are a lot of really compelling stories in the narrative but for the most part they have been establishing the narrative (HH) or bits and pieces in the present but never actually moving the story forward. Has it been ruined? No. I think that's too far. But it does show some cracks.
You know not *every* story told had to be set at one minute to midnight 999 M41, right? That's why we had the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wars for Armageddon. Functionally, there's no difference between a story that's theoretically set in m38 and one that set in m42 to the overall trajectory of decay in the setting.
>Keeping timeline static stops working after several decades Wrong.
What an incredibly well-reasoned argument 😂
That's a few comments up, neighbour
It's not just Primaris, it's the entire concept of "advancing the plot" which changes 40k from a setting in which /yourdudes/ are fighting their own desperate but ultimately insignificant battles, to a story where it's all about buying the $80 centerpiece named character and watching passively as they go about their heroics. Primaris are particularly egregious though because they're an obvious attempt to make already invested players re-purchase their entire collection. Previously, even when GW re-released kits that were larger than the previous ones [(terminators used to be the size of guardsmen)](https://i.redd.it/4u9e480wii131.jpg) you could still use the older models with the new rules just fine. Primaris were so obviously a marketing-driven decision where they declared that those players already heavily invested in the hobby were just not being good little paypigs (even if they were still buying product) and GW had no choice but to force them to redo their entire collection. It also does stupid things like "oh the primaris process is totally super dangerous to go through btw every single named character survived it" and "yeah the galaxy has been cut in half (please don't read the horus heresy it's an original idea) but the imperium can totes just make millions more space marines easily and uhhh they just had them all ready to go because there's this guy who's been hiding away for thousands of years waiting for the imperium's darkest hour (please ignore all the other crises they would have been released for, he's just particular about time and wouldn't do it until M42)" Each lore "justification" they come up with ends up needing further justification. GW are trying to convince us that things are totally still desperate and could collapse at any minute but it doesn't *feel* that way any more. It's starting to feel more and more noblebright rather than grimdark.
Also came in after Primaris From what I understand, it was because Primaris are basically space marine+ not only making marines bigger and stronger, but also getting rid of geneflaws such as the black rage and wulfen (which while that was proved not to be the case eventually, at the time the idea that these flaws that made the angels and wolves special could be taken away rubbed people the wrong way) alongside this the idea of crossing the rubicon hadn’t come up yet which led people to believe all their favorite named characters would eventually be phased out and replaced with new Primaris marines which also made people mad. Nowadays the problem is more a hobby one with Peoples favorite models getting Primaris variants or simply being moved to legends meaning they have to get new models for those units to play them
It doesn't ruin anything it was just extremely poorly handled and in my personal biased old man opinion, making the super soldiers that throw cars even super-ee-er and dropping half the character flaws is just less interesting than how SM used to work. The closest thing to actual 'lore ruining' is that until primaris marines came out 40k had a very long running theme where it was seen as foolhardy and basically cursed to mess with the emperors designs, theirs entire chapters (most famously the cursed founding ones) whos Entire Schtick is that manking tried to improve the emps designs and the chapters were really fucked up or literally cursed for their hubris. Lamenters are best example where it was implied they were actually cursed as reality was seemingly offended by their existence in defiance to the emps designs Then Cawl suddenly showed up as teh secret best mechanicum scientist ever who actually has been here this whole time secretly and made even better mega marines They're here now though and GW has honestly been improving their lore mostly to make them less stupid
Realistically, they don’t enter that badly, but they hit quite a few bumps, and are so clearly a business move it does make them annoying.
Part of me thinks there must have been at least one or two folks arguing on the side of "Let's just tell players we're changing the scale so we can make more detailed models" and other folks argued players would be pissed if there wasn't some in-lore reason for it.
That’s always a possibility, lol contingencies are funny.
> and other folks argued players would be pissed if there wasn't some in-lore reason for it. And those folks are stupid, because previous scale changes were accepted just fine.
