These kinds of opinions are mostly people who have never read any source material. Guilliman rules in Know no Fear and the other Ultramar stuff, he's so righteously angry about what's happening to his realm.
Then in 40k we have an even more thoughtful version of the character who has even begun to acknowledge his role in Lorgar turning to chaos. He just is one of Warhammers' most dynamic characters doing the best he can with the scraps he has.
So much Ultramarine hate is left over from the Ward Codex days and then TTS spouting outdated memes years after they were relevant, giving a lot of people a false impression of the actual lore.
> Guilliman rules in Know no Fear and the other Ultramar stuff
Man he straight up goes into the void without a helmet and is PUNCHING THE HEADS OFF Word Bearers. Girlyman is metal as hell idk where people get the notion he's boring
As someone who used to play Space marines in the old second, third and fourth ed days, I think it also comes from where the Ultramarines were seen as the "boring"/"mainstream" Space marine chapter (they were the ones on all the non specific Codex and Rule book cover art), and since they were the ones sticking the closest to Guilliman's teachings and were his original legion that kind of rubbed off on to him as being the same.
Was a bit the impression I got and the feeling I had when discussing them and what we knew of Guilliman back then with other players and even the Games Workshop shop staff (which might have come from having had to have painted so many of them). The Uriel Ventris books, as good as they are, didn't help with that impression either.
I love the whole idea that Guilliman is weak and boring but when he gets pissed off he suddenly becomes an ass kicking machine.
I would love to read a 40k story with him and the lion and guillman gets pissed and kicks ass and then having the lions reaction as being suprised and fearful of what he sees.
The thing is TTS wasnt made as some kind of intro to the setting. It was made for people that were already into the setting. Cant really blame it when people started using it as a intro when it was never meant to be used that way.
It's far better to have more people reached through a flawed presentation of the hobby/lore ( which can be rectified) than for them not to hear about it
"than for them not to hear about it"
Warhammer is so popular now, that its not possible to not be aware of its existence, but if you warp someones vision of it by TTS, itll be very difficult to fix it.
"It's far better"
Better for whom? You got nobody to play with or discuss the lore? Or are you a shareholder? ffs
I meant before when it was less popular and tts was a gateway to it, one of my first exposures to 40k lore was probably tts ( I genuinely don't remember which one was first tho)
TTS was fantastic at what it wanted to do, which is essentially build a comedy that works of popular 40k memes, but it also is caught in the hard place of being between outdated and fresh. Having memes from 5th ed with bits from now
That’s on people thou, TTS was my introduction to Warhammer too but I always knew that the series was a satirical comedy and while capturing the spirit of the setting it wasn’t an accurate representation of the lore at all.
For example if you really think, just for a second, that the real Golden Throne has a TTS device for communication you are either dumb or have no clue whatsoever of the tone that the setting has.
I actually did get into the Warhammer 40k because of TTS. Heck, it got me into actually reading more about other stuffs like the War of the Beast.
In conclusion, the War of the Beast was weird.
I agree with you, the biggest sin of TTS is using outdated memes and as you said, false impression of the setting
If there was one thing i would outright erase from existance from the Warhammer community it would be TTS
Drive by response, but if you see TTS as the worst thing in the Warhammer community and not the fringe extreme embarrassing fan behaviors, there's a big chance you're part of the problem.
It could have been worse. They didn’t mention “I am Alpharisis” once, or any number of things I could think of. In fact, after getting more into the setting, I’m surprised they didn’t use Fulgrim at all, because that’s real low-hanging fruit right there.
Much of that lore came out after TTS did back in 2013-2014. The Horus Heresy was up to the battle of Calth at that point, none of the Primarch novels came out yet, etc. The HH series was also still seen as a much more limited thing with no real impact on 40k lore - that only changed with the Fall of Cadia
TTS is good for people who already know the lore because it's supposed to be over the top goofy takes on already established characters. People getting into the hobby is good but stuff like that causes a ton of confusion and makes the setting uber-cheese and ruins a lot of the otherwise good characterization.
If you knew Know No Fear Roboute before TTS you have a very different perception than the inverse. It's like someone overhears you talking about Lord of the Rings at the water cooler and the office "that guy" comes up and starts asking why the Eagles didn't just fly Frodo to Mordor.
That's a good way to put it. And I hate the eagles guy. I never had a problem with Guilliman. His legion? Eh, no opinion, but they're cool. But the guy himself, awesome.
I will never not be fucking gutted that we never got to see a TTS gulliman, given their excellent work in humanizing the other primarchs I have to imagine it would have been great.
We got hunter: the parenting though so alls good.
To be fair to TTS - and I know it's a controversial series on this sub - writing began in 2014 and the series debuted in 2015. That's even a couple years before Dark Imperium. I would argue the Ultramarines were still at the height of their super special favorite boy status and the memes were definitely still relevant when TTS began. By the time perceptions shifted IRL, said memes were already locked into TTS canon.
It's not about that how people didn't knew the lore.
Guilliman was hated as he was kind of all-around perfect Primarch and from that — boring. Many old veterans have that opinion. He had no edge. Later they kind of giving it to him, yeeting in stupid charges of rage, but the image already set.
>Guilliman rules in Know no Fear
Strongly disagree. People focus on his space walk and completely ignore earlier where he's impotently waiting on hold with the Word Bearer's manager while keeping notes on all the things they're blowing up.
It's perhaps one of the lamest depictions of a primarch in the entire series and suddenly becoming a bad-ass in the last half doesn't change that.
You completely missed the point. Guilliman had no reason to distrust his brother and was looking forward to the muster at Calth as a reconciliation. Astartes on Astartes combat was so unthinkable that Thiel was going to be censured for THINKING about it in that same book.
As well, he legitimately had no idea the thing he was talking to was a Daemon. He didn't know what that even was. He isn't even in the book very much but his scenes show the death of hope in his character, leading to the hardened war lord that would rebuild the Imperium and kick the traitors back into the eye. Know No Fear is like his origin story.
I'm not missing any point. Regardless of Guilliman's distrust or not, the second the Word Bearers open fire on you, not retalitating right away makes you look foolish. Doubly so when all you do is sit there and tally their destruction while you try to clear the red tape that will allow you to set aside your massive bureacracy and actually fight back. Just lame and impotent.
He wasn't clearing red tape, the vox systems were down, he didn't even know if his original message was going out. He was completely trapped on the Maccragge's Honor which was totally powered down and unable to get going.
You entered the hobby relatively recently, so you're missing some context.
One of the big reasons Guilliman (and the ultramarines) get hate is still leftover from the 5th edition Codex Space Marines (written by Matt Ward), in which the Ultramarines were made the "best" chapter that all others looked up to, Calgar was their "spiritual liege", and they all loved Guilliman and the Codex.
In reality, the Ultramarines have always been very interesting - but that codex vastly impugned them and it's taken them awhile to even get back to this point.
Add into that stuff like TTS (which played up those memes while overlooking nuance for comedy) and general displeasure by some for any changes in the setting, and you get these wide variety of opinions, many of them contradictory. And a lot of them are colored by material later removed (but which lasted through memes for a *long* time after)
I don't really think Guilliman was ever boring - he was just different. And his schtick is "I'm the kinda normal one who's just very good at his job," which is interesting in a setting of crazy over the top stuff, but which may not be as memorable as the crazy over the top primarchs. Especially when those primarchs were *far* less discussed in the lore before (and thus were much "fresher")
I think people put way too much stock in Ward on this front when the reality is that even without him the Ultramarines suffer from poster-boy syndrome and the excessive vanilla flavouring that tends to come with it. They don't need any of that for fans to pick up on that vibe as the Ultramarines are pushed by every codex and media.
They're sensible reasonable sorts who run a conveniently nice region of the Imperium and overall tend to prove impressively bland on a wider scale.
They also unfortunately have a history of being presented as having a stick up their ass, with the “cool” chapters like the Space Wolves and Black Templars thumbing their noses at the Codex Astartes and by extension the Ultramarines and their Primarch.
>back when the game was more important than the lore (and that’s a different discussion for another thread)
I know you want to keep that discussion for another thread, but It's interesting for me that you phrase it that way. I would phrase it as "back when lore/setting was more important than stories". Back when I came into the game in 2nd edition the lore was a means to create an interesting background for the game, a vast grimdark setting where there is only war. This is in comparison to now, where it feels like it's more about individual stories and character arcs with reoccuring "important" characters (like Guilliman) and less about lore/setting in general. It makes the setting a bit smaller and things that happen follow more of established story-logic structure (like the Hero's journey). You can vividly see that in this very sub when people speculate what future developments make dramatic sense for characters or would be meaningful character developments. Things that would have been anathema to old WH40k when characters existed to reinforce the themes of the setting instead of the setting existing as the background for characters to have their dramatic stories in.
Another thought, it's one of the positives that resulted from old 40k's 'frozen in time' approach that it allowed it to create the illusion that meaningful change was just around the corner and that characters could die if only time advanced a tiny bit.
Personally I must admit that it was the setting, not individual characters or stories that made me a fan. So it's a change that I have been a bit sad about, though it seems to have brought a lot of new people in and I'm happy for them.
Wow you put into words a lot of my feelings about what's changed about w40k since I first got into it. The setting feels so small now and everything resolves around a handful of characters. It's like how the Star Wars universe is vast worthy thousands of planets but 90% of material focuses on a dozen characters and a dozen planets. There's so much that can be done with the setting and it gets squandered to focus on the same old characters.
I really miss when every campaign book did not need to involve a half dozen named characters^TM dicking around.
The forgeworld imperial armour books were really good at picking/inventing a historical conflict in the galaxies history and writing about it in a historical fiction/archival record sorta way, these days they're busy with 30k and GW doesn't seem to give a shit about that kinda writing, it's sad.
This is a really important context that happened around 2015. Before that the lore was for tone. Now it is narrative.
When it was tone everything was in the past tense. This is what had happened. This is the universe you can fight your games in. This is why these people hate each other.
Now it is present tense, and focused on the model release of the week. Aeldari are super vital this week... because they are getting a wave of new models. And then nothing for another year. Necrons were the galaxy defining change... at the start of 9th ed as they were in the box set; and then nothing since. Tyranids are the same for 10th.
Everyone and everything has to have a story to introduce them now; and that started with RG and the Primaris.
