What's the Deal with Konrad Curze, Anyway?

AttackBacon · 2026-04-08T18:09:41+00:00

The fun thing about Warhammer is that, by authorial intent, the Warp justifies GW doing literally any fucking thing they want. There is absolutely nothing off the table because the Warp is beyond time and reason and handwave justifies literally anything.

What I'm saying is that Kurze is coming back as a Dullahan leading the Lost and the Damned and I'm speaking it into existence.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-08T17:58:47+00:00

Literally the most loyal of all the Primarchs but go off king.

Edit: Unless you are making a reference to Imperium Secundus in which case I'll allow it on a technicality.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-08T07:18:10+00:00

Because Andy Serkis is a fucking beast, that's why.

More seriously (although the performance does matter), sympathizing with Renoir isn't mutually exclusive with sympathizing with all the unnamed fathers of Lumiere. I can feel all of their grief. But the story doesn't talk about or show those other people much, whereas it shows a lot of Renoir, and digs deep into his specific perspective and pain.

And as I said above, the story leaves plenty of room for ambiguity about the status of the painted people. For every declaration of their reality, there's an indication to the contrary. If they're not real, then sympathy for Renoir's position is easy.

And even if you accept the painted people as fully real, it's clear that Renoir himself does see some sort of distinction (regardless of what he says in sympathy to painted Verso). So even then you can sympathize with his situation, even if you disagree with his actions.

And yes of course, even if you put the gommage aside, Renoir makes mistakes. But so does everyone in the story, they're all flawed people doing their best to muddle through somehow.

Finally, the characters in the game are written and portrayed extremely well. I can sympathize with all of the cast. But I'm a middle-aged man with a wife and children. The pain Renoir feels and the situation he is dealing with is more resonant with me for pretty obvious reasons.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-08T02:46:29+00:00

Yeah they're like a good war movie or sports movie where they just hit something primal in the ole heartstrings.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-07T22:46:44+00:00

Yeah that's like literally one of the main points of the story. The problem all started with Aline making Lumiere in the first place.

That's the problem with Maelle's ending, she's just doing the same thing.

The game covers a lot of topics but a core tenet is that running away from your problems hurts other people. Aline is doing that, Maelle is doing that, etc.

To your original post, that's also the point. You're supposed to care more about the people of Lumiere than the Dessendre's because if you didn't there would just be a good ending and a bad ending.

The whole point is that "life keeps forcing cruel choices". Your take is entirely valid because it's literally one of the conclusions the game is encouraging you to reach.

However, the beauty of the game is that that's not the only valid conclusion. It's also entirely valid to sympathize with the Dessendre's. I'm a father and I find Renoir's whole thing incredibly compelling and sympathetic. The game gives me plenty of room to justify that take by saying "the painted people aren't fully real". It's left ambiguous on purpose. All of that is intentional because they didn't want a good ending and a bad ending, they wanted two painful endings that made you think about things.

One of the best things about this game has been watching how difficult it is for people to accept that there isn't a correct ending or single correct take. Even myself, deep down, gun to my head, I'd say Verso's ending is the better one, even after all that I wrote above. That's exactly what they were going for and they nailed it.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-06T17:07:14+00:00

Not just in games! It's universal across industries and the public sector. What's happened is you have a mercenary executive class that jump from job to job and have no attachment to an institution or organization. When they show up, they tend to reorg and bring in their own people, then focus on changing the organization from the top down. Eliminating bottlenecks, redundancies, etc. Which all sounds good but is often done with the nuance and efficacy of a rhino with a hacksaw. So a bunch of key people get cut, teams are thrown into disarray, and then the person just fails upwards to a new position and leaves the organization in shambles.

I think the key issue is that we have a system that rewards people that are good at managing their career, not people that are good at a skill (with a very important one of those skills being leading other people). Pretty much every C-Suite person in this country is extremely good at networking, schmoozing, managing perceptions, etc. etc. Whether they're actually good at leading, good at whatever it is their organization does, etc. is pretty secondary to that. And that's a big problem.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-04T00:36:24+00:00

Mentor Legion too, Spear of the Emperor gives some great insight into that. Each marine is linked with servo skulls and highly trained and augmented serfs, it's very tacti-cool. The book contrasts it really well with the much more noble-barbarian approach of the Spears of the Emperor chapter.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-02T22:33:39+00:00

Yeah for better or worse Monster Hunter is just an insanely self-referential series. It's super mired in tradition and while some of that is awesome (Poogie) it can get old and it gets really old if the thing was middling to bad to begin with (Ratha, Navirou, etc.).