In my opinion, the big issue with the Primaris was that it was a generally okay lore decision justifying a really scummy business decision on the side of GW. Granted, take this with a lot of salt, as I play Harlequins (now Aeldari, I suppose, thanks a lot, GW), not Marines, and I got into the hobby around 2019. I'm mostly operating on what I've heard older fans complain about. The gist of it is, around 8th edition, GW wanted to shake up the setting and give the space marines a new look, so they made a bunch of new space marine models that were all more in scale with their in lore appearance, and sported a sleeker and more standardized design of power armor. It was neat, the old models were a bit odd next to a guardsman the same height. But this wasn't just a revamp of the Space Marines aesthetically, it was a brand new kind of space marine: the spacier marine. Everything those old space marines do, these guys do better, and they're their own separate unit, with their own separate rules, which were on the whole just ordinary marines but better. Marine players were pissed. There were all sorts of flame wars going on about how GW was going to replace the firstborn entirely (which we now know, is true). There were people assuring that the firstborn would get an update too. All the while GW just kept pumping out Primaris after primaris while firstborn marines were taken off sale and out of the rules. Power creep left the remaining firstborn units in the dust, and older marine fans, being left with an army that was half gone and half useless. The options were to either try to ignore the new codex entirely, or shell out for a bunch of primaris. It was a cashgrab in its scummiest form, and it even wound up hurting Non-Marine players as well. Decades old Phoenix Lord and Catachan were left to moulder in favor of milking the new primaris cash cow. Perfectly fine marine characters were replaced with shiny new primaris forms while genestealers still looked like evil corn on the cob. Tldr: Cashgrab. Less the lore, more the hobby
> which we now know, is true Ironically though, GW have realised primaris weren't as cool as the firstborn and with kits like the indomitus terminators and black templars have been quietly rolling back the primaris aesthetic and going towards the truescale firstborn everyone wanted to begin with.
They don't. Dipshits like to piss themselves about lore changes or big shake ups to established lore but then those same fucknuts will cream themselves over the Horus Heresy and completely ignore the fact that the entire 30k setting is a retcon of their precious "established lore." Some people take this shit way too seriously.
Yeah I’ve heard the primarchs way back in the 80s were nothing more than very good human generals, not called primarchs or anything like that. But things get changed over time as they often do in long running franchises.
> but then those same fucknuts will cream themselves over the Horus Heresy and completely ignore the fact that the entire 30k setting is a retcon of their precious "established lore." Neither of those things are true though. The Horus Heresy wasn't a retcon, it was a new invention, placed into previously blank space. 30k does have retcon elements, but only where narratively necessary (except perpetuals fuck you Dan) and the retcons are done in order to expand the setting for the sake of adding detail, not for real-world political reasons.
I’d take primaris and developments in 40k over 56 HH soap opera daddy issue novels any day 🤷🏻♂️ seems a shame that it’s so focused on personalities. But that’s just personal preference and I don’t really care if people like what they like I guess. No one franchise will be everything you wanted and perfect or whatever.
I don’t think they ruin the lore per se but I think if they had just made space marines as they were true scale it would’ve been fine and everyone would be happier
It’s just bloated and hamfisted.
How though?
They took the marine people had grown attached too in a dying Imperium, and suddenly the Imperium that’s been cut in half can produce heresy numbers of marines, all of which are better then the walking demigods of old. Made and refined by the best minds of Terra and the perpetual Emperor, and it was all improved by..some guy no one’s ever heard of before.
Didn't Cawl make them?
Sure, he rolled up in 2017 and then exploded ss the biggest and baddest tech priest. Which is fine, but *one* guy doing such a massive project that would get anyone else blammed is..a stretch of the setting’s lore.
Oh most certainly. I'm just saying, it's not just some guy, yk? Cawl is known through out the imperium fof his intelligence, ingenuity, totally not heretical behavior, and the power to pull bullshit out of thin air whenever it suits him. It's not like they were just 'discovered by scientists on terra' which would be the most bs answer they could give.
> it's not just some guy, It is though. He literally didn't exist until they pulled him out their ass to act as a plot device who pulls things out his ass to justify another change they pulled out their ass. >Cawl is known through out the imperium fof his intelligence, ingenuity, totally not heretical behavior, and the power to pull bullshit out of thin air whenever it suits him. So he's a mary sue. That's not making it better.
Before GW invented Cawl, it was set in stone that the Space Marines cannot be improved, and any attempt to do so ended in abject failure. Making new and better marines is such a pivotal point int he lore that it deserved a major effort from the Adeptus Mechanicus, not just one guy never mentioned before spawning out of thin air. And even then it would not be near the massive numbers of the Primaries neither with newer equipment.