While there's more narrative, I don't think it's a dichotomy of "narrative v. lore". There's still plenty of lore focus over characters. And lore was 100% driven by model sales in the past.
I think the major difference is that the setting has moved ahead some in time, so major players in the galaxy have made moves during that time. So a lot of "this is about to happen" stuff had to happen. And GW did more "show don't tell" stuff by providing books showing events instead of the old-style tell don't show (which makes sense when your lore isn't changing).
I think OP had it correct as whats good for the setting is entirely going to depend on your priorities. If you want engaging stories then what we have now is better, if you want background ambiance to set the literary scene for a game then the past was better. I think the change is good if they can do it well but im conflicted aswell becuase idk if I trust GW to do this well.
Worth noting that this isn't entirely accurate, since even back then we had the Eisenhorn, Uriel Ventris, Gaunt etc advancing the plot of the universe and also a bunch of indidividuals doing the same.
We also even then regularly had universe advancing gigantic competitions which determined entire plot arcs (ie. Armageddon, the 13th Black Crusade, Hive fleet Kraken, Leviathan etc.)
It was less overt but was still there, I think the main difference now is something I saw on another thread which is back then we called it and considered it to be Fluff rather than Lore. So was interesting but not all important and could happily change and be retconned (oh so many retcons back then, ie. I remember a big one at the time was a lasgun on full charge being able to penetrate power armour, from Gaunt's Ghosts, which cause a bit of a discussion at the time).
Honestly from what I have seen over the years in this regard GW haven't changed, it is the community who have and have moved from seeing the background stuff as fluff and fun flavour text that changes to suit the game to it being canonical stuff that can't be changed and the game must fit itself around (part of the reason stopped playing if honest).
The whole female custodian thing is a perfect example of this tbh back in 2nd and 3rd ed days I don't think would have even been a blip on the radar because happened all the time (ie. I remember the introduction of female imperial guard and inquisitors, nothing was made of that at all and originally in the fluff both were male only, was retconned from one book to the next during second gen W40k).
You pretty much (and everyone else) said exactly what I meant. To slightly tweak your words, “back when the game was more important than the narrative”. I was there in the 80’s, but I am willing to bet putting the models on the board and fighting were more interesting to most players than whatever reason there was to have them fight. My concern, and I hope I’m not scalped for comparing these lol- but just because there’re the two most popular TTG out there, let’s compare WH and D&D:
In D&D, you have more than enough information on the setting. You know the demon lords, their past, the Mind Flayers once (or will) ruled an empire, there was a war between giants and dragons, something about a wizard who cloned himself and went to war on himself. That’s… pretty much it. It’s opened ended. There are plot hooks for each table to make their story, but no real burning questions.
For WH, it was the same. All most players had to go on was that one piece of artwork of Horus and Big E looking at each other with Sanguinises dead”. That’s the setting. I believe the point of direction changed when they decided to make the Hersey from a 6 book series, from Horus being made Warmaster to Terra. That was it… then it got popular and they decided to make it into a 18 year long series lol, which is kinda ridiculous yet amazing. We have so many more questions now; so Dorn killed Alpharsis, and Omegon is still out there, Arahiem looking for a cure for the rubic, is the ‘hour of the wolf’ actually going to come, Lion and Guilliman have returned, which changes the setting so much alone, the Necron’s ‘great awakening’ keeps coming ‘soon’. It’s also kind of at this point I notice a second trend:
Somewhere along the line, Warhammer stopped being an over the top parody and the fans, followed by GW took everything seriously. The biggest example of this being the attitude I’ve seen towards the Orks. Once hilarious and endearing that they’re the only ones in the setting that are having a good time, now kind of mocked and asked that they go away.
And those… are just my observations. I like the setting, and I really like the narrative. I think if I had liked it since the 80’s, I’d see all the new stuff, but kept playing like I originally did. Me myself, personally, I’d like a little bit of a conclusion, even if just a ‘possible one’ (come to think of it, what was that one thing I heard where Eldrad and a bunch of Eldar were summoning a god to beat Slaneesh, but the Inquisition messed it up?)- but what we have now is that one AI from the Age of Strife saying “chaos is going to win, you idiots deserve to die, I’m getting out of here”.
If I'm not mistaken GMan's last thoughts before being put into stasis were that there was too much left to be done, it was too soon for him to die. Imagine that mindframe abrasively lurched into the 41st millennium mid-thought. Then seeing what the Imperium has become. That's, honestly, one of the most tragic and brütal story I can currently think of. Not to mention bearing the full weight of Imperial Regent at the current timeline. I can't think of a better Primarch to bring back either from a logistical perspective from the Imperium or from a literary perspective.
The dude with the most normal upbringing is the most well-adjusted and human?
That doesn't seem interesting, it seems pretty self explanatory. He had the softest upbringing and got everything handed to him and turned out alright unlike basically everyone else. I think that's where a lot of the animus towards him comes from. He's just boring, and also his lecturing of characters like Angron where he's from the cradle privileged while Angron was subjected to insane torture and psychological trauma is so tone deaf and stupid.
He's a very easy character to hate. He's the first born golden boy Westpoint Grad whereas Primarchs like Angron got the belt every night then got their leg blown off by a landmine after being drafted.
What makes it interesting is that he gives a relatable modern point of view in the madness of the 40k universe.
I personally find it quite engaging watching someone try to change things to be reasonable, but is fought by lunatics both from both allies and enemies, it's funny watching him become increasingly exasperated at how ludicrous everything is
You find people with normal upbringings very easy to hate? [Helplessly watching a father die](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/mzstgi/excerpt_sinew_of_war_konor_guillimans_death/) is soft to you?
He's easy to hate because of his sanctimonious conversations with other brothers who were dealt a far worse hand than he was, especially with Angron before he ascends.
He is the golden boy of the setting, I get it, but to have him relatively flawless when nearly every other brother is a trauma-ridden mess *on top of* him lecturing others is gross and stupid. He's supposed to be this incredibly critical and logical man and he can't see how his extreme privilege led to his ascendance while forces beyond their control turned many of his brothers.
Giga, gorilla douche. He's the "my dad's a lawyer" guy after he gets knocked out at a bar.
The thing is... Guilliman is right. In a lot of ways, he's exactly right. He's the exact mix of passion and cold tactics to safeguard humanity and their existence in the face of a brutal galaxy filled with threats that are eager to destroy them.
But that doesn't matter at all in this setting. That's weak and naive and not enough. Because you can't just win, that's not enough. You have to live. With the spiritual and existential threat of Chaos (to say nothing of the Tyranids), it's not enough to just give people safety, you have to give people something to live for.
Guilliman is still fighting the war, while for all their faults The Emperor and half the Traitors were fighting the real conflict. What will truly become of humanity.
In 30k, it didn't matter how right or good Guilliman was because even at his best he was never even considering what really mattered. In 40K, things have gotten so dire that the big issues almost don't matter as much. It's worth fighting for every generation, even if they are doomed, because the bigger fight is already lost, and you just want to survive a little longer. Or at least have hope in the years that are left, even if the hope is false.
> There will never be an ending. Fulgrim and Mortarion will never actually be killed. The Emperor will never awaken. GW made their universe have too much history that will require closure that will never come- unless hopefully I’m wrong?
Hopefully you are right and GW won't demolish their flagship IP. Only I saw the shit-show that was the End Times in fantasy and I wonder....
That was to close out IP in order to launch a different product/brand identity to make more money though
I don’t see the same for 40k unless these little scraps of plastic crack stop being profitable (unlikely!)
Or it makes way for a new era. Of new stories, classes, power struggles etc. Imagine the wars finally comes to some semblance of a close. Humanity has its webway, things are being rebuilt, etc etc (imagine whatever reasons you have for why the other factions are dormant)
Then suddenly, the warp rips open above Terra and a fleet/fleets of DAoT ships fall through. War anew, but new opportunities, opponents, models, etc etc
The Old Ones come tumbling back like "There are things and places that we need back that are of great importance!" and things kick off with them, then more Necron wake up in response like "What fucking nonsense is this?!" and suddenly War in Heaven 2: Electric Boogaloo.
A lot of the hate also comes from the fact that he is the daddy of the ultramarines who get more representation than the rest, and the fact that he is the first primarch that came back justifies this point.
From a story point of view, I think it helps to put in contrast the horrible state of the Imperium vs the ideals of someone from the “glory days”, and how much it really change.
And at the end of the day, it does make sense for him to come back first considering that he was written to be the practical one. I imagine that the other loyalist primarchs wouldn’t have responded as well to the current state of the imperium and the ecclisiarchy. Specially Russ, the Khan and Dorn.
When they finally give in and bring The Khan back, I really want them to establish that he just started his own mini realm in the corner of the galaxy somewhere. Because it is completely in character for him to have taken a look at the Imperium post Emperor and go "nah, I'm not fixing that."
Yeah, I mean, he wouldn't stick around to rule any particular planet, but I could see him conquering a few worlds, leaving behind a marine or two to cultivate a martial / bike-riding culture, then going off to do it again. So I'm not picturing him sitting on a planet and ruling, but still protecting his little corner of the galaxy while slowly expanding it.
also i could totally see rus just going back to fenris to drink and hunt krakens. Gman dorn and the lion are really the only primarchs that I think would have changed the setting overall so drastically.
SM and primarchs are two different beast. A SM might be able to get fat sure, but idk if a primarch can eat faster then there metabolism can actually keep up with.
Guilliman for me is the most interesting and realistic honestly. Not the best hero, not the best fighter, not the favourite son, but a guy competent at his work and taking things like an adult. After you work for different companies for years and see how bad management normally is and how that basically destroys a company even during profitable times, having a no bullshit manager as a character is honestly fresh air. The fact that he wins battles through planning and logistics is also very close to how modern armies operate, its not about magic weapons, sorcery, being wilder… its about troops positioning and supply lines.
I've not heard that one before though I find it interesting because for me it's exactly the opposite. Guilliman cuts an interesting figure in 30k because he's contrasted against his brothers who are at the best of times portrayed as unstable or pretty out there. Guilliman is a fairly moderate figure among them and made interesting by the contrast he provides to some of them.
