Does anyone else feel tired of the inability for a lot of modern Warhammer stuff(And things not TG related) being so high on the idea of Grimdark that it's gone back around to some bizarre idealistic setting where bad things only seem to happen to bad people?
Let me explain. So way back when the old fluff that we knew about the Horus Heresy and the Emperor was the following:
>The Emperor Loved his sons
>His Sons had flaws that were preyed upon and exploited by Chaos
>His most loved Son fell to Chaos through trickery
>The Emperor nearly dies because the love for his Son prevents him from killing him
>The Primarchs were scattered to the winds by the direct actions of the Chaos Gods.
But in the 16 years since Horus Rising was published all of this has been changed for the sake of it being more `Dark`. The Emperor never loved his sons, all the Traitors were so comically flawed they would have turned evil even without Chaos(Mortarion, Angron, not counting Conrad since the fact he's so fricked up is still kinda tragic), and the Primarchs were scattered because of a single person's bad decision. The whole tragedy of the Horus Heresy was that it was the culmination of someone trying to do the best they could given the circumstances and failing because of an uncaring universe.
Why was this all changed, what did they achieve? How have we become so dark that we've ended up being hopeful for some stupid reason?
What a ludicrously moronic point of view
Why do you think that?
>It's idealistic and hopeful because everyone is bad and bad things happen
Yes. It's more horrific when bad things happen to good people. The Emperor genuinely trying and failing would be more depressing than being fricked from the outset by his own hubris.
>It's more horrific when bad things happen to good people.
Even if we assume this is true how does that make it idealistic or hopeful?
Because the idea that all of this has happened because the people responsible on some cosmic level deserve it is in the background of all the stories.
Let me clarify, the setting isn't idealistic or hopeful, the tone of the stories is. The tone says that if you're bad, then bad things happen because you were bad. And since that idea hangs over the actions of all the major players, it makes them far less interesting.
The idea of any sense of hope being crushed under the reality of the setting is what makes the Grim Darkness of the Far Future so horrible.
>the tone of the stories is. The tone says that if you're bad, then bad things happen because you were bad.
No it's not, and no it doesn't. Nothing implies that there's any sort of karma at work.
The entire modern character of the Emperor is based on that concept.
No it's not.
Why do you think it isn't?
Because nothing implies it.
So pulling out all the positive traits the Emperor had and making the entire heresy directly his fault because of his direct actions rather than indirectly doesn't imply anything?
Firstly, it wasn't all his fault, there happens to be a pantheon of evil gods at work to help out. Secondly, not it doesn't imply that at all. Finally, you can't just make up a thesis with literally nothing concrete to back it up.
Reply to me only when you have a source directly talking about karma.
The entire cause of the heresy and the state of 40k is because the woman involved got emotional and acted irrationally.
>all the positive traits the Emperor had
He never really had any traits, positive or otherwise. There's what, the one two page story of him killing Horus, some very vague ancient history background, and the Star Child stuff. Before the HH books he was barely even a legend, never mind a character.
Dude, did you even play the game, let alone read it?
Are you being serious right now?
something something marvel something something basedjack authors something something lowest common denominator
The new lore def made it less compelling for sure at least. Borders on darkness induced apathy now, hard to give a crap about alot of it if it was all shit to begin with.
Not sure if it makes it less grimdark though, maybe its just not as good a flavor of grimdark?
It's less grimdark because there are no spots of light that make realise how dark it really is. The Emperor not killing Horus because he loves him makes his eternal suffering all the more painful(Or sweeter, depending on your tastes).
>Angron
>not counting Conrad
Angron was literally enslaved and lobotomized. Conrad Kurze was a fatalist with a fetish for torturing and hurting people in any way he could. He was a complete unrepentant monster who excused his actions by hiding behind some moronic notion of predestination.
I included Angron there because of the following three things:
>The final battle where he's taken from his comrades and they end up all be fricking slaughtered to a man before the Emperor just subjugates the planet anyway.
>His constant bitterness and self-hatred instead of a constant working against the nails and failing
>The Fact he ordered the nails implanted into the legion rather than them adopting it to be more like him and thus damning their whole legion.
A lot of the newer traitor primarch stories seem to be written as if there was no chance they were going to be anything but traitors. On a meta sense that is true, but this mindset only serves to hold them back. The biggest problem with the greater whole of the expanded Horus Heresy story is not that it gave us indepth looks at all the primarchs, it's that they didn't. All the Traitor Primarchs can have their entire character summed up in the same sentences we had for them 20 years ago. I'm more accepting of Conrad because I still like the Night Haunter alternate personality and Nihilism aspect he has going for him. It's not perfect but I feel its the one aspect that had potential.
Take Perterabo. So the whole deal with him is that he turned traitor because he felt all his great works and deeds were being ignored while he got all the work horse jobs that ground his men into a fine paste. Yet, this story we start with is that he was actually a great believe in democracy and his home planet was a bastion of this ideal. He goes to the stars hoping to spread that idea and finds that the world outside his home is so far gone from what he knows that it's all gone to shit. But he doesn't slowly fall to the traitor's side because of his broken dream, he still does it out of pettiness and jealousy.
Like 95% of the argument built on the idea that the Emperor doesn't love his sons is based off conversations he has with members of the Mechanicum, during which he comes off as a cold unfeeling robot because he literally warps his appearance/speech to appear as a cold unfeeling robot. This whole 'Big E never loved his sons' is a meme popularized by morons who only read the wiki or were too stupid to figure out you're not supposed to take anything he says at face value.
Isn't there an entire sequence with Gulliman where he figures out the Emperor never loved any of them? When he visits the Golden Throne, I think.
>After being skeletonized by Horus for ten thousand years the Emperor's opinion on the primarchs changed somewhat
Imagine my shock
Welcome to modern 40k. The Primaris are better marines that never fall and get along well with everyone and can be mass produced, and they got over their problems with their parent oldmarines in a generation or two with no major wars or long-term problems. The High Lords of Terra, corrupt and worthless, have been ousted and replaced with motivated and interested individuals working on making the Imperium stand stronger and better, while the civil war promised by the old guard was swiftly crushed before it could cause any problems. There are new factions of more technologically advanced humans that are bringing that technology to help the rest of the universe instead of squabbling on their home rocks against each other. Humans and Eldar have formed a functional alliance, maybe not one that spans the entirety of both factions but one that promises a future for both races.
40k is barely grimdark anymore and more represents something like Star Wars or Mass Effect now. It's been going that way for decades but it's firmly here now. The new Squat faction is bringing in functional AI and advanced technology and they're not going to have any major fallout with the Mechanicus who've been apparently squashing that technology for millennia. Get used to it.