Only through the blessed holy words of the Omnissiah have we found witness of the Divine Emperor’s workings, through the trials of Knight Titus in his battle with the Chaos of Tzeetch. For now, I know my place as a reject, seeing that our work is beneath that of the Adeptus Astartes we shall carry our burden through peril, we shall demonstrate the brute force of our discipline to exact the zealous wrath we carry for Mankind. For the Emperor. For Atoma!
Naw, it was savage. it was absolutely top notch quality. Made me realize how much we in Lore are doing the stuff that the Grey Knights just can’t be occupied to handle with. It seems to me that we are more of a glorified special riot team to deal with this cult that has taken root in Tertium. The next stage is when it is no longer a cult but a full on infestation of Nurgle where there is nothing left human about it. But, if I’m reading the plot correctly, we’re kind of already too late but the brass is too stupid to save face and ask for help. OR, they are paying the heaviest price in lives to seek the heart of the corruption - which is in Lore I guess. But, I get the feeling that while there may be a hierarchy that is augmenting or carrying Nurgle’s will, I sense that this plague has no origin point; it’s like mold that just manifests in darkness where light does not reach.
This was probably the best depiction of Warhammer outside of the Black Library books in my opinion. It captures the grim darkness of the IP perfectly and the brutality and raw power of Space Marines in a way that I think is on par with or better than Astartes (the animation). Void of real dialogue though it was, I think it did a good job of highlighting at least a bit of the kind of bonds that exist amongst Space Marines, which humanizes and adds layers of complexity and depth to what otherwise tends to be pretty one dimensional characters. It also does this without minimizing their brutality and power, which could easily happen if such things were written poorly.
All in all I think it’s probably one of the best advertisements for the whole setting since Astartes. If the Henry Cavill/Amazon project(s) can match this in terms of feel and tone, we could all be in for a real treat and the potential rocket propelling of 40k into the center of mainstream media. Fingers crossed GW can keep it true to itself if that were to happen.
Along with Astartes, one of the better 40k SM adaptations in my opinion, much like Astartes it was a really nice world building short story.
Loved the animation/visual style.
Also nice to see a representation of why chaos is very very dangerous which was a good touch, even if “angry and no fear” is a little reductive of a plot point for a smurf shaking off warp shenanigans of that strength (it’s a nitpick, i know, but it wasn’t a black templar or world eaters episode either and discounting the rather bad character writing in SM2, it certainly wasn’t his thing in SM1, he’s not Kharn or Helbrecht).
Watched it with my daughters, who are both big TTS fans as well, and we all laughed when the secret weapon box was deployed, that was great.
Hard to say “better than Warhammer TV” for me without knowing how much staffing and budget is available to either, but i thought Pariah nexus and the exodite were pretty good, particularly the latter, and overall i really liked Tithes as well even if I’m not a huge fan of the animation style.
Top 3 for me in no particular order would be Astartes, Exodite, and the secret level episode, could argue for pariah instead of exodite, but need more xenos/non-imperial media.
It turned out to be…almost exactly what I expected. Well executed fanservice bolter porn, Avengers: Astartes. Fun to watch for the magnificent visual feast, but, as is tradition, it’s a copypasta storyline that could have been taken from one of many pulp Black Library books or stories, and (to me at least) Space Marines are just not terribly interesting as actual characters and story centerpieces.
To be fair, they’ve got an order of magnitude higher budget.
I get what you mean and far too often that is true, but they really can be when the thought and effort is put into doing so. Why GW so rarely decides to add depth to these characters is beyond me. It would only deepen and enhance people’s love for space marines id they could also find any kind of emotional purchase with them.
Take Garviel Loken’s story for example. He’s as badass and dipped in cool factor juice as you can get, but there’s a lot more going on with that character than those surface level things.
One of my bigger let downs with Space Marine 2 is that it only just started to scratch the surface of the emotional dimension at the end of the game. They could have made it more compelling, but opted for something pretty safe and uninteresting on its own merits for the bulk of the plot.
I want Brothers in Arms and Band of Brothers level emotional engagement in future games and media and I think GW would be well served by deepening people’s connection to these centerpiece characters, without detracting from the things that made them appealing in the first place.
While i personally feel the astartes or even secret level portayal is closer to how I’ve viewed marines vs the lore/novels, and that a BoB-level narrative makes the Gaunt’s novel series an obvious pick (guessing they were heavily influenced by BoB once it became a proper novel series), that’d require a pretty heavy investment into the narrative as far as games are concerned.
I wouldn’t be very upset if amazon decided to just straight port the gaunt novels to a multi-season format similar to BoB as a show, with each book being one season. (ok, starting at book 3 probably).
I’d love to see any kind of narrative progression in darktide though, seeing as it’s the closest we’re going to get to a guard game for a while.
Well, i say progression, let me rephrase, I’d like to see a coherent/followable story structure outside of the intro mission.
Aye, they can be made interesting, they just…aren’t most of the time in games and videos
The Marines in this one gave off a vibe of “I’m getting too old for this ****”, giving a stoic visage of “doing what I gotta do” with none of the passion of a psycho-indoctrinated fanatical religious zealotry from a culture and organization that finds beauty in martyrdom. The “lets stand perfectly still in the open and take a barrage gunfire that magically hits nothing but the shields two dudes are carrying” combat is typical bolter porn stuff that gets goofy the more you watch it.
There’s plenty of room to make Marines engaging, and I just wish they’d use it instead of leaning so much on thousand yard stares and solemn faces or roars of anger. There’s lots of space for comrades in arms stories like Band of Brothers, or even leaning into the grimdark more. “In the Garden of Ghosts” from WarhammerTV I think is one of the better exceptions, showing the Eldar perspective of being on the receiving end of a genocidal Ultramarine attack. The Ultramarines there are absolute monsters in every sense of the word. They’re powerful, they’re dangerous, they openly broadcast their hate, they do absolutely unspeakable things and firmly believe what they’re doing is glorious and right, and their victory feels anything but heroic. They’re a radically different portrayal of ostensibly the same Ultramarines as those found in “And They Shall Know No Fear”, and have far more flavor as the bad guys.
I don’t mean to be hating too much on “And They Shall Know No Fear”, overall it was fine, the animation was stellar, I get the template they’re working from and for what it was they did a great job. The psyker in a coffin bit was perfect.
A couple of years ago GW clamped down on fan content so a bunch of them stopped producing in fear of GW’s lawyers. GW then hired a bunch of them for official projects.
though i’m still a 40k novice (good part being everything “lore” is new to me and i got tons to catch up upon) to me, that sounds entertaining as hell.
maybe its in the same vein as me routing for the humans in avatar and blasting them blue tree huggers without much thought given the alternative, 40k has “might makes right” down to a t.
not held back by morality in the face of countless enemies trying to eradicate you from existance, i wouldnt mind what xenos is on the attack order either.
as for little eldar knowledge i read up so far “checks codex” space perverts responsible for slaneesh…
that about right?
if so, burn the lot of em
then there’s a plane of martial prowess and the sheer beauty of bloodshed among “equal” adversaries.
they’s got the numbers, space marine is a unit in himself.
plus, rule of cool for me is still in full effect.
offer me a place in power armor (mk7 helmet non-negotiable) and point a finger on what to purge, i’m game
so yeah, even standing on deck in space marine 2 seeing the incense weilding tech priests, servitors shambling about, cupits, the chanting…
some fine goosebumps when those metal boots are clanging on the floor
and the armor fitting ritual short animation, chefs kiss&thing of beauty.