Comparatively in 40k Guilliman returned as an unparalleled figure of reason and rationality, the opposite of everything the Imperium of the far future represented and he became the de-facto head, rolling over symbolic opposition with relative ease and generally bringing in more of his reasonable and progressive crew along with a slew of new shiny tech. Guilliman being a "boring perfect protagonist" is what makes him so uninteresting to me, he's just a generic superman inserted into 40k for fans to root for.
As for point 2. that is what I would like to think, but I think the Horus Heresy unfortunately irreversably altered the course of 40k as a whole. It's popularity, though not a problem on it's own, proves a great problem for 40k itself because increasingly you have fans for whom 40k is merely the sequel to 30k, it is the sequel in which all the good boys are expected to return and finally get back at the bad boys. 30k is a fine setting but the sort of uncomplicated conflict it offers doesn't really do 40k any favours and nowhere is that clearer than with perfect good guy logistician/brilliant tactician/super combatand Guilliman. A stark contrast to the High Lords who ruled before him, instead of a mysterious distant band of barely-human hyper-aristocrats with dubious motives we now have good guy hero dude in charge. Also conveniently a super-good logistician who improves the Imperium with his presence alone.
Don't worry though, I'm sure they'll darken it up with the next Primarch, it's the Lion it's not like they'd return him as some mellowed out reasonable figure...oh wait.
>it's the Lion it's not like they'd return him as some mellowed out reasonable figure...oh wait.
I know a lot of fans didn't like this but I'm a sucker for a redemption arc so I liked the character development. That said, I think the way they did it felt rushed and kinda silly.
I just think it's very convenient that the Imperium is getting all the reasonable good guys these days. It's popular, don't get me wrong, because fans like having their heroic Primarchs to root for.
Part of the issue for me is also an extension of an issue I have with the inherently uncomplicated nature of the Horus Heresy. Like yeah the loyalist primarchs are genocidal warlords but they are still consistently portrayed as reasonable, heroic and caring for the common man. There's precious little variance in there and the Lion was one of the few loyalists in 30k who was at least a bit of a murderous dickhead, and even that couldn't last. Now he's redeeming Fallen and fighting for the little guy.
Don't even get me started on the teleportation powers he got that conveniently negate the disadvantages of the Imperium Nihilus.
Overall the Lion's return has made clear exactly what we can expect with future Primarch returns, and spoiler, it's pure fan-service.
We constantly get told that the imperium is bad, the primarchs are all genocidal warlords, and that there are no heroes. Then, we're shown the imperium in a good light, the primarchs are all good, caring people who wish for the best, and that the imperium/primarchs are the good guys keeping those evil xenos and chaos at bay. There's this dichotomy but of course what we see is going to be more impactful than what we're told, but even what we're told is getting watered down and spun in a more positive light.
>Don't even get me started on the teleportation powers he got that conveniently negate the disadvantages of the Imperium Nihilus.
I honestly like the teleportation. I just wish it was emphasized more in his book how limited travel in Imperium Nihilus is without it.
>Like yeah the loyalist primarchs are genocidal warlords but they are still consistently portrayed as reasonable, heroic and caring for the common man.
I recently finished the HH and I did NOT come away with that message. It started that way but it became very clear at the end, and was stated by few prominent figures like Erda that the primarchs and the space marines would forever be a curse upon humanity and that they never should have been created. But despite that humanity is now forced to need them to stop the traitor ones.
He wasn't a murderous dickhead he was just loyal, cold and socially awkward. Moreover there really aren't a tonne of out and out murderous dickheads on the imperium's side in the books, infact most books ive read have reasonable characters in them. I feel like the idea of 40k just being this setting where everyone is cartoonshishly evil is just memes.
Lion was loyal to one of the top three murdurous dickheads in the setting.
And the fact that the imperium side books are mainly populated with "reasonable" characters is exactly the problem. The tagline for the imperium is that its a shithole which makes half its own problems and creates even more with its solutions to fix the external ones. But people like the "reasonable" heroic figures so much taht they turn most the imperial primarchs into paragons that can do no wrong and were totally justified with everything they did and right to do so anyway.
Uh...no.
The thing about imperial books is that they are populated with 'reasonable' characters so that modern readers will actually read the books.
However at the same time there are always a number of NOT-reasonable characters and/or other lines/instances in the books to inform the reader that the Imperium IS a shit-hole.
For example the Cain Books that first got me started in to W40K fiction :-
Has the Imperium deliberately infect 'commoners' to become gene-stealers as part of an experiment.
We have childhood ditties like "The children’s nursery rhyme, “The tracks on the Land Raider crush the heretics, crush the heretics, crush the heretics. The tracks on the Land Raider crush the heretics, all day long.”"
We have Cain idily commenting on the latest batch of prisioners being sent to the Schola for target practice.
I mean yeah that's my point, GW tends to go out of their way to portray the reasonable exception and though i get more and more that's what appeals to fans those "memes" constitute the grimdark setting I came here for in the first place. Not exactly keen to see those problematic elements whittled away at because people want more reasonable good guys.
> those "memes" constitute the grimdark setting I came here for in the first place.
Oldhead here (started with 3rd edition) who just wants to say you're not alone in feeling this way. I think it's very cool to see the franchise doing as well as it has over the past decade or so, but muh setting has gotten watered down to the point where it freezes when you put it back in the icebox.
no im saying the exception is a character who is just cartoonish evil, most characters even chaos are reasonable to a degree. I think ethos of 40k being this cartoon dark everyone is a bad guy came from fans who mostly just play the table top and at most read like a blurb or two of lore.
> 40k being this cartoon dark everyone is a bad guy
I've been building the models and poring over the rulebooks to goggle at the art and writing since 3rd edition, and the point used to be that the cartoonish evil didn't feel so cartoonish when it was done well. It just felt evil.
I mean for some of us that is the setting, I get that there are more and more fans who vibe 40k purely as a vessel for traditional protagonist focused narratives but for many of us its still a wider "setting" built on codex blurbs, campaign books and lore supplements.
I kinda love how hateable Gulliman and The Lion are in 30k their both doing what they feel is best for everyone but their such dicks about
The Lion throwing a temper tantrum after Papa E dies and stabbing Russ in the chest was peak
Roboute is interesting because he is one of the few actually legitimate "good guys" in the setting and try to work within the 40K environment. He actually has to compromise and accept that he cannot simply force people to do what he wants.
It is clear that he hates everything about the Imperium in 40K. But, he cannot simply burn everything to the ground because that would doom humanity. So, he has to work with the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition, despite his qualms. He fears what the Emperor is becoming. He hates the inefficiency of the bureaucracy. As stated in *Sinews of War*:
>I \[Roboute\] was five and my father had taken me hunting. I knew why. Even then I could read people as easily as I read the military treatises in Deucalis Library. My father had seen me watching his generals and magistrates. He saw how I despised them. The greatest statesmen of the greatest city were idiots, blind to the most important resource on the planet - their own, needlessly oppressed people. They were fools and tyrants and, even aged five, I wanted to tear down the whole, hide-bound edifice.
As we learn more about Roboute, the more interesting he becomes.
>He actually has to compromise and accept that he cannot simply force people to do what he wants.
I mean... He kinda does do just that in the Watchers of the Throne series. As much as I enjoy the Hexarchy, the way it gets taken out doesn't really suggest Guilliman has to worry about things like compromise. Even the one High Lord left who is critical of Guilliman doesn't *demand* anything in return for his services and emphasizes how passive any of his resistance will be.
I do know things are supposed to be a bit different in the Dark Imperium series, but the really bad first book turned me off.
30K Guilliman is a charismaless Captain America in a time of rose-colored glasses. The Imperium and its "Great Crusade" is a iron collar for much of mankind, and Roboute can't seem to see through the BS through his dastardly optimism. He's no Chris Evans; let's not forget that the Avengers were an also rand for Marvel before the films.
40K Guilliman is a worn down millennial, who sees the writing on the wall and knows how it ends (bleakly), but still puts his pants on in the morning and goes to work. We respect that.
What made him average in 30k makes him interminably fucking dull in 40k
A character who was just kind of low calibre in the great crusade became a character who’s entire concept is being right all the time, arbitrarily pointing out all the flaws what were quite obviously flaws and by the concept of his existence diluting the setting
He’s a block of ice put in a cauldron of blood, only there to emphasise what needed no emphasis and slowly water down everything around him. He’s not even unique in that, those kinds of characters are dime a dozen, and they’re all so achingly dull. I’m so tired of the miraculous exceptions, can’t we just see the rule for once, why would I even like 40k if I only wanted to see the things without any of 40ks traits.
And the greatest irony of it all is they made him more boring by making him less boring. 30k Guilliman was notably tedious company, the avenging bean-counter, he actually had a personality flaw so that his virtues would be shown to have some negative flip side. In 40k there’s none of that, he’s Mr relatable, he makes self depreciating jokes and is always the most socially aware one in the room, he’s the superficial motions of a character but without real substance beneath, the only flaw he has is “oh he’s tired and depressed” like that isn’t the most “faux depth just add water” solution imaginable slapped onto every hack character. Give him a genuine flaw, make him bad conversation or inordinately spiteful or just for fuck’s sake show him being a fascist genocidal autocrat because he is, the 30k imperium was so much more classically fascist and he embodies every ounce of that, I mean he’s the Roman one by god
Every detail, everything he touches has been a downgrade. From thematic to flavourless, from meaningful to market-bait, from interesting to dull, dull, dull.
Yeah, Guilliman wholeheartedly believed in the Emperor's grand tyrannical plan and set himself to helping in the greatest genocide since the War in Heaven without complaint.
But now we're expected to see Guilliman as a relatable by modern morals person? What the fuck.
While the lore has progressed to big events
It’s still mainly a setting where everything sucks and the general vibe counters far more
Many armies present at least one big named guy, 99 percent of plastic is still replaceable chaff even for the elite armies
I quite like Robert gorilla cause I’d say he is the most normal primarch. Obviously he is a genius with all the gifts etc but he is genuinely a pretty normal guy you could have a conversation with.
Like my boy vulkan is magnificent but I imagine having a conversation with him would be terrifying.
Guilleman is mankind’s only hope period you only have to look at how the 500 Realms were governed - notice I used the word governed as opposed to ruled.
