Game Theory: We’re getting down in the blood and guts of Warhammer 40,000
Between new releases of Darktide, and the upcoming Rogue Trader, video games are tackling one of tabletop's most venerable and violent franchises
Games Features Warhammer
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We’ll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you’re playing this weekend, and what theories it’s got you kicking around.
Warhammer 40K is one of those gaming brands with intimidation built right into its name—because, after all, how the hell is a new player supposed to follow its vision of a grimdark future if they haven’t already played Warhammers 1 through 39,999?
But even beyond that (extremely dumb) joke, Games Workshop’s venerable war gaming brand has a healthy scare factor built into its DNA, courtesy of years of hardcore tabletop gaming mixed with a whole universe of novels, stories, and video games. Warhammer is having a pretty good 2023 in terms of getting its message—roughly summed up as “Oh shit, literally everything in the galaxy is trying to kill us”—in front of more people, though; Darktide, Fatshark’s 40K update to its long-running Vermintide series of first-person shove-and-shooters, has just landed on Xbox and GamePass, while Pathfinder developer Owlcat Games is preparing to release Rogue Trader, a new turn-based role-playing game set in a different (if still extremely violent and nasty) corner of the far-flung universe. Truly, it’s never been easier to spend time with the insane, pustule-ridden people of the future!
In playing the two games over the last few weeks, it’s been fascinating to have two very different perspectives—both literally, and otherwise—on this particular set of ugly, awful worlds. The characters you play as in each game couldn’t be further apart, in terms of status: Darktide positions you as a conscripted prisoner, tossed into suicide missions by a whole crew of taskmasters who could each have you executed with a single word. Rogue Trader, meanwhile, has you take on its titular role, which, in the highly class-based society of 40K’s Imperium Of Mankind, is sort of like a mixture of a frontier explorer, an old-school privateer, and a roving duke or duchess. (The ship you travel through space in, for instance, is crewed by hundreds of thousands of serfs, many of whom have been toiling for your glory for generations.) It’s rare to get this kind of look at both the bottom and the top of a single fictional society at one time, and it highlights the interesting oddities of Warhammer’s often brutal approach to storytelling.
Darktide is the more visceral experience, for obvious reasons—even before taking into account the fact that it sees you waging war on the setting’s cheerful god of disease and decay, and his various sore-ridden accomplice. Weirdly, it might also be the more optimistic of the two games: Sure, the hordes of Chaos will always be there, with the game’s Left 4 Dead-esque AI always ready to send another wave of baddies and special enemies at your hapless condemned. But it’s also a game that revels in players taking down said hordes and escaping in triumph, and its overall tone—especially the audio banter between different classes—goes as heavy on quips and humor as it does dread. (Honestly, the scariest part might be the prices the game sets on cosmetic upgrades, and other ways to make your character look like anything but an escapee from the universe’s filthiest mental hospital.)
But while Rogue Trader pulls back from that first-person, “blood and pus spraying on your screen” viewpoint, that doesn’t make it any less queasy of an experience. One of the philosophical lynchpins of the 40K universe, after all, is that it’s a reality in which fascistic overreaction is often the “right” choice, because the enemies of humanity really are that bad. (When a single Chaos-tainted amulet can corrupt thousands of otherwise innocent people into acts of unimaginable cruelty and debauchery, it’s easy to fall into a “Kill them all and let the Emperor sort them out” mentality.) But because you’re playing the game as a lofty noble with a lot of privileges, you have an unusual amount of power to push back on the dogmatic default.
You don’t have to—Owlcat is very good at letting players embody the tabletop game’s default tone of imperious, xenophobic classism if they feel like it—but the game is also perfectly happy to allow you to indulge in such “weaknesses” as mercy or tolerance toward others. Navigating when to do so, then, becomes as tactically challenging as the game’s robust, enjoyable take on turn-based combat; we haven’t gotten far enough in the game for any acts of compassion to really bite us in the ass, but the threats are constantly looming. It’s the most interesting aspect of either game, kneejerk altruistic impulses facing interrogation through conflict with an opposing moral logic.
Which all sounds pretty heavy, for a game where you also have to do tech support for your spaceship’s computers by sticking your hand in a “cybergargoyle” so it can suck your blood, but such is the appeal of Warhammer 40K as a whole: Aesthetics verging on camp, married to deliberately uncomfortable ethics (and very satisfying combat, which Rogue Trader and Darktide both have a ton of). Whether you’re literally slumming it amongst the wretches, or sitting on a throne, nobody gets out of that galaxy clean.
