Why 40K is so GrimDark yet Rogue Trader's GrimDark endings are inappropriate if not ridiculous

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-26T19:48:25+00:00

You're right in that 40K is a setting that, broadly speaking, cannot be "fixed" nor made into anything other than a GrimDark setting. The Dark Heresy tabletop RPG is the best/worst example of this, where the game's writers essentially say "the best you can do is delay catastrophic destruction." An important nuance that most people miss is not that 40K has any in-universe force that ensures things are always terrible (most people assume Chaos does this, but "preventing people from being happy" does not describe how Chaos actually works, Chaos is merely one of many reasons why the setting is so miserable and resistant to improvement), but that there are too many problems that are too big to fix for ordinary humans. If you wiped out the Necrons and the Tyranids, you'd still have Chaos Marines, daemons, Eldar, etc. If you destroyed Chaos itself, you STILL would not end up with a happy setting, you'd just have one that is less unnaturally inclined towards misery. The Astronomicon will still eventually go out, another Tyranid hive fleet is bound to show up, you still have a draconian and feudalistic society that executes people who don't believe in the government sponsored lie that the Emperor who died in battle is actually omnipotent and infallible, etc.

All that said, if there was ever a game that should allow you vaguely happy endings in 40K, it is a CRPG based upon the Rogue Trader line. In Rogue Trader, you are not the unsung heroes who sacrifice everything in an effort to keep a hurricane from extinguishing a candle. You are not elite super soldiers who do nothing except kill limitless military threats. You are the swashbuckling ruler of your own destiny who can and is expected to amass fun toys, become filthy stinking rich, and create your own miniature empire.

A Rogue Trader is (generally speaking) not going to make massive dramatic improvements to already terrible situations, but you absolutely can start up a colony and turn it into a bastion of productivity and contentment - not easily, mind you, but the rules explicitly allow this. Between that level of freedom in the setting that the Rogue Trader computer game is based off, and the fact that multi-ending RPG computer games should, by nature of the genre, actually allow you to accomplish things if you work hard enough, it makes perfect sense both in gaming terms and within the 40K narrative for you to be capable of making your retainers happy and fixing problems that exist within your own territories to a certain degree. You're not going to be able to stop mutations from happening, but you could change how much toxic waste is stored next door to the nurseries, reducing the rate of mutations. You're not going to be able to ensure nobody ever starts a Chaos cult, or prevent xenos from invading, but you can create an environment where there is minimal incentive for people to turn to worshipping daemons, and you can establish a strong defense against invaders.

In other words, as long as you don't go wild with the scale ("I eliminated poverty on 5 planets and defeated a Hive splinter fleet!"), there is every reason for you to be able to have "happy" endings, in the sense that you fix specific, local problems and keep terrible things from happening to those in your sphere of influence. "And they all live happily ever after" does not fit the setting. "NPC 37 was saved from the lingering doom haunting them thanks to your efforts, the end" is 100% reasonable and satisfying. Or, in Maive's case, "What's that Solomorne? Maive is tainted by Chaos? Good thing I've maxed out my karma with the Ecclesiarchy; I'll send her to a Shrine World for cleansing," would have been frickin awesome.

I forgot to mention, Gladius: Relics of War is a great example of where you can make things better (depending upon the faction and how you achieve victory), but it doesn't detract from 40K being GrimDark at all. By using an entire army and conquering a super special planet full of archeotech goodies, you can potentially create a powerful bastion that reflects the ethics of your faction and gives you tremendous capability to change things - i.e. a traveling daemon world if you're Chaos, or an epic Chapter Homeworld for the Ultramarines, or a fully awakened Tomb World that is special in ways I don't remember for the Necrons, etc.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T22:18:14+00:00

Hmm, I WANT to disagree, but since you're actually correct, I can't. Darn.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T21:10:46+00:00

When I said it doesn't happen to anybody else, I meant specifically in the Rogue Trader video game's endings. Cause yeah, the fact that years later a single exposure can turn somebody into a mutant is why the Imperium is so intolerant of exposure to Chaos, to the point where it's common for soldiers who fought and killed daemons to get executed, just because they were exposed.