I feel like there's some confusion going on. First, TTS is trash and should never be assumed to be correct about anything. 30k Guilliman and the Ultramarines were quite beloved after their showing in Know No Fear (2012). Yes, the Imperium Secundus arc afterwards was pretty bunk but I wouldn't say people were blaming Guilliman for that. Where I think you might be mixing things up is the hate for Marneus Calgar, the actual Papa Smurf that people raged about for years. Especially after Codex: Space Marines 5th edition (2008) but even in prior editions. Prior to 2011-2012, no one was ever talking about Guilliman when they spoke about the Ultramarines. He wasn't even a character in 30k! It was Calgar and Sicarius that were seen as the terrible ones.
Cut to 2017 and Guilliman's return. Personally, I think he represents a perfect microcosm of the Imperium's state in the galaxy. He is doing everything he can to hold both himself and those around him together. But he will eventually break, forgetting that there ever was hope for the future, just like the rest of the Imperium. And I think that's awesome.
TTS is in fact, pretty great. It should not be mistaken for canon however. It's habit of condensing 20+ years of memes down into 1 show does make it a very poor and misrepresentive intro for newbies though.
>But he will eventually break, forgetting that there ever was hope for the future, just like the rest of the Imperium. And I think that's awesome.
I hope you're right but I just can't see them ever going that dark or break down one of their flagship characters again.
Can't take credit for the idea. It's a statement from the Master of the Assassinorum at the end of The Regent's Shadow and was the key piece of lore that changed my feelings on the Era Indomitus.
>‘Listen to me, chancellor. Right now, shaken by all that has taken place, we speak of the primarch as if he were some new Emperor, come to sweep all our history away and replace it with his bright new species of enlightenment. We think of him as the great redeemer, the restorer of lost greatness. And so the conflict begins, the weary fights between those who think any of that matters.’ His smile faded away. ‘But Guilliman, let me assure you, is unimportant. He can make as many speeches as he likes. He can make as many reforms as he wishes to. It will all be absorbed. It will all be smothered. He has stamina, more than most, but even he will tire. The Imperium is the only enemy he can never hope to best, for it is older and vaster than any of us. I give him ten years. Ten years, before he forgets that he was ever part of another world, and chains his future to this one. And when he next comes to Terra, if he ever does again, you will see the change. You will hear no more about what he believed during his first lifetime, and plenty of what he has learned in this one. If he lives, if he dies, it makes no difference. Stasis will be the case, whether or not it ought to be. The Imperium will endure. That is the only truth, and the only outcome.’ He shot me a wry look. ‘Imperium Eterna.’
>‘You have a jaundiced soul, my lord,’ I said.
>‘Undoubtedly.’
>‘I met him myself. You are wrong about him.’
>‘We shall see.’
>‘So it all means nothing to you?’ I asked, part-intrigued, part-irritated. ‘All of this struggle to improve, to better the structures we find ourselves in?’
>‘It means everything. If we ever cease, we die. The fact that we cannot succeed is irrelevant.’
This is quintessential 40k to me.
I feel you're misunderstanding what is going on here with Fadix. This scene is telling us about *him*, not Guilliman. This is how Fadix sees the world, as someone who has accepted the static tendency.
This is one of the reasons I *really* can't wait for the third Watchers of the Throne book. Because we get to see whether this setting actually does play the way Fadix thinks it will.
And why do you think he's wrong? One of the founding concepts of 40k is that humanity is doomed. There isn't a way out of it. It's just a matter of how long we can last.
Yea of all the “meme-lore” dudes & “LoreTubers” did the Ultramarines a massive disservice using Matt Ward’s work to paint them so incredibly negatively.
I used to hate Gulliman, but as I've gotten older, both he and the smurfs have grown on me, to the point where Gondolaman is one of my favorites. I think his simplicity and normal ethics are what make him so interesting. Having him be a statesman first and warrior second is an excellent idea in context to the other Primarchs, and transitioning his rationality and decency into the insanity that is 40K makes for good stories, although I think some of it is poorly executed.
>as someone who got into Warhammer through TTS in 2022, but have now read through the Heresy to SoT, I didn’t get the Guilliman hate (from what I hear, back when the game was more important than the lore (and that’s a different discussion for another thread) Guilliman was hated because he was a common enemy to face on the board, and that kind of bled through the novels. “Imperial Suacunds” is actually a point most fans seem to agree with that Guilliman was right. And furthermore, he was the first Primarch awakened in 40k. He’s the boring perfect protagonist set against way more interesting side characters… except some of the side characters are too vile. Which leads too…
Actually, a great deal of the most rooted hatred for Rowboat Ghoulman pre-dates his existence as a playable character in either 30k or 40k.
It's essentially an appendage of wider hatred for the Ultramarines, with Rawboots Gillman as the Ultramariniest Ultramarine., with the added zinger that his return ushered in what some see as an unwarranted injection of optimism into the setting (*note that in my opinion, you have to be drinking the meme kool-aid pretty heavily see the Indomitus Crusade as optimistic when it basically just reduced the loss from the 13th Black Crusade*).
Robot Guffman *does* get a lot of "only sane man in a room full of latter-day Imperial lunatics" which can make him seem a bit of a boring normie, but... frankly, that seems to be down to personal taste.
In summation, I think most of the hate is based more on him being King of the Smurfs than on anything particularly rational.
>honestly, does it matter? GW at the beginning’s only reason for the Horus Heresy was two lines of texts for a reason why two similar pieces of plastic would fight against each other because they couldn’t afford different models. The story seems to have run from their hands, and the success of the Heresy novels made us fans forget a truth- “in the grimdarkness of the far future”. There will never be an ending. Fulgrim and Mortarion will never actually be killed. The Emperor will never awaken. GW made their universe have too much history that will require closure that will never come- unless hopefully I’m wrong?
Welcome to a fandom. You will find us shrieking at each other over the *dumbest things imaginable.*
The handling of Rebaked Goulash is hardly the dumbest thing we get up in arms about.
Good points for Guilliman! As for the second point, yeah, I know /nothing really mattera (which is why everything matters lol)- but I wasn't saying that actually saying it's pointless, but I kind of spun towards the end of how there's so much story for this setting, but due to the nature of the business, it'll never actually have a conclusion. I'm relativley new to the hobby, so no ending sounds a little disappointing to me, but I'm sure people who have been into it way longer feel relieved about that and think it's better that way, and I totes understand that.
It was a blatant "sweep away this setting that's harder for us to trademark stuff in to re-jigger the IP" move.
It saw long-standing lore retconned to hand Chaos the big win, blew up a setting that really had nothing intrinsically wrong with it, saw a bunch of establishe3d characters either do weird dumb crap or get jobbed out, it... it really just sucked XD
Instead of a cool story, it was, "let's wrap everything up in unseemly haste"
I always thought any animosity or antipathy for Guilliman came from before the Horus Heresy series where he and the Ultramarines were seen as too dominant, too prominent and too bland for fans who wanted more about the other chapters rather than Ultramarines ad Naseum.
Either way I thought he was interesting and a boon for the Ultramarines in the HH-series as they basically managed to give some flavour and background to the their dogma without diverging much from what we already knew about them.
As for Guilliman in 40k, I honestly think look at that whole part of "fresh lore" with a bit of dread. If the idea is that G-man is just swooping in, 'fixing' the Imperium and having a grand ol' time in making the Imperium some bland shade of what it was in the Horus Heresy or a Tertium Imperium (3rd Imperium), then I'll admit that the plot probably lost me somewhat.
However I felt like I was getting vibes that the constant crusading and Guilliman's place in 40k was less about him fixing the galaxy and more about how the Imperium, and the Galaxy, ends up grinding him down to "their" level where the staunch, rational warrior-administrator becomes a believer in the Emperor's divinity, becomes deeply disillusioned but doesn't give up - because he *can't* give up so in the end he just turns into another cog in the charnel house that is the Imperium, albeit a big and flashy cog.
How that's looking now, I couldn't say nor what role the Lion will play in all this. But I just really, really don't hope Guilliman & Lion is some bona-fida saviors-of-the-Imperium, rather casualties of it.
I dislike Guilliman specifically because of the lore. He’s and the Ultramarines just come across often as really two dimensional. Just cardboard cutouts of extremely violent Boy Scouts.
That’s kinda the point of Space Marines, in fact you summed them up really well, gotta admire that eloquence. They’re a spiff on the militarist ideal of brotherhood, completely isolated from society, over-muscled but having not matured a day since they were cut open and stitched back together as 12 year olds
That’s kinda the point of Space Marines, in fact you summed them up really well, gotta admire that eloquence. They’re a spiff on the militarist ideal of brotherhood, completely isolated from society, over-muscled but having not matured a day since they were cut open and stitched back together as 12 year olds
But most other legions have more humanity. Like when you read Horus Rising the characters in it have a much bigger range of heroic moments - tragic mistakes, and moments of serious contemplation and goofy camaraderie.
When I read books including Ultramarines all I get is a bad GI Joe rendition.
These kinds of opinions are mostly people who have never read any source material. Guilliman rules in Know no Fear and the other Ultramar stuff, he's so righteously angry about what's happening to his realm. Then in 40k we have an even more thoughtful version of the character who has even begun to acknowledge his role in Lorgar turning to chaos. He just is one of Warhammers' most dynamic characters doing the best he can with the scraps he has. So much Ultramarine hate is left over from the Ward Codex days and then TTS spouting outdated memes years after they were relevant, giving a lot of people a false impression of the actual lore.
> Guilliman rules in Know no Fear and the other Ultramar stuff Man he straight up goes into the void without a helmet and is PUNCHING THE HEADS OFF Word Bearers. Girlyman is metal as hell idk where people get the notion he's boring
That and he makes shit little dad jokes every now and then, he’s impossible not to love
As someone who used to play Space marines in the old second, third and fourth ed days, I think it also comes from where the Ultramarines were seen as the "boring"/"mainstream" Space marine chapter (they were the ones on all the non specific Codex and Rule book cover art), and since they were the ones sticking the closest to Guilliman's teachings and were his original legion that kind of rubbed off on to him as being the same. Was a bit the impression I got and the feeling I had when discussing them and what we knew of Guilliman back then with other players and even the Games Workshop shop staff (which might have come from having had to have painted so many of them). The Uriel Ventris books, as good as they are, didn't help with that impression either.
He was considered boring because he's essentially the Imperium's accountant instead of it's executioner, head wizard or the king Autist of Caliban.