10 Comments
Games Workshop has been pretty smart for a while now with their Warhammer 40K videogame adaptation liscening. I’m not sure it’ll transfer to more people actually coming into the high-buy-in tabletop version, but it is good to see them understanding the value of their IP in the videogame space.I assume that the “Future of Gaming” Game Awards thinkpiece published yesterday was sponcon since the other entries in the series were, even though it was not labeled as such (that I could see, anyway).I don’t have an automatically negative reaction to sponcon, if it is used to push thoughtful articles (which it was here) and is flagged as such (which…well, someone should get on that).Since I couldn’t comment on that articles, I’m just going to dump my thoughts here:If the game awards want to get the respectability they seem to want, they need to extract themselves completely from the hype-cycles and corporate entanglement*. I know that corporate involvement helps fund the show and draws eyeballs to it, but it dimishes the critical reputation of the show (or any awards given out). Remember the negative reaction over the “Flash enters the speed force” “cheer moment” from last year’s Oscars? This is what happens when you try to cram some hype BS into a “respectable”** awards ceremony. The fact that no-one bats an eye when that kind of stuff happens during the Game Awards shows you just how serious people take it.*(This is probably good advice for games journalism as a whole, too. Game critics allow companies to control far too much of the conversation. It is not a symbiotic relationship; it is a parasitic one.)**(Actual respectability of the Oscars may vary from viewer to viewer. Please consult a doctor if you notice any major changes in respectability.)But onto the usual business:I’m still slowly making my way through Baldur’s Gate 3. I believe I might be starting into Act III, having just beat [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and his spititual sponsor (the boss’ boss, if you prefer)…barely. Before I did that, but after freeing [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and assaulting Moonrise, I bluffed my way into the adjacent prison tower in order to free the prisoners, only to find out that they were gone (presumably parasitized/killed or shipped off to be parasitized/killed). Looking it up, I found out that entering the Shadowfell automatically removed those prisoners (and their questlines) unavailable for rescue. I got some vague “some quests will become unavailable” warning before I entered the Shadowfell, but I didn’t presume the meant the prisoner-rescue ones; I figured I would do that when I was actually on my way to Moonrise Towers. In theory, I’m generally in favor of any RPG mechanic that gives some sense of urgency to the plot—too many RPGs allow the player to just fuck around and stall the story until they see fit to advance the main questline—but I wish it had been signposted better (it is possible there was some note or dialogue I missed that did just that).I’m also a bit pissed with myself for not going back to the Adamantium Forge and using up the last of my mithril—bit of decision fatigue figuring out what I wanted to make—before it got locked out at the end of Act II. Ah well, it feels like the game is starting to throw/offer end-game equipment at this point anyway.Glad to see it win big at the Game Awards. It was actually a fairly good year for game releases—both AAA and indie—altogether, although it was also a pretty big year for layoffs, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From what I’ve heard from people in the industry, GW doesn’t expect to convert a lot of video game players to table top players and they realize they are pretty oversaturated in that market already. Instead licensing the property out lets them build the IP across different platforms to strength it to expand even farther, the ultimate goal being TV and movies.
It’s sponsored by that most noble and caring organisation, Facebo- er “Meta”. You can perhaps see why they ain’t too keen to honk about this.Guy with a wanky arts background here. Gaming is a medium that so desperately craves being seen as art, yet seems to strenuously and deliberately avoid taking or making any action, step, or initiative that could in any way be construed as artistic at almost every opportunity. Yes, yes, sure – every media has its venal bastards and money-grubbing arseholes, but gaming is the only one that’s built from the ground up – or the top down – with the profit motive in mind.It may be the world’s first fully-corporatised media, or at least so corporatised any semblance of actual independent thought is a rounding error. Maybe this is because gaming kicked off in the greed-is-good eighties, or because it’s an engineering-driven form that means it’s, well, pretty much inextricably welded to capitalism (no one else is gonna fund it…) *(This is probably good advice for games journalism as a whole, too. Game critics allow companies to control far too much of the conversation. It is not a symbiotic relationship; it is a parasitic one.)This is why I don’t like the term “game journalism”, because it’s little to do with actual journalism most of the time, and almost wholly dependent on PR. It’s access at its worst. Similarly for game “critics” – very few are actual critics, merely product reviewers.
There’s a lot of independent, self-published games if you know where to look. The barrier to entry is so low these days that any hobbyist can put out something weird and occasionally wonderful.I’ll also dispute that it’s a medium built from the ground up in the modern day. So much of gaming comes from RPGs, tabletop/wargaming, even “indoor” sports in general that it didn’t emerge fully formed by any measure.Besides, commercial art is still art.
1. Never say “sponcon” again.2. Is that why there were no comments on that article?3. I wanted to leave a comment on that article saying that the Super Mario Brothers movie is absolute trash. Kids are smart, they can enjoy things that are not formulaic. What a missed opportunity to make something as smart and creative as Super Mario RPG or one of the Paper Mario games
I’ve very much enjoyed both of Owlcat’s Pathfinder games, so I’m looking forward to see what they do with 40k.
I thought the first one was good, but it was shackled to RTWP; once I got the turn based mod installed it became much easier to play, but I never finished it. WOTR shipped that way, so I shouldn’t have had that problem in the first place, but I find myself restarting frequently & having to play the first 10 or 15 hours over. and. over again, which leads to wasted time and boredom. There’s also a lot of systems in both games to deal with, which are are integrated/functional to varying degrees (kingdom management, battle leadership). I could turn them off, but that leads to FOMO. Some of is this b/c I’m not super fond of Golarion, & Pathfinder = Mathfinder.I have better luck w/ BG3, b/c I know the system very well, & I’m at least affectionate for the setting from the first two, reading novels & materials as a kid, etc. Rogue Trader is another easy sell. I have the table top version, have been playing 40k for 25 years; the buy in for the world is done & I can figure out build(s) that are simple to play. All of this stuff is competing w/ Rimworld, which has sort of a high “lead time” & lacks polish (due to mods), but is totally customizable (hello dinosaur riding super scientist who is his own clone & whacked out on cocaine with his finger on The Button!). It’s really an embarrassment of riches.
4 hours in an it’s a lot of fun. Bit crunchy in places but the good variety. The writing is superb
I thought that was a very Emprah Approved, 40K joke. Ha ha heresy.
I haven’t played many Warhammer games, aside from having a ton of them from Humble Bundles… I thought it was really good, although with one change it could have been great.When you did the chainsaw kill you could still take damage and die… but if you were invulnerable during the couple seconds it took for the animation it would have led to quite a fewer unnecessary deaths.This game does look cool though… I just felt like complaining about the Space Marine thing first.