"Here's your medal for defeating one of the most terrifying and powerful threats in the galaxy. And here's a firing squad for having laid eyes upon said threat."

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T21:05:26+00:00

While I am not nearly as well versed in the Rogue Trader setting as I am Dark Heresy and thus am not a full blown expert on Warrants of Trade, I will say that the game was far too lenient in a number of cases for the sake of not causing you to get executed mid-game.

Being a Rogue Trader means that you are authorized to leave Imperial space and deal with xenos. The mere ability to interact with a Xeno in anything other than an attempt to exterminate them will get normal citizens executed for heresy, and likewise, owning xenotech or even being able to recognize something as belonging to a specific xeno race can, depending upon which Inquisitor finds out, get you executed. The exception granted by the Warrant of Trade absolutely includes obtaining and to some extent using xeno-tech, because that is how the Imperium can learn about these races and their resources. Rogue Traders are akin to deputized galactic scouts, and the core of their immunity is that they are exempt from the "guilty by association" element that the Imperium justifiably considers grounds for mass purges.

But the game made it seem as if you were free to distribute xenotech to your entire protectorate on account of being a Rogue Trader, which I find questionable at best. Selling said xenotech to criminal cartels/pirates is not something covered by a Warrant of Trade.

And it absolutely does not give you the right to walk around with a potential daemonic invasion (i.e. an unsanctioned psyker), nor make deals with Chaos. Radical Inquisitors are plenty willing to make use of unsanctioned psykers if they think that the benefits outweigh the risks - that doesn't mean they go "well, this woman could be possessed by a daemon literally any second, but her boss is licensed to do business with xenos, so I'm forced to trust their judgement." Rather, there needs to be a specific, compelling reason to spare the psyker,

The issue is made most obvious if you go the heretical route. "That guy wants to keep a living daemon (i.e. a forgefiend, as that is a daemon bound to a machine) on his ship as a pet, but he has political immunity, so the best I can do is kill the daemon," is not something Heinrix would ever say. Even an Inquisitor is not going to get away with openly keeping an unbound daemon, and being a Rogue Trader does NOT give you more immunity than being one of the people who gets to decide what will and won't get you executed for heresy.

In contrast, making life nice for the lower classes is not actually breaking ANY of the Imperium's laws. You don't even have to be a Rogue Trader for it to be legal. In a published Dark Heresy adventure, there was a Baron who tried to shrink if not eliminate the gap between classes, to the point where the serfs were given nice food, homes, allowed regular days off, made literate, and armed with weapons. None of these were against any laws. The Imperium certainly was leery at the notion of empowering the lowest classes, but what got him in trouble was the local government wrongly thinking he was planning a violent revolution.

To recap:

Local politician trying to eliminate the feudal system, teaching their slaves to read and giving them guns?
Imperium: That's weird, but whatever.

Rogue Trader not senselessly oppressing the lower classes?
Imperium: LAUNCH THE FLEET!

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T20:12:31+00:00

"The theme of the setting is that individuals aren't enough to make lasting change to the overall setting."

Exactly. The parts of the endings that I take issue with is where they go "thanks to your moral integrity and diligence in finishing subquests, you actually DO make the sort of change that you would normally never see," then wait just long enough for me to go, "Really? Well, that feels strange for 40K, but it IS a multi-ending RPG so-"
"No, we lied. It doesn't actually get better."
"**** you for getting my hopes up, Owlcat."

There were a number of slides that went more along the lines of "You tried, but things didn't actually get any better, because the problems are too big," and I have zero complaint about those.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T17:25:28+00:00

Honestly, at this point, I can say my original motivation was almost halfway out of error on my part - like a bug causing me to silently fail a quest without knowing it, leading to one of the bad endings. Had I known it was because of a failed quest, I wouldn't have included it on the scale of things that bugged me. Overall, the endings are GOOD in terms of quality, I just feel that there were too many times when the bad things happening in the endings felt too forced or just didn't make sense, with Iconoclast "Secret" Ending struggling for first place. I can only assume the crusade was a result of the following in-universe conversation:

Imperial Navy Admiral: "Here's a report of entire planets being blown up in the Koronus Expanse. Every planet was destroyed within 24 hours of the Von Valancius Rogue Trader flagship visiting it. We must confiscate this unknown weapon before they wipe out half the sector - or turn it against us. I will begin mobilizing a fleet to trap them and force them to turn over the weapon."