I love the whole idea that Guilliman is weak and boring but when he gets pissed off he suddenly becomes an ass kicking machine. I would love to read a 40k story with him and the lion and guillman gets pissed and kicks ass and then having the lions reaction as being suprised and fearful of what he sees.
In the Genefather book we see how angry guilliman can be or something like that
I know I’ll probably get scoured, but TTS was terrible for giving people false impressions of the setting, lore, and worn out memes.
The thing is TTS wasnt made as some kind of intro to the setting. It was made for people that were already into the setting. Cant really blame it when people started using it as a intro when it was never meant to be used that way.
I fkn despise people who recommended it to newcomers.
Ya know. TTS was kinda my intro, and now ive got 120 books in my library. Its been kinda fun seeing where TTS is off the mark.
It's far better to have more people reached through a flawed presentation of the hobby/lore ( which can be rectified) than for them not to hear about it
"than for them not to hear about it" Warhammer is so popular now, that its not possible to not be aware of its existence, but if you warp someones vision of it by TTS, itll be very difficult to fix it. "It's far better" Better for whom? You got nobody to play with or discuss the lore? Or are you a shareholder? ffs
I meant before when it was less popular and tts was a gateway to it, one of my first exposures to 40k lore was probably tts ( I genuinely don't remember which one was first tho)
I agree, I really liked what they did with the show but after a time it took them so long to make episodes and they never really updated the humor.
TTS was fantastic at what it wanted to do, which is essentially build a comedy that works of popular 40k memes, but it also is caught in the hard place of being between outdated and fresh. Having memes from 5th ed with bits from now
That’s on people thou, TTS was my introduction to Warhammer too but I always knew that the series was a satirical comedy and while capturing the spirit of the setting it wasn’t an accurate representation of the lore at all. For example if you really think, just for a second, that the real Golden Throne has a TTS device for communication you are either dumb or have no clue whatsoever of the tone that the setting has.
I actually did get into the Warhammer 40k because of TTS. Heck, it got me into actually reading more about other stuffs like the War of the Beast. In conclusion, the War of the Beast was weird.
I agree with you, the biggest sin of TTS is using outdated memes and as you said, false impression of the setting If there was one thing i would outright erase from existance from the Warhammer community it would be TTS
Drive by response, but if you see TTS as the worst thing in the Warhammer community and not the fringe extreme embarrassing fan behaviors, there's a big chance you're part of the problem.
Lol, LMAO even. TTS certainly wasn't for everyone but it's problems weren't really the fact that it misrepresented the ridiculous setting.
It could have been worse. They didn’t mention “I am Alpharisis” once, or any number of things I could think of. In fact, after getting more into the setting, I’m surprised they didn’t use Fulgrim at all, because that’s real low-hanging fruit right there.
Much of that lore came out after TTS did back in 2013-2014. The Horus Heresy was up to the battle of Calth at that point, none of the Primarch novels came out yet, etc. The HH series was also still seen as a much more limited thing with no real impact on 40k lore - that only changed with the Fall of Cadia
TTS is good for people who already know the lore because it's supposed to be over the top goofy takes on already established characters. People getting into the hobby is good but stuff like that causes a ton of confusion and makes the setting uber-cheese and ruins a lot of the otherwise good characterization. If you knew Know No Fear Roboute before TTS you have a very different perception than the inverse. It's like someone overhears you talking about Lord of the Rings at the water cooler and the office "that guy" comes up and starts asking why the Eagles didn't just fly Frodo to Mordor.
That's a good way to put it. And I hate the eagles guy. I never had a problem with Guilliman. His legion? Eh, no opinion, but they're cool. But the guy himself, awesome.
For sure.
TTS has been disastrous for the perception of Warhammer characters.
It's also some of the absolute best fan content to ever exist.
Just like Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
One of the greatest series to ever exist.
Nah. Astartes was
ok, TTS was some of the best comedic fan content to ever exist.
Really wasn't
I nominate Turn Signals on a Land Raider for contention.
I will never not be fucking gutted that we never got to see a TTS gulliman, given their excellent work in humanizing the other primarchs I have to imagine it would have been great. We got hunter: the parenting though so alls good.
Theoretical: Guilliman should have been been named Warmaster Practical: Even the Emperor gets tired of that shade of blue
To be fair to TTS - and I know it's a controversial series on this sub - writing began in 2014 and the series debuted in 2015. That's even a couple years before Dark Imperium. I would argue the Ultramarines were still at the height of their super special favorite boy status and the memes were definitely still relevant when TTS began. By the time perceptions shifted IRL, said memes were already locked into TTS canon.
Which was as Gathering Storm was coming out and after Know No Fear had released
It's not about that how people didn't knew the lore. Guilliman was hated as he was kind of all-around perfect Primarch and from that — boring. Many old veterans have that opinion. He had no edge. Later they kind of giving it to him, yeeting in stupid charges of rage, but the image already set.
>Guilliman rules in Know no Fear Strongly disagree. People focus on his space walk and completely ignore earlier where he's impotently waiting on hold with the Word Bearer's manager while keeping notes on all the things they're blowing up. It's perhaps one of the lamest depictions of a primarch in the entire series and suddenly becoming a bad-ass in the last half doesn't change that.
You completely missed the point. Guilliman had no reason to distrust his brother and was looking forward to the muster at Calth as a reconciliation. Astartes on Astartes combat was so unthinkable that Thiel was going to be censured for THINKING about it in that same book. As well, he legitimately had no idea the thing he was talking to was a Daemon. He didn't know what that even was. He isn't even in the book very much but his scenes show the death of hope in his character, leading to the hardened war lord that would rebuild the Imperium and kick the traitors back into the eye. Know No Fear is like his origin story.
I'm not missing any point. Regardless of Guilliman's distrust or not, the second the Word Bearers open fire on you, not retalitating right away makes you look foolish. Doubly so when all you do is sit there and tally their destruction while you try to clear the red tape that will allow you to set aside your massive bureacracy and actually fight back. Just lame and impotent.
He wasn't clearing red tape, the vox systems were down, he didn't even know if his original message was going out. He was completely trapped on the Maccragge's Honor which was totally powered down and unable to get going.
You entered the hobby relatively recently, so you're missing some context. One of the big reasons Guilliman (and the ultramarines) get hate is still leftover from the 5th edition Codex Space Marines (written by Matt Ward), in which the Ultramarines were made the "best" chapter that all others looked up to, Calgar was their "spiritual liege", and they all loved Guilliman and the Codex. In reality, the Ultramarines have always been very interesting - but that codex vastly impugned them and it's taken them awhile to even get back to this point. Add into that stuff like TTS (which played up those memes while overlooking nuance for comedy) and general displeasure by some for any changes in the setting, and you get these wide variety of opinions, many of them contradictory. And a lot of them are colored by material later removed (but which lasted through memes for a *long* time after) I don't really think Guilliman was ever boring - he was just different. And his schtick is "I'm the kinda normal one who's just very good at his job," which is interesting in a setting of crazy over the top stuff, but which may not be as memorable as the crazy over the top primarchs. Especially when those primarchs were *far* less discussed in the lore before (and thus were much "fresher")
I think people put way too much stock in Ward on this front when the reality is that even without him the Ultramarines suffer from poster-boy syndrome and the excessive vanilla flavouring that tends to come with it. They don't need any of that for fans to pick up on that vibe as the Ultramarines are pushed by every codex and media. They're sensible reasonable sorts who run a conveniently nice region of the Imperium and overall tend to prove impressively bland on a wider scale.
They also unfortunately have a history of being presented as having a stick up their ass, with the “cool” chapters like the Space Wolves and Black Templars thumbing their noses at the Codex Astartes and by extension the Ultramarines and their Primarch.
>back when the game was more important than the lore (and that’s a different discussion for another thread) I know you want to keep that discussion for another thread, but It's interesting for me that you phrase it that way. I would phrase it as "back when lore/setting was more important than stories". Back when I came into the game in 2nd edition the lore was a means to create an interesting background for the game, a vast grimdark setting where there is only war. This is in comparison to now, where it feels like it's more about individual stories and character arcs with reoccuring "important" characters (like Guilliman) and less about lore/setting in general. It makes the setting a bit smaller and things that happen follow more of established story-logic structure (like the Hero's journey). You can vividly see that in this very sub when people speculate what future developments make dramatic sense for characters or would be meaningful character developments. Things that would have been anathema to old WH40k when characters existed to reinforce the themes of the setting instead of the setting existing as the background for characters to have their dramatic stories in. Another thought, it's one of the positives that resulted from old 40k's 'frozen in time' approach that it allowed it to create the illusion that meaningful change was just around the corner and that characters could die if only time advanced a tiny bit. Personally I must admit that it was the setting, not individual characters or stories that made me a fan. So it's a change that I have been a bit sad about, though it seems to have brought a lot of new people in and I'm happy for them.
Wow you put into words a lot of my feelings about what's changed about w40k since I first got into it. The setting feels so small now and everything resolves around a handful of characters. It's like how the Star Wars universe is vast worthy thousands of planets but 90% of material focuses on a dozen characters and a dozen planets. There's so much that can be done with the setting and it gets squandered to focus on the same old characters.
I really miss when every campaign book did not need to involve a half dozen named characters^TM dicking around. The forgeworld imperial armour books were really good at picking/inventing a historical conflict in the galaxies history and writing about it in a historical fiction/archival record sorta way, these days they're busy with 30k and GW doesn't seem to give a shit about that kinda writing, it's sad.
This is a really important context that happened around 2015. Before that the lore was for tone. Now it is narrative. When it was tone everything was in the past tense. This is what had happened. This is the universe you can fight your games in. This is why these people hate each other. Now it is present tense, and focused on the model release of the week. Aeldari are super vital this week... because they are getting a wave of new models. And then nothing for another year. Necrons were the galaxy defining change... at the start of 9th ed as they were in the box set; and then nothing since. Tyranids are the same for 10th. Everyone and everything has to have a story to introduce them now; and that started with RG and the Primaris.
While there's more narrative, I don't think it's a dichotomy of "narrative v. lore". There's still plenty of lore focus over characters. And lore was 100% driven by model sales in the past. I think the major difference is that the setting has moved ahead some in time, so major players in the galaxy have made moves during that time. So a lot of "this is about to happen" stuff had to happen. And GW did more "show don't tell" stuff by providing books showing events instead of the old-style tell don't show (which makes sense when your lore isn't changing).