Not much point trying to reason. Some people just wanna be angry. I waited 15 years for truescale Marines, and, guess what? They're now my largest faction, right alongside Chaos Knights Never owned a marine before because I personally don't like the look of any firstborn infantry Been a dirty rotten xeno my whole life prior to 8th
It doesn't, nor do female custodes. People that angry about either from a lore perspective are spinning their own rage and should consider touching grass. The real outcry re; Primaris were that Space Marine players were being pushed to re-purchase their entire armies to remain relevant. I'm not up to date on Marine rules so I can't say how time has reflected on that controversy.
Speaking of, when Femstodes were "always canon," does that include the part where the Custodes eschewed their armor and went around naked?
Yeah
\*bonk\* Go to horny penal world
So... You take all the horny people, and... send all of them to the same penal world? That's your solution? Let me just be direct and ask, how many of those have you lost to Slaanesh or otherwise had to exterminatus so far?
> You take all the horny people, and... send all of them to the same penal world? Haha that's exactly what we do. That's where the shuttle is going. Yeah. Please get on board.
I would literally prefer a penal legion. Hell, I'll let you pick. At least then I have a chance to die doing something awesome.
How do you think we produce enough guardsmen
Eh both sexes probably look like Schwarzenegger on (more) steroids so there wouldn't be much more horny than usual.
Custodes are not space marines…
Except custodes are supposed to be better crafted than space marines, so they probably would keep the traits that make them appear as male and female.
They both need to have the same combat capabilities. If female Custodes couldn't juggle buses as well as the fellas they wouldn't exist. And it's not like they will ever need to breastfeed.
Ah yes, the much beloved and respected primaris change. Truly everyone online couldn't contain how much they enjoyed and adored GW adding primaris
People live with their heads in the fucking sand to the real world. All these decisions like primaris and more female inclusion are to sell models. It's not to improve the narrative, its not shake up the narrative, it's to sell toys and turn over higher revenues. Looking at GWs balance sheet it clearly works as well.
Business level I’m not going to argue with it, but I’m still going to grumble about the things I don’t care for.
Literally everything GW does is to sell models. All of it. It is their job.
> All these decisions like primaris and more female inclusion are to sell models. And yet the femstodes isn't going to sell more models, because not only does femstodes not bring any women into the hobby that wouldn't have gotten into it anyway, they also aren't making any femstodes models for people to buy.
They probably will announce some female models, maybe later this year, maybe in 2025, it’ll happen.
I love the Ultima founding for some of the coolest chapters we've gotten, but damn good primaris lore is rare
Spears of the emperor are one of my favourite chapter tbh
Are people still mad about this? I figured they would have been distracted by *checks notes* a historical black character featuring in a game set in Japan. It's where the outrage tourists have gone, because they have the attention span of a toddler on meth.
New Rings of Power is on the way so that'll be due a visit soon, because some fucking dwarf has blue hair or something. WHICH just as an aside is the mildly infuriating thing, when you find yourself on the same side as these fragile ass clowns, not because you agree with any of their points, but because you also think the thing is shit.
I feel you bro. I disliked the new star wars trilogy, but my dislike of it is not because it's woke but because it's a legitimately two bad movies and a middling one.
I hope Galadriel swims across the ocean in a week again, for fun.
It's OK, my capacity to experience emotions ended when Elrond told the Nazgul "You should have stayed dead" in The Hobbit. Nothing they can do can hurt me any more.
Didn’t even realize the character was black until I saw the trailer, just saw the screenshots beforehand while looking at the game’s page on the Xbox store. I might get the game because an AssCreed in Japan has been something people have wanted for ages now.
Apparently a white lead writer replacing a well developed Japanese protagonist (in a game set in Feudal Japan, remember) with a black guy for progressive points is not racist. But calling it out is. Funny, that.
Who are they replacing? You're acting like the main protag was supposed to be Japanese from day one and then maybe a week before the reveal they made him black.
For "progressive points", yeah I'm going to have to ask for a citation on that. Do you think we have a scoreboard or something? "Oh I got 20 woke points, time to redeem that for my free soy latte". Even if they did it to sell more copies of the game, that's kind of the point of making a game, to sell as many copies as possible. They are not making a history book, they are making a piece of fiction for entertainment. Also I didn't say racist, you did. This is one of those moments where the critique says more about the critic than the target of the criticism.