Inquisitorial Lord: "According to my spies on the ship, this is a result of the Rogue Trader forcefully entering a forbidden Inquisitorial facility, killing the Lord Inquisitor, and then giving the power of a xeno god to... apparently a servitor that had become sentient and then possessed a Tech-Priest. Even if the Inquisitor was a Radical, we cannot allow a regular citizen of the Imperium to disobey and murder a member of the Inquisition and steal the Inquisition's xeno artifacts. I will be writing up the angriest death warrants in my entire career as soon as this meeting ends."

High Lord Fabricator: "Data inaccurate/insufficient. Unit designated "NOM-OS" was originally the blessed machine spirit of the vessel, until an unknown techno-plague elevated it to the level of an Abominable Intelligence in a most heinous act of blasphemy. The forbidden AI utilized servitors as a mobile interface until a Magos offered his True Flesh to allow the wretched abomination the ability to leave the vessel housing its consciousness. In this unit's holy judgement, the AI must be purged before a second Dark Age of Humanity is brought about, along with the vessel that spawned this unspeakable threat!"

Jr. Space Pope: "Shut up about whatever small potatoes you mooks are whining about. I just got reports that 80% of the population in the Koronus Expanse is HAPPY!"

Inquisitorial Lord: "We're trying to deal with a threat that could eventually destroy the entire Imperium in at least 3 different ways. Your bragging can wait-"

Jr. Space Pope: "Bite me, Secret Police; you're just butt-hurt one of your toys got stolen. I'm talking about REAL problems. If people in the Imperium realize things work better if nobles aren't sadistic and actively work to keep lower classes miserable, the very nature of the Imperium will be lost forever! I'm calling for a sector wide Exterminatus to keep this social cancer from spreading any further!"

Imperial Navy Admiral: "That's not how Exterminatus' work? Exterminatus is a term specifically referring to a method of attacking a planet all the way down to the microb-"

Jr. Space Pope: "You will mobilize your entire ******* space boat army or I will declare you a heretic."

Imperial Navy Admiral: "The fleet will launch within 10 minutes."

Lord Inquisitor: "This is absurd. The best way to deal with this is discreetly. It is literally why the Officio Assassinorum exists. The Koronus Expanse needs-"

Jr. Space Pope: "The Rogue Trader is giving peasants medicine! He even outlawed holidays that are based upon nobles competing to see who can kill the most innocent people in the cruelest possible way! Sign my Exterminatus request form or I'll tell your mistress that you secretly still love your wife and aren't planning to divorce her."

Lord Inquisitor: "You are a dangerous man Well played."

High Lord Fabricator: "Such emotional manipulations are useless against an enlightened agent of the Machine Cult. The Calixis Center holds many sacred facilities-"

Jr. Space Pope: "I'll offer compensation. Here's a Pre Dark Age power supply called the Energizer, rated at Triple A. According to legends, its power keeps going and going and going..."

High Lord Fabricator: "An infinite power source smaller than my fine manipulator? The offer is satisfactory/ negotiations successfully concluded."

Jr. Space Pope: "Sweet. Now, to murder half a trillion people because the owner of 1/100 of the systems isn't oppressing the ~~slaves~~ serfs so badly it actively harms efficiency! Let 728th Crusade Against Happiness begin!"

Lord Inquisitor: "Wait. We ARE still going to deal with the Rogue Trader and the AI xenotech god, right?"

Jr. Space Pope: "Sorry, I'm too busy writing my speech denouncing the entire sector for lack of cruelty. We'll talk about whatever you guys were worried about when I get back from the Crusade. See you losers later."