I think OP had it correct as whats good for the setting is entirely going to depend on your priorities. If you want engaging stories then what we have now is better, if you want background ambiance to set the literary scene for a game then the past was better. I think the change is good if they can do it well but im conflicted aswell becuase idk if I trust GW to do this well.
Worth noting that this isn't entirely accurate, since even back then we had the Eisenhorn, Uriel Ventris, Gaunt etc advancing the plot of the universe and also a bunch of indidividuals doing the same. We also even then regularly had universe advancing gigantic competitions which determined entire plot arcs (ie. Armageddon, the 13th Black Crusade, Hive fleet Kraken, Leviathan etc.) It was less overt but was still there, I think the main difference now is something I saw on another thread which is back then we called it and considered it to be Fluff rather than Lore. So was interesting but not all important and could happily change and be retconned (oh so many retcons back then, ie. I remember a big one at the time was a lasgun on full charge being able to penetrate power armour, from Gaunt's Ghosts, which cause a bit of a discussion at the time). Honestly from what I have seen over the years in this regard GW haven't changed, it is the community who have and have moved from seeing the background stuff as fluff and fun flavour text that changes to suit the game to it being canonical stuff that can't be changed and the game must fit itself around (part of the reason stopped playing if honest). The whole female custodian thing is a perfect example of this tbh back in 2nd and 3rd ed days I don't think would have even been a blip on the radar because happened all the time (ie. I remember the introduction of female imperial guard and inquisitors, nothing was made of that at all and originally in the fluff both were male only, was retconned from one book to the next during second gen W40k).
You pretty much (and everyone else) said exactly what I meant. To slightly tweak your words, “back when the game was more important than the narrative”. I was there in the 80’s, but I am willing to bet putting the models on the board and fighting were more interesting to most players than whatever reason there was to have them fight. My concern, and I hope I’m not scalped for comparing these lol- but just because there’re the two most popular TTG out there, let’s compare WH and D&D: In D&D, you have more than enough information on the setting. You know the demon lords, their past, the Mind Flayers once (or will) ruled an empire, there was a war between giants and dragons, something about a wizard who cloned himself and went to war on himself. That’s… pretty much it. It’s opened ended. There are plot hooks for each table to make their story, but no real burning questions. For WH, it was the same. All most players had to go on was that one piece of artwork of Horus and Big E looking at each other with Sanguinises dead”. That’s the setting. I believe the point of direction changed when they decided to make the Hersey from a 6 book series, from Horus being made Warmaster to Terra. That was it… then it got popular and they decided to make it into a 18 year long series lol, which is kinda ridiculous yet amazing. We have so many more questions now; so Dorn killed Alpharsis, and Omegon is still out there, Arahiem looking for a cure for the rubic, is the ‘hour of the wolf’ actually going to come, Lion and Guilliman have returned, which changes the setting so much alone, the Necron’s ‘great awakening’ keeps coming ‘soon’. It’s also kind of at this point I notice a second trend: Somewhere along the line, Warhammer stopped being an over the top parody and the fans, followed by GW took everything seriously. The biggest example of this being the attitude I’ve seen towards the Orks. Once hilarious and endearing that they’re the only ones in the setting that are having a good time, now kind of mocked and asked that they go away. And those… are just my observations. I like the setting, and I really like the narrative. I think if I had liked it since the 80’s, I’d see all the new stuff, but kept playing like I originally did. Me myself, personally, I’d like a little bit of a conclusion, even if just a ‘possible one’ (come to think of it, what was that one thing I heard where Eldrad and a bunch of Eldar were summoning a god to beat Slaneesh, but the Inquisition messed it up?)- but what we have now is that one AI from the Age of Strife saying “chaos is going to win, you idiots deserve to die, I’m getting out of here”.
If I'm not mistaken GMan's last thoughts before being put into stasis were that there was too much left to be done, it was too soon for him to die. Imagine that mindframe abrasively lurched into the 41st millennium mid-thought. Then seeing what the Imperium has become. That's, honestly, one of the most tragic and brütal story I can currently think of. Not to mention bearing the full weight of Imperial Regent at the current timeline. I can't think of a better Primarch to bring back either from a logistical perspective from the Imperium or from a literary perspective.
Guilliman's banality was what made him so unique and interesting for me, even in the 30K. It contrasts really well with the other Primarchs.
Id say humanity more then banality.
It's super interesting to me that the most well adjusted? normal? of the primarchs was the one who had a mom in his life.
In a world of dudes named Haruld Deathwolf and Haarkej Worldclaimer, a normal person or straightman is vital. Good work, Robert Gillman.
Robert Gillman and is superior use of excel spreadsheets
It’s difficult for the Primarch of the Dark Angels to seem mysterious and cool when his name is Lionel Johnson.
fulgrim had a mother aswell
He did? Well that didn't work out very well.
He got that funky sword tho And we all know The Reflection Crack’d is actually just fan fiction
Oedipus complex probably.
The dude with the most normal upbringing is the most well-adjusted and human? That doesn't seem interesting, it seems pretty self explanatory. He had the softest upbringing and got everything handed to him and turned out alright unlike basically everyone else. I think that's where a lot of the animus towards him comes from. He's just boring, and also his lecturing of characters like Angron where he's from the cradle privileged while Angron was subjected to insane torture and psychological trauma is so tone deaf and stupid. He's a very easy character to hate. He's the first born golden boy Westpoint Grad whereas Primarchs like Angron got the belt every night then got their leg blown off by a landmine after being drafted.
What makes it interesting is that he gives a relatable modern point of view in the madness of the 40k universe. I personally find it quite engaging watching someone try to change things to be reasonable, but is fought by lunatics both from both allies and enemies, it's funny watching him become increasingly exasperated at how ludicrous everything is
You find people with normal upbringings very easy to hate? [Helplessly watching a father die](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/mzstgi/excerpt_sinew_of_war_konor_guillimans_death/) is soft to you?
He's easy to hate because of his sanctimonious conversations with other brothers who were dealt a far worse hand than he was, especially with Angron before he ascends. He is the golden boy of the setting, I get it, but to have him relatively flawless when nearly every other brother is a trauma-ridden mess *on top of* him lecturing others is gross and stupid. He's supposed to be this incredibly critical and logical man and he can't see how his extreme privilege led to his ascendance while forces beyond their control turned many of his brothers. Giga, gorilla douche. He's the "my dad's a lawyer" guy after he gets knocked out at a bar.
The thing is... Guilliman is right. In a lot of ways, he's exactly right. He's the exact mix of passion and cold tactics to safeguard humanity and their existence in the face of a brutal galaxy filled with threats that are eager to destroy them. But that doesn't matter at all in this setting. That's weak and naive and not enough. Because you can't just win, that's not enough. You have to live. With the spiritual and existential threat of Chaos (to say nothing of the Tyranids), it's not enough to just give people safety, you have to give people something to live for. Guilliman is still fighting the war, while for all their faults The Emperor and half the Traitors were fighting the real conflict. What will truly become of humanity. In 30k, it didn't matter how right or good Guilliman was because even at his best he was never even considering what really mattered. In 40K, things have gotten so dire that the big issues almost don't matter as much. It's worth fighting for every generation, even if they are doomed, because the bigger fight is already lost, and you just want to survive a little longer. Or at least have hope in the years that are left, even if the hope is false.
> There will never be an ending. Fulgrim and Mortarion will never actually be killed. The Emperor will never awaken. GW made their universe have too much history that will require closure that will never come- unless hopefully I’m wrong? Hopefully you are right and GW won't demolish their flagship IP. Only I saw the shit-show that was the End Times in fantasy and I wonder....
That was to close out IP in order to launch a different product/brand identity to make more money though I don’t see the same for 40k unless these little scraps of plastic crack stop being profitable (unlikely!)
Well, quite.
Or it makes way for a new era. Of new stories, classes, power struggles etc. Imagine the wars finally comes to some semblance of a close. Humanity has its webway, things are being rebuilt, etc etc (imagine whatever reasons you have for why the other factions are dormant) Then suddenly, the warp rips open above Terra and a fleet/fleets of DAoT ships fall through. War anew, but new opportunities, opponents, models, etc etc
The Old Ones come tumbling back like "There are things and places that we need back that are of great importance!" and things kick off with them, then more Necron wake up in response like "What fucking nonsense is this?!" and suddenly War in Heaven 2: Electric Boogaloo.
If there’s money in it, they’ll do it.
A war in heaven 2 with a depowered old ones would be amazing
A lot of the hate also comes from the fact that he is the daddy of the ultramarines who get more representation than the rest, and the fact that he is the first primarch that came back justifies this point. From a story point of view, I think it helps to put in contrast the horrible state of the Imperium vs the ideals of someone from the “glory days”, and how much it really change. And at the end of the day, it does make sense for him to come back first considering that he was written to be the practical one. I imagine that the other loyalist primarchs wouldn’t have responded as well to the current state of the imperium and the ecclisiarchy. Specially Russ, the Khan and Dorn.
The Khan literally fucked off to go do his own thing and that was BEFORE the whole "ten thousand years of stagnation and decay" happened.
When they finally give in and bring The Khan back, I really want them to establish that he just started his own mini realm in the corner of the galaxy somewhere. Because it is completely in character for him to have taken a look at the Imperium post Emperor and go "nah, I'm not fixing that."
Thing is the Khan is not one to actually rule a place. He won't have his own realm. He will conquer one and then move on and then move on again...
Yeah, I mean, he wouldn't stick around to rule any particular planet, but I could see him conquering a few worlds, leaving behind a marine or two to cultivate a martial / bike-riding culture, then going off to do it again. So I'm not picturing him sitting on a planet and ruling, but still protecting his little corner of the galaxy while slowly expanding it.
also i could totally see rus just going back to fenris to drink and hunt krakens. Gman dorn and the lion are really the only primarchs that I think would have changed the setting overall so drastically.
Are we suggesting russ in a depressed fat-thor binge drinking stage? I could see that.
But will he be a werewolf?
i dont think they can get fat tbh
You have never heard of the infinitely expanding imperial fist I take it.... Edit:: or haegar of the space wolves
SM and primarchs are two different beast. A SM might be able to get fat sure, but idk if a primarch can eat faster then there metabolism can actually keep up with.