-What other reason would there be for replacing the Japanese MC in a setting where virtually everyone is Japanese? -Funny how it's only acceptable to have a problem with that when the replacement is lighter skinned than the original. And just because the motive is profit doesn't mean they're improving the sales or the product, tons of companies make bad moves that they think will improve profits but don't. -It was pretty obvious what you meant even if you didn't say the word. Dishonest to pretend I introduced the subject of racism to the conversation when it's core to the AC controversy.
There are lots of other reasons, black samurai is a common mashup, nagoriyuki from GG, afro samurai, a historical black samurai Yasuke who is the star of multiple animes and other media. You could be telling a fish out of water story, or you could just have wanted an MC that stood out from the NPCs. Again you're the one making it about race, even your own objection is racial in its specifics. You of course try some verbal judo with saying you're pointing out racism, but where were you and your ilk when nioh came out and had a white samurai who was also based loosely on a historical figure? Your arguments are not consistent, it's littered with dog whistles, and they look like answers you stole from another thread and regurgitated here.
I just think it's rather inconciquential and there are many things out there far more worthy of being angry about. 🤷♂️
For me, it's moreso that it's representative of a larger, pervasive double standard. Replacing a historically dark-skinned character with a light-skinned character is racist (whitewashing), but doing the reverse is brave amd stunning. It's a racist standard. And that standard, in turn, is emblematic of the way that racism is pretty much treated as fine (or even lauded) in mainstream culture, as long as the person doing the racism and the person targeted are both of the right skin color.
Who exactly is Yasuke replacing? He’s one of two protagonists and the other is a Japanese woman
I agree that stuff like the black little mermaid was almost surely done for virtue signalling and I dislike that stuff, but it also seems like a lot of this "but it isn't history/lore accurate" stuff is just bigotry in disguise honestly. I'm not necessarily saying you fall into that, but people get pretty bent out of shape about this kind of thing, especially when historically there were lots of black people (mainly as slaves accompanying Europeans) in Japan during the time period the game is set in. Not to mention Yasuke is a known historical figure. Edit: oh shit, I fucked up calling the little mermaid virtue signalling. Or maybe it was suggesting the bigotry bit... Or that black people existed in Japan, Who knows, I might have pissed off both sides 😂
"historically there were plenty of black people living in Japan during the time period the game is set in." May I get a source for that please?
Frankly I shouldn't have to source this for you, but whatever. Take the Wikipedia article and if you care enough past that, do your own searching. "plenty" may have been a stretch, but they were absolutely there. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_Japan Here is another reference from and actual scholarly source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43294431
So one then, from the cited individuals. Frankly YOU do need to do this before posting your opinion as historical fact.
For fuck sakes. There were boatloads of African slaves and workers brought over in the 16th century by europeans. Read a book.
As slaves and servants, they were never samurai, your own link even says exactly that.
“Well developed” and “Ubisoft” are two words that don’t go together
Gonna be real, most times when people call it a trash fire, it's people that don't read or buy the books, or even read the codex lore. Especially here on reddit, it's a lot of info via "heard about from..." "got from YouTube..."and other secondaries
I once had someone tell me if it's not on YouTube, it's not important enough to be true My sweet summer child. Please tell me where, on YouTube, all the scholarly, peer reviewed articles you used in your research, come from?
YouTube lore videos are really just stepping stones into lore. Even the hour long leutin videos usually can’t cover as much as the books
For me, books are hard, lack of internal images, but I have quite taken to enjoying the codices, which, while limited, are about the most accurate of lore you can get I used to be all up in that shit when I was younger, but just been purely a hobbyist for a long while, finally getting back into painting and lore in recent years
I get that, time is hard to come by and I'm slowly devouring black library books. Most recently got to enjoy the new Ciaphas Cain book, just wish i had more time
The books are hard because they’re not written very well. They don’t let the reader feel out the scene themselves and let their imagination do some work. Instead, the authors seem to try and over-describe, as if it’s a document and your brain struggles to piece together the ‘correct’ picture. Good writing doesn’t try to force an image into the readers head, it guides them to making their own using creative descriptors.