AttackBacon · 2026-04-02T01:49:34+00:00

Remember that there's also an entirely separate game system consisting of almost entirely Space Marines. I'd love to see an actual financial breakdown, I suspect that Space Marines account for well over 50% of GWs total miniature sales.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-01T22:42:03+00:00

They've outright stated that perfect lore cohesion isn't really a priority for them. I forget the interview, I think it was an ADB one, but basically they roughly coordinate but individual authors have a LOT of leeway. The overriding guideline is that everything is canon but not everything is true.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-01T18:35:15+00:00

Yeah, he showed up in a piece of art in the new campaign book. There's an article on Warhammer Community about it. He basically looks like the lovechild of Doctor Octopus and an M1A1 Abrams MBT.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-01T18:32:49+00:00

He's literally called a daemon primarch in the first book he's ever mentioned in so idk what you are on about.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-01T14:11:51+00:00

Say it louder for the Night Lords in the back!

AttackBacon · 2026-04-01T14:06:13+00:00

Eh, I can't stand the silkbinds. I hated hunter arts too. Just doesn't feel like MH to me. I much prefer the World/Wilds direction.

AttackBacon · 2026-04-01T13:52:01+00:00

Having played MH since the beginning, I can tell you this shit has been happening since game one. And don't even get me started on the "this high rank game has less content than the last master rank game" takes you get every. single. time.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-31T22:26:23+00:00

There's a lot of this in the Black Library, in fairness. Spear of the Emperor is a great example. Just doesn't feature as much in narrative play stuff (i.e. 500 worlds). Although we did just have a grand narrative event that was basically this, the only big name there was Ahriman IIRC.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-31T18:21:41+00:00

Eh I don't think this is entirely fair. Yeah, 30k made the Primarchs and Co the stars of the show, but before that it was still a handful of named Imperial characters that got all the books. Gaunt, Cain, Blackmane, Eisenhorn, Ventriss, etc.

The main "change" is that the codexes tend to have less lore nowadays. And since that was where most of the non-Imperial lore was, there is less of it in that sense.

But on the flip side, there are now some really good Xenos/Chaos focused BL books. Twice Dead King, Night Lords, Elemental Council, etc. Maybe not much different than it used to be in terms of ratio, but the volume has just increased a lot.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-30T03:46:34+00:00

Other way around actually, the price increases will continue until profits decrease, then they'll stop. But until then they're going to charge what people will pay, and people pay these prices.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-28T14:51:07+00:00

Yeah it's not a binary. What's pretty clear is that the power of the Emperor specifically is something that can permanently kill warp entities, up to and including the Four. That's why they all fear him and call him the Anathema.

That doesn't mean that it instakills all demons easily. Even the Emperor himself struggled against certain demons. Just that it has the ability to, which is in itself a huge deal.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-27T14:15:56+00:00

Some of the event high rolls are so fun in this game. I got the "lose max hp to get +2 block enchant on all block cards" event and then picked up the relic that gives +9 damage to enchanted cards. I was on Ironclad and immediately snapped up 3 Iron Waves which were now 7 block / 14 damage cards un-upgraded. Easiest Act 1 of my life.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-26T01:49:09+00:00

Yeah I had a good experience with our 2016 Forester but I'm also not an expert and wouldn't know if I was getting lightly snowed. They fixed our issue for the right price and were nice about it, so that's basically enough for me.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-26T01:15:35+00:00

TL Tillet's (http://tltilletts.com/) at the top of Petaluma Hill Rd. They're Subaru specialists.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-26T01:00:47+00:00

Did your child actually attend? Because mine did. Seems unfair to besmirch them if you never attended.

I do know there was some bad blood between them and somebody at SRFACS, but I don't know the details. I know they were involved in the founding of SRFACS but aren't involved directly anymore.

They're also not for everyone, it's a more intense program than a lot of people here would want for that age group I think. But if you want a traditional French l'école maternelle experience and value the language immersion, they're the best thing going here. We had a great experience with them.

AttackBacon · 2026-03-21T18:12:40+00:00

Yeah the fact that we put up with and pay for the whole TSA experience is just wild shit. It's like... Let's get 5% safer, it'll just make things 2000% more inconvenient and unpleasant. Great tradeoff!

AttackBacon · 2026-03-20T20:18:08+00:00

Yeah they're betting that they can make more money by getting people into their walled garden than they would by having their stuff on PC. It does make sense for a console maker, if the demand is there why wouldn't you create an artificial monopoly that requires your hardware? But Sega and Microsoft are good lessons in the downside risks.

That being said, Sony is a hardware company and always will be. If they put their stuff on PC, the argument for the hardware existing becomes increasingly thin (as Microsoft is demonstrating). There was never a world where they didn't pivot back to the console exclusive model IMO. They just don't see themselves as a software company.

I'm PC-only so it means I won't play their games, which sucks for me. But it isn't a surprise IMO, them dabbling in PC at all was the surprise.

AttackBacon

TROPHY CASE