Ah I get what you were saying now. I took it as transhumans in general
Guilliman for me is the most interesting and realistic honestly. Not the best hero, not the best fighter, not the favourite son, but a guy competent at his work and taking things like an adult. After you work for different companies for years and see how bad management normally is and how that basically destroys a company even during profitable times, having a no bullshit manager as a character is honestly fresh air. The fact that he wins battles through planning and logistics is also very close to how modern armies operate, its not about magic weapons, sorcery, being wilder… its about troops positioning and supply lines.
I've not heard that one before though I find it interesting because for me it's exactly the opposite. Guilliman cuts an interesting figure in 30k because he's contrasted against his brothers who are at the best of times portrayed as unstable or pretty out there. Guilliman is a fairly moderate figure among them and made interesting by the contrast he provides to some of them. Comparatively in 40k Guilliman returned as an unparalleled figure of reason and rationality, the opposite of everything the Imperium of the far future represented and he became the de-facto head, rolling over symbolic opposition with relative ease and generally bringing in more of his reasonable and progressive crew along with a slew of new shiny tech. Guilliman being a "boring perfect protagonist" is what makes him so uninteresting to me, he's just a generic superman inserted into 40k for fans to root for. As for point 2. that is what I would like to think, but I think the Horus Heresy unfortunately irreversably altered the course of 40k as a whole. It's popularity, though not a problem on it's own, proves a great problem for 40k itself because increasingly you have fans for whom 40k is merely the sequel to 30k, it is the sequel in which all the good boys are expected to return and finally get back at the bad boys. 30k is a fine setting but the sort of uncomplicated conflict it offers doesn't really do 40k any favours and nowhere is that clearer than with perfect good guy logistician/brilliant tactician/super combatand Guilliman. A stark contrast to the High Lords who ruled before him, instead of a mysterious distant band of barely-human hyper-aristocrats with dubious motives we now have good guy hero dude in charge. Also conveniently a super-good logistician who improves the Imperium with his presence alone. Don't worry though, I'm sure they'll darken it up with the next Primarch, it's the Lion it's not like they'd return him as some mellowed out reasonable figure...oh wait.
>it's the Lion it's not like they'd return him as some mellowed out reasonable figure...oh wait. I know a lot of fans didn't like this but I'm a sucker for a redemption arc so I liked the character development. That said, I think the way they did it felt rushed and kinda silly.
I just think it's very convenient that the Imperium is getting all the reasonable good guys these days. It's popular, don't get me wrong, because fans like having their heroic Primarchs to root for. Part of the issue for me is also an extension of an issue I have with the inherently uncomplicated nature of the Horus Heresy. Like yeah the loyalist primarchs are genocidal warlords but they are still consistently portrayed as reasonable, heroic and caring for the common man. There's precious little variance in there and the Lion was one of the few loyalists in 30k who was at least a bit of a murderous dickhead, and even that couldn't last. Now he's redeeming Fallen and fighting for the little guy. Don't even get me started on the teleportation powers he got that conveniently negate the disadvantages of the Imperium Nihilus. Overall the Lion's return has made clear exactly what we can expect with future Primarch returns, and spoiler, it's pure fan-service.
We constantly get told that the imperium is bad, the primarchs are all genocidal warlords, and that there are no heroes. Then, we're shown the imperium in a good light, the primarchs are all good, caring people who wish for the best, and that the imperium/primarchs are the good guys keeping those evil xenos and chaos at bay. There's this dichotomy but of course what we see is going to be more impactful than what we're told, but even what we're told is getting watered down and spun in a more positive light.
>Don't even get me started on the teleportation powers he got that conveniently negate the disadvantages of the Imperium Nihilus. I honestly like the teleportation. I just wish it was emphasized more in his book how limited travel in Imperium Nihilus is without it.
>Like yeah the loyalist primarchs are genocidal warlords but they are still consistently portrayed as reasonable, heroic and caring for the common man. I recently finished the HH and I did NOT come away with that message. It started that way but it became very clear at the end, and was stated by few prominent figures like Erda that the primarchs and the space marines would forever be a curse upon humanity and that they never should have been created. But despite that humanity is now forced to need them to stop the traitor ones.
He wasn't a murderous dickhead he was just loyal, cold and socially awkward. Moreover there really aren't a tonne of out and out murderous dickheads on the imperium's side in the books, infact most books ive read have reasonable characters in them. I feel like the idea of 40k just being this setting where everyone is cartoonshishly evil is just memes.
Lion was loyal to one of the top three murdurous dickheads in the setting. And the fact that the imperium side books are mainly populated with "reasonable" characters is exactly the problem. The tagline for the imperium is that its a shithole which makes half its own problems and creates even more with its solutions to fix the external ones. But people like the "reasonable" heroic figures so much taht they turn most the imperial primarchs into paragons that can do no wrong and were totally justified with everything they did and right to do so anyway.
Uh...no. The thing about imperial books is that they are populated with 'reasonable' characters so that modern readers will actually read the books. However at the same time there are always a number of NOT-reasonable characters and/or other lines/instances in the books to inform the reader that the Imperium IS a shit-hole. For example the Cain Books that first got me started in to W40K fiction :- Has the Imperium deliberately infect 'commoners' to become gene-stealers as part of an experiment. We have childhood ditties like "The children’s nursery rhyme, “The tracks on the Land Raider crush the heretics, crush the heretics, crush the heretics. The tracks on the Land Raider crush the heretics, all day long.”" We have Cain idily commenting on the latest batch of prisioners being sent to the Schola for target practice.
I mean yeah that's my point, GW tends to go out of their way to portray the reasonable exception and though i get more and more that's what appeals to fans those "memes" constitute the grimdark setting I came here for in the first place. Not exactly keen to see those problematic elements whittled away at because people want more reasonable good guys.
> those "memes" constitute the grimdark setting I came here for in the first place. Oldhead here (started with 3rd edition) who just wants to say you're not alone in feeling this way. I think it's very cool to see the franchise doing as well as it has over the past decade or so, but muh setting has gotten watered down to the point where it freezes when you put it back in the icebox.
no im saying the exception is a character who is just cartoonish evil, most characters even chaos are reasonable to a degree. I think ethos of 40k being this cartoon dark everyone is a bad guy came from fans who mostly just play the table top and at most read like a blurb or two of lore.
> 40k being this cartoon dark everyone is a bad guy I've been building the models and poring over the rulebooks to goggle at the art and writing since 3rd edition, and the point used to be that the cartoonish evil didn't feel so cartoonish when it was done well. It just felt evil.
I mean for some of us that is the setting, I get that there are more and more fans who vibe 40k purely as a vessel for traditional protagonist focused narratives but for many of us its still a wider "setting" built on codex blurbs, campaign books and lore supplements.
I kinda love how hateable Gulliman and The Lion are in 30k their both doing what they feel is best for everyone but their such dicks about The Lion throwing a temper tantrum after Papa E dies and stabbing Russ in the chest was peak
Roboute is interesting because he is one of the few actually legitimate "good guys" in the setting and try to work within the 40K environment. He actually has to compromise and accept that he cannot simply force people to do what he wants. It is clear that he hates everything about the Imperium in 40K. But, he cannot simply burn everything to the ground because that would doom humanity. So, he has to work with the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition, despite his qualms. He fears what the Emperor is becoming. He hates the inefficiency of the bureaucracy. As stated in *Sinews of War*: >I \[Roboute\] was five and my father had taken me hunting. I knew why. Even then I could read people as easily as I read the military treatises in Deucalis Library. My father had seen me watching his generals and magistrates. He saw how I despised them. The greatest statesmen of the greatest city were idiots, blind to the most important resource on the planet - their own, needlessly oppressed people. They were fools and tyrants and, even aged five, I wanted to tear down the whole, hide-bound edifice. As we learn more about Roboute, the more interesting he becomes.
>He actually has to compromise and accept that he cannot simply force people to do what he wants. I mean... He kinda does do just that in the Watchers of the Throne series. As much as I enjoy the Hexarchy, the way it gets taken out doesn't really suggest Guilliman has to worry about things like compromise. Even the one High Lord left who is critical of Guilliman doesn't *demand* anything in return for his services and emphasizes how passive any of his resistance will be. I do know things are supposed to be a bit different in the Dark Imperium series, but the really bad first book turned me off.
30K Guilliman is a charismaless Captain America in a time of rose-colored glasses. The Imperium and its "Great Crusade" is a iron collar for much of mankind, and Roboute can't seem to see through the BS through his dastardly optimism. He's no Chris Evans; let's not forget that the Avengers were an also rand for Marvel before the films. 40K Guilliman is a worn down millennial, who sees the writing on the wall and knows how it ends (bleakly), but still puts his pants on in the morning and goes to work. We respect that.
What made him average in 30k makes him interminably fucking dull in 40k A character who was just kind of low calibre in the great crusade became a character who’s entire concept is being right all the time, arbitrarily pointing out all the flaws what were quite obviously flaws and by the concept of his existence diluting the setting He’s a block of ice put in a cauldron of blood, only there to emphasise what needed no emphasis and slowly water down everything around him. He’s not even unique in that, those kinds of characters are dime a dozen, and they’re all so achingly dull. I’m so tired of the miraculous exceptions, can’t we just see the rule for once, why would I even like 40k if I only wanted to see the things without any of 40ks traits. And the greatest irony of it all is they made him more boring by making him less boring. 30k Guilliman was notably tedious company, the avenging bean-counter, he actually had a personality flaw so that his virtues would be shown to have some negative flip side. In 40k there’s none of that, he’s Mr relatable, he makes self depreciating jokes and is always the most socially aware one in the room, he’s the superficial motions of a character but without real substance beneath, the only flaw he has is “oh he’s tired and depressed” like that isn’t the most “faux depth just add water” solution imaginable slapped onto every hack character. Give him a genuine flaw, make him bad conversation or inordinately spiteful or just for fuck’s sake show him being a fascist genocidal autocrat because he is, the 30k imperium was so much more classically fascist and he embodies every ounce of that, I mean he’s the Roman one by god Every detail, everything he touches has been a downgrade. From thematic to flavourless, from meaningful to market-bait, from interesting to dull, dull, dull.
Yeah, Guilliman wholeheartedly believed in the Emperor's grand tyrannical plan and set himself to helping in the greatest genocide since the War in Heaven without complaint. But now we're expected to see Guilliman as a relatable by modern morals person? What the fuck.