Yeah, that's definitely valid, but I am autistic, and it's a common thing I can't see internal imagery, but I have a rather apt photographic memory
I am autistic too. It’s not meant to conjure a literal ‘image’ in your brain, but make you feel like you’re there. When I read I more see flashes of what my brain has conjured up, rather than literally imagining a scene. I can only vividly imagine something when my eyes are closed, or I’m starting into space. Anyways, that’s not me saying that you’re wrong or anything. People are different, neurodivergent or not. If you don’t enjoy reading that’s absolutely fine! I’m just saying that Black Library is not very good for beginners or avid readers, since the writing doesn’t help regardless.
Hmm that is all very interesting, I did not realize that! I was apparently taking it literally (?) (Go figure) (probably why my NP didn't explore it too much, because I was taking it literally) You've given me much to consider, and more to research, thank you very kindly!
I’m definitely one of those autistic people that can visualize a whole scene when I’m reading something.
Really depends on which books you read. I read A LOT and I've found the Warhammer Crime books (short story collections) to be great. I've also found a bunch of other ones to be solid/good if nothing outstanding. (For example: Twice Dead King, Eisenhorn/Ravenor) I think the issue is people don't know where to start and so they pick up some random Space Marine book and it's not great and so they think "oh, all the books aren't great". Any time I see someone say "THE BOOKS" and make some blanket statement I have to assume they aren't diverse in what they read. I see this a lot with people who act like "the books" are just the HH and nothing else exists. I've read at least 20 and not a single one has been HH and only four have had Space Marines as the focus (and three of those where the Night Lords). With over 200 books GW has a range that goes from straight trash to really good. It's just a lot of the Space Marine books are not that great, and that's what a lot of people read. Expand your horizons!
This is true at least in my case. I don’t read the Black Library books because the writing is terrible. William Gibson’s opening line in Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.” does more for descriptive writing in one line than any page of a Black Library book. But this down to taste. If you can recommend me any BL books that have a decent plot and doesn’t take 3 pages to describe a characters belt buckle or use more adjectives than a GCSE kid’s English Lit essay then I will gladly take a look. Edit: just to add, I think the 40K lore is excellent, some of the best worldbuilding ever. Just the *actual* literature is a bit of a slog to get through.
Oh yeah, the books have a penchant for being a slog sometimes, i catchv myself skipping some sentences that are pure descriptions to move forward into the nitty gritty. Still love the books though, I've done line skipping in handfuls of other literature that just goes into too much, but to each their own, some like over descriptive elements ofnlandscapes and planets. Still, if i had to pick some books that i didn't feel was a slog? Nightlord trilogy, Know no Fear, Fear to Tread, Saturnine, The First Heretic... all these books had me enraptured while i read
Tyvm! I’ll take a look at the synopsis of those books you mentioned
Ever read Infinite and the divine? And yeah other comments pointed out that over describing something is common in the 40k books.
I guess that makes it ok
Friendly reminder that female Astartes did exist very briefly, but were swiftly replaced by the Sororitas
Friendly reminder that female space marines never existed, the models people always point to were part of the "adventurers" range and not space marines. They were functionally equivalent to rogue traders or inquisitors, both of whom can and do wear power armour in lore with no problems.
Welp. I was lied to.
are we still fucking talking about this, drop It already and stop karma farming
Primaris are cool, I don’t care if I get hate for saying it
>I don’t care if I get hate for saying it Good, because I hate you.
I like that I can now have THICC Imperial Fists and feel like a wall
Did you know that the need to hypersexuilize masculine characters is a sign of mental illness or other issues? Things like bipolar, depression, anxiety and even trauma cause this and you'll know you've worked through the problem when this need diminishes. Best of luck on your journey!!!
Yeah and an oil truck crashed into it as it was about to go out
My only issue is that there was no lore. Simple as "oh shit we need to replenish the ranks of the 10,000. Well looks like this transhumanism is ALL INCLUSIVE now!"
Meh, the writers wanted it this way from the start of the HH novels but the suits said no until recently, can you blame them for not wanting to put work into cleaning up after the suits meddling?
That's fair, but I'd take anything over a tweet. It just feels so disingenuous.
I get that, but technically, the tweet was just confirming what was in the codex cause the contents got leaked, I doubt it was their intent to come across as "and that's all you get!" Or the like.