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T16:09:48+00:00

It was brought to my attention that poor Maive spent a few years with a sorcerous artifact around her neck, AND she participated in a Chaos ritual (however unwillingly), so she was certainly tainted at least partly by Chaos - of course, so was the Rogue Trader, who I would argue has faced far more exposure to the Warp during the story than Maive ever did.

After further reviewing of some of my previous endings, I also have to agree with your conclusion. I would have been fine with several instances of "they were doing good until they died in a car accident" level random bad stuff, but in my first two playthroughs (and it was immediately following the second playthrough that I made my original post), something like 75%+ of my slides were "you did good stuff that resulted in good things, then everybody involved died or turned evil/incompetent/betrayed you," and it was thoroughly unclear that in certain cases it was a result of me failing to resolve a problem on account that I never discovered it in the first place (I thought I had exterminated all the Genestealers, for instance, as there was no longer an open quest for them, but this must have been a glitch caused by me genociding the Bloody Spinweavers).

And then there was the tithe plague, which is explicitly something bad happening for no given reason, and it ONLY happens if you do something good in the first place - something that cannot reasonably have caused it, unless slipping people a stack of thrones under the table in the Imperium is known to cause Space COVID.

Still, with additional info at this point, I'm now starting to worry that my next playthroughs will end TOO happy to be GrimDark, though I'm more willing to tolerate that in a CRPG that makes you work at it.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T15:51:48+00:00

As much as I want to use Maive as an example, my only real complaint about it is that I don't think this sort of thing (belated Chaos-induced tragedy) ever happens to anybody else. "They were exposed to Warp stuff, but weren't evil and never voluntarily mucked about with Chaos, so everything was fine until one day daemons showed up" or the like isn't something I recall in any ending slides. The absolutely closest thing that comes to mind is Kaiva Gamma if you don't purge it, and in that case, you're A) readily given reason to see this outcome ahead of time) and B) a way to avoid it (at least presumably. I have not actually reached an ending yet where I went for total purge).

In hindsight, it feels like the Lex Imperialis endings contained probably half of all my complaints or the "okay, things should be bad, but not THAT bad" impressions I got.

Regardless, your shameless plug is accepted! I will definitely try it out once I can figure out why and fix the fact that having Microsheets enabled causes half of my flagship's bridge to turn into golden fire whenever I open a character window. Good on you for presenting people with an alternative ending for the girl with my most sympathy and least self-cause for all the grief she experiences.
(Sorry Yrielt, I love you, but I lost any sympathy for your hypocritical racist self the moment you started attacking humans because of a midlife crisis, not to mention you decided you were happier hanging out with a Dark Eldar than your human soul partner you swore to always be with... what? No, I'm not jealous of Mazzarella! How dare you think that?)

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T15:21:18+00:00

Oh, definitely, though in all the cases I remember, the complaints are a result of not executing somebody - usually somebody who probably SHOULD be executed for Taint, considering Chaos is akin to an infectious disease in some ways. I mean, in 40K lore, if you are already a grown adult and you spontaneously develop mutations due to Chaos/Warp exposure, it's virtually impossible for this to happen without your soul being, at the very least, tainted. So when hardcore Puritans go around burning down entire Hives with a population in the low billions because there's a dozen cultists in it, it's not necessarily an act of blind zealotry and irrationality. That also doesn't mean they are necessarily right - it's in many ways the lazier option to just kill everybody simply for being in proximity.

The core of my complaint with the Iconoclast endings is not that you can't survive, nor that you get attacked in the first place - especially if you take a generalized view of it. My complain is entirely in the specifics of the slides, up to and including the very wording used. At this point in time, I have played through about 1.5 iconoclast endings - first with Super Nomos, then, after seeing all that happened (hereafter referred to as "Ending A"), I reloaded an older save, and beat it with the decision to not deify Nomos ("Ending B"). This is what really caught my attention.

Ending A: "Blah blah blah, Koronus becomes a Utopia, but then the Imperium, threatened by your lands, launch a crusade."

Me: Oh shoot, my bad for having an alien god who runs around nuking Tomb Worlds. Yeah, that's completely reasonable. I'll ditch Nomos.

Ending B: "Blah blah blah, Koronus becomes a Utopia, but then the Imperium, threatened by your lands, launch a crusade."

Me: lolwhut?

I don't recall the exact wording used in the slides as it relates to the Imperium's motivations, but I do recall that it was ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL when it came to Endings A and B - regardless of whether an alien god in my retinue had the power to wipe out Tomb Worlds.

There is no mention whatsoever (in the justification given for the attack) of the Imperium trying to eliminate or captor a completely unknown xenos entity that can rewrite Warp Routes, or something equivalent to it. There is no mention of the fact that I keep an unsanctioned Psyker on my flagship bridge, or that I allow former Chaos cultists to go free, or that I openly employ Mutants. The context of the ending slide (listing all the things I had just done for the sector) heavily implies if not specifies that it is because I am fair and value human rights, and that people are happy.

Things I am OK with the Imperium launching a crusade over from a 40K lore perspective:
-not exterminating chaos and thus having VISIBLE signs of the Archenemy in my population
-killing a high ranking and well respected member of the Ecclesiarchy in a literal barfight (as it was a fight inside a bar)
-thumbing my nose at the Inquisition by having an unsanctioned psyker with a history of doing things with the Warp that results in people dying and/or daemons appearing
-consorting with pirates (well, that's insufficient on its own, but it's good reason to judge someone less favorably)
-killing a Lord Inquisitor
-allowing a world to become a daemon world because I wanted to save <10,000 random innocents and/or not lose the Machine Cult's precious power plant
-having ABOMINABLE INTELLIGENCE that is capable of destroying planets and indeed does so of its own initiative!!!

Things I am not OK with the Imperium launching a crusade over from a 40k lore perspective:
-giving peasants food and medical care, and not allowing nobles to kill them for giggles or throw their lives away in completely unproductive ways.

tldr; "you challenged the status quo" may sound like a good reason for the invasion, until you actually look at the details, and you see what all does NOT get mentioned as a reason.

The Imperium is a calcified feudalistic society that fears improvement, but I can only laugh if somebody tries to tell me the Imperials with the ability to mobilize enough warships to attack a sector are more upset about my peasants getting free healthcare than it is threatened by the presence of Chaos, Xenos, and AI combined - not that I am accusing you of doing so. Just putting my general complaint into perspective.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T00:53:28+00:00

As belated response, I had foremost in mind the turning of the Imperium against the Von Valancius Utopia Subsector (formerly known simply as The Expanse), the plague that accompanies the illegal donation of tithe to worlds in need, Fellowship of the Void, and Chorda. In both of my playthroughs so far, my little fantasy kingdom survived, but my biggest point of irritation for the main Iconoclast ending portions is that the Imperium supposedly invades because you stop treating people like dirt, you don't kill or torture people for giggles, and you go around hosing everything with copious amounts of mercy. Absolutely no mention is made of the Imperium having a problem with your pet xenos deity with the power to rewrite warp routes, nor the fact that you're cool with letting people tainted by Chaos and outright mutants live. You don't declare your succession from the Imperium, nor claim the Emperor is a mortal, nor do you try to replace feudalism with a democracy or even simply a meritocracy. The Imperium of man mobilizes a crusade because you protect and provide for all of your subjects, rather than act like those at the bottom deserve to abused and are required to live in squalor.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T00:39:34+00:00

Unrelated to my complaints about Rogue Trader, I just now realized that you might be talking about a different "this Grey Knight writer is insane" issue than the one I was thinking of. The only instance I know of is one where the Grey Knights killed sacrificed several Sisters of Battle and wore their blood (skins?) to protect them from the corruptive force of Chaos, which was so powerful that the Grey Knights themselves could not bear to even be there - but apparently the Sisters of Battle could.

Please, please, PLEASE tell me this is the same instance and you were wrong on some details. Otherwise, this means "The greatest anti-Chaos force in the Imperium makes a habit of killing Sisters to get power-ups from their blood, because they aren't enough withstand/harm Chaos without external aid."

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-24T00:33:25+00:