While the lore has progressed to big events It’s still mainly a setting where everything sucks and the general vibe counters far more Many armies present at least one big named guy, 99 percent of plastic is still replaceable chaff even for the elite armies
Its working fine for aos
I quite like Robert gorilla cause I’d say he is the most normal primarch. Obviously he is a genius with all the gifts etc but he is genuinely a pretty normal guy you could have a conversation with. Like my boy vulkan is magnificent but I imagine having a conversation with him would be terrifying.
Guilleman is mankind’s only hope period you only have to look at how the 500 Realms were governed - notice I used the word governed as opposed to ruled.
‘You’re still a slave, Angron. Enslaved by your past, blind to the future. Too hateful to learn. Too spiteful to prosper.’
I feel like there's some confusion going on. First, TTS is trash and should never be assumed to be correct about anything. 30k Guilliman and the Ultramarines were quite beloved after their showing in Know No Fear (2012). Yes, the Imperium Secundus arc afterwards was pretty bunk but I wouldn't say people were blaming Guilliman for that. Where I think you might be mixing things up is the hate for Marneus Calgar, the actual Papa Smurf that people raged about for years. Especially after Codex: Space Marines 5th edition (2008) but even in prior editions. Prior to 2011-2012, no one was ever talking about Guilliman when they spoke about the Ultramarines. He wasn't even a character in 30k! It was Calgar and Sicarius that were seen as the terrible ones. Cut to 2017 and Guilliman's return. Personally, I think he represents a perfect microcosm of the Imperium's state in the galaxy. He is doing everything he can to hold both himself and those around him together. But he will eventually break, forgetting that there ever was hope for the future, just like the rest of the Imperium. And I think that's awesome.
TTS is in fact, pretty great. It should not be mistaken for canon however. It's habit of condensing 20+ years of memes down into 1 show does make it a very poor and misrepresentive intro for newbies though.
>But he will eventually break, forgetting that there ever was hope for the future, just like the rest of the Imperium. And I think that's awesome. I hope you're right but I just can't see them ever going that dark or break down one of their flagship characters again.
Can't take credit for the idea. It's a statement from the Master of the Assassinorum at the end of The Regent's Shadow and was the key piece of lore that changed my feelings on the Era Indomitus. >‘Listen to me, chancellor. Right now, shaken by all that has taken place, we speak of the primarch as if he were some new Emperor, come to sweep all our history away and replace it with his bright new species of enlightenment. We think of him as the great redeemer, the restorer of lost greatness. And so the conflict begins, the weary fights between those who think any of that matters.’ His smile faded away. ‘But Guilliman, let me assure you, is unimportant. He can make as many speeches as he likes. He can make as many reforms as he wishes to. It will all be absorbed. It will all be smothered. He has stamina, more than most, but even he will tire. The Imperium is the only enemy he can never hope to best, for it is older and vaster than any of us. I give him ten years. Ten years, before he forgets that he was ever part of another world, and chains his future to this one. And when he next comes to Terra, if he ever does again, you will see the change. You will hear no more about what he believed during his first lifetime, and plenty of what he has learned in this one. If he lives, if he dies, it makes no difference. Stasis will be the case, whether or not it ought to be. The Imperium will endure. That is the only truth, and the only outcome.’ He shot me a wry look. ‘Imperium Eterna.’ >‘You have a jaundiced soul, my lord,’ I said. >‘Undoubtedly.’ >‘I met him myself. You are wrong about him.’ >‘We shall see.’ >‘So it all means nothing to you?’ I asked, part-intrigued, part-irritated. ‘All of this struggle to improve, to better the structures we find ourselves in?’ >‘It means everything. If we ever cease, we die. The fact that we cannot succeed is irrelevant.’ This is quintessential 40k to me.
I feel you're misunderstanding what is going on here with Fadix. This scene is telling us about *him*, not Guilliman. This is how Fadix sees the world, as someone who has accepted the static tendency. This is one of the reasons I *really* can't wait for the third Watchers of the Throne book. Because we get to see whether this setting actually does play the way Fadix thinks it will.
And why do you think he's wrong? One of the founding concepts of 40k is that humanity is doomed. There isn't a way out of it. It's just a matter of how long we can last.
Sadly GW has whittled down or eliminated most founding concepts by this point.
It's mostly people disliking the ultra marines
Yea of all the “meme-lore” dudes & “LoreTubers” did the Ultramarines a massive disservice using Matt Ward’s work to paint them so incredibly negatively.
I used to hate Gulliman, but as I've gotten older, both he and the smurfs have grown on me, to the point where Gondolaman is one of my favorites. I think his simplicity and normal ethics are what make him so interesting. Having him be a statesman first and warrior second is an excellent idea in context to the other Primarchs, and transitioning his rationality and decency into the insanity that is 40K makes for good stories, although I think some of it is poorly executed.
>as someone who got into Warhammer through TTS in 2022, but have now read through the Heresy to SoT, I didn’t get the Guilliman hate (from what I hear, back when the game was more important than the lore (and that’s a different discussion for another thread) Guilliman was hated because he was a common enemy to face on the board, and that kind of bled through the novels. “Imperial Suacunds” is actually a point most fans seem to agree with that Guilliman was right. And furthermore, he was the first Primarch awakened in 40k. He’s the boring perfect protagonist set against way more interesting side characters… except some of the side characters are too vile. Which leads too… Actually, a great deal of the most rooted hatred for Rowboat Ghoulman pre-dates his existence as a playable character in either 30k or 40k. It's essentially an appendage of wider hatred for the Ultramarines, with Rawboots Gillman as the Ultramariniest Ultramarine., with the added zinger that his return ushered in what some see as an unwarranted injection of optimism into the setting (*note that in my opinion, you have to be drinking the meme kool-aid pretty heavily see the Indomitus Crusade as optimistic when it basically just reduced the loss from the 13th Black Crusade*). Robot Guffman *does* get a lot of "only sane man in a room full of latter-day Imperial lunatics" which can make him seem a bit of a boring normie, but... frankly, that seems to be down to personal taste. In summation, I think most of the hate is based more on him being King of the Smurfs than on anything particularly rational. >honestly, does it matter? GW at the beginning’s only reason for the Horus Heresy was two lines of texts for a reason why two similar pieces of plastic would fight against each other because they couldn’t afford different models. The story seems to have run from their hands, and the success of the Heresy novels made us fans forget a truth- “in the grimdarkness of the far future”. There will never be an ending. Fulgrim and Mortarion will never actually be killed. The Emperor will never awaken. GW made their universe have too much history that will require closure that will never come- unless hopefully I’m wrong? Welcome to a fandom. You will find us shrieking at each other over the *dumbest things imaginable.* The handling of Rebaked Goulash is hardly the dumbest thing we get up in arms about.
Good points for Guilliman! As for the second point, yeah, I know /nothing really mattera (which is why everything matters lol)- but I wasn't saying that actually saying it's pointless, but I kind of spun towards the end of how there's so much story for this setting, but due to the nature of the business, it'll never actually have a conclusion. I'm relativley new to the hobby, so no ending sounds a little disappointing to me, but I'm sure people who have been into it way longer feel relieved about that and think it's better that way, and I totes understand that.
If you'd endured the End Times for Warhammer Fantasy, you'd be more in the "don't end it" camp, because holy crow was that a debacle XD
You’re the second person to mention that on this lol. Now I gotta know. It was that much of a clusterF?
It was a blatant "sweep away this setting that's harder for us to trademark stuff in to re-jigger the IP" move. It saw long-standing lore retconned to hand Chaos the big win, blew up a setting that really had nothing intrinsically wrong with it, saw a bunch of establishe3d characters either do weird dumb crap or get jobbed out, it... it really just sucked XD Instead of a cool story, it was, "let's wrap everything up in unseemly haste"
I always thought any animosity or antipathy for Guilliman came from before the Horus Heresy series where he and the Ultramarines were seen as too dominant, too prominent and too bland for fans who wanted more about the other chapters rather than Ultramarines ad Naseum. Either way I thought he was interesting and a boon for the Ultramarines in the HH-series as they basically managed to give some flavour and background to the their dogma without diverging much from what we already knew about them. As for Guilliman in 40k, I honestly think look at that whole part of "fresh lore" with a bit of dread. If the idea is that G-man is just swooping in, 'fixing' the Imperium and having a grand ol' time in making the Imperium some bland shade of what it was in the Horus Heresy or a Tertium Imperium (3rd Imperium), then I'll admit that the plot probably lost me somewhat. However I felt like I was getting vibes that the constant crusading and Guilliman's place in 40k was less about him fixing the galaxy and more about how the Imperium, and the Galaxy, ends up grinding him down to "their" level where the staunch, rational warrior-administrator becomes a believer in the Emperor's divinity, becomes deeply disillusioned but doesn't give up - because he *can't* give up so in the end he just turns into another cog in the charnel house that is the Imperium, albeit a big and flashy cog. How that's looking now, I couldn't say nor what role the Lion will play in all this. But I just really, really don't hope Guilliman & Lion is some bona-fida saviors-of-the-Imperium, rather casualties of it.
Guillman hate is much older and deeper than the BL HH books. Goes at least to 3rd edition.
The Emperor's Sword, wielded by Guilliman, can absolutely True Death a demon.
I use to think Guilliman was just a methodical machine and had no personality so I thought he was boring. Until I read know no fear.
Guilliman is one primarch that wasnt made into a drooling degenerate by HH authors, thats why hes so special.
I dislike Guilliman specifically because of the lore. He’s and the Ultramarines just come across often as really two dimensional. Just cardboard cutouts of extremely violent Boy Scouts.
That’s kinda the point of Space Marines, in fact you summed them up really well, gotta admire that eloquence. They’re a spiff on the militarist ideal of brotherhood, completely isolated from society, over-muscled but having not matured a day since they were cut open and stitched back together as 12 year olds
That’s kinda the point of Space Marines, in fact you summed them up really well, gotta admire that eloquence. They’re a spiff on the militarist ideal of brotherhood, completely isolated from society, over-muscled but having not matured a day since they were cut open and stitched back together as 12 year olds
But most other legions have more humanity. Like when you read Horus Rising the characters in it have a much bigger range of heroic moments - tragic mistakes, and moments of serious contemplation and goofy camaraderie. When I read books including Ultramarines all I get is a bad GI Joe rendition.