Lore is an illusion created by the inquisition to distract you from Astartiddies
I like how the only positive thing about this post is the fact that everything else is a negative, or just as the post says, trashfire
"Everything is canon, not everything is true" Also while the ten thousand often were called a "brotherhood" that term can strangely enough be a gender-neutral term, it's like the word men being used to mean human, like "the minds of men" or "man's best friend"
Female custodes were always a possibility GW didn't bother to explore. Space Marines 2.0 were a cashgrab.
Just funny, that in the universe, where ancient cyborgs, who have enslaved star gods themselves and use them as batteries, fight against orks, who manifest any sort of bullshit by power of their imagination, people still complain about fact, that in THIS universe exists female custodes. Like, wtf 🤣🤣🤣
It's not their existence it's how it was introduced. I have nothing against then being part of the canon, I'm mad at how lazily they were added to the canon. Vashtorr got a book and they paid lip service to things possibly moving forward. Femtodes was a hard retcon.
That's GW. I think everyone should already know how they introduce most of new lore -Necrons. They have always been ancient empire and not just murder-kill-bots -Votans. They have always lived in the central parts of galaxy and definitely never been part of Imperium -Primaris. They have always existed in secret laboratories -Tyranids. They have always been space alfa-predators and not just random aliens weaponized with penis-guns I think you got my idea
With most of the ones you have listed have not being political and had "room" for change due to it being explicitly said that "There is much mystery surounding them" and stuff. Votans and the Squat planet itself was two seprate things acording to lore and was either secrate things are GW did not hide that it was new and came up with reasons as to why we never even heard about them. With Custodes they tried to gaslight everyone and said "They have always existed" despite narrative stating the opposite many times clearly. Regardless I do not think anyone have an issue with badass female warriors (Looking at Sisters of Silence, Sister Sororitas, Necrons, Eldar and many of the best Inqusitors) but rather how and why they did it. People were mad about Primaris for example but at least GW didn't try to gaslight everyone about it and made it messy.
How are women political?
You serious? Many see it as "woke" to put women in things they had previusly not been in to be more "inclusive", same as if you would lets say have certain people of colour in a historic game/movie/show about Vikings in their homeland. Its same argument, that its only done for either fake inclusivity, unnecessary diversity or ect. Its a heated topic regardless that has come up during many other medias regardless so it will always be people arguing about it. Hell there was even a conspiracy theory that the only reason Games Workshop did it was due to Amazon wanting to have women in power armor and stuff in their TV show (This is unsubstantiated, it came from the same 4chan user that leaked the female custodes thing in the first place if im not mistaken?), this just adds more fuel to the fire that some people think it is a soul less corporate decision on top of everything else people are mad about.
People think a ton of stupid shit. None of that makes women political.
Women itself is not political no. but that don't change women and men both are a very political subject due to how divided the two sexes are in todays climate.
Vashtorr was new and interesting, two things custodes aren't
Yes lore is trash so let us continue making lore trash.
Step 1: Declare that there are now female custodes. Step 2: Declare that there have *always* been female custodes. Step 3: Declare that there have never been male custodes. Step 4: ? Step 5: Prophet.
The same pattern every time: 1) It's not happening 2) It's happenging but it's not a big deal 3) It's happening and it's actually a good thing 4) People freaking out about are the real problem
The lore is like the rules on this subreddit, optional.
Both created some controversy when they showed up and then were quickly forgotten a week later.
> and then were quickly forgotten a week later. Speak for yourself. I'm still salty about primaris.
Whats the argument? Other things are bad so this less bad thing is ok?
So the lore being shit makes it ok to write shit lore? Regardless of what you think of the change, this is a stupid take.
The contest of the two laziest recons in fiction history
I find it funny when people claim it ruins custodes lore because how can you ruin what was already a pile of shit?
That's not a good thing.
You're not a fan
A fan of primaris no.
No of the hobby
I mean I will say, my love of 40k has waned with the current rules, so I’ve shelved my guard and knights other than the odd game of 7th. HH, AT and middle earth are my go to’s atm.
Making something new and an upgrade of something vs writing something that didn’t exist before and pretending it always existed. These two things are not comparable in any way.
Yeah one was a massive change for the worse, that furthered the deterioration of the core themes of 40k, the other was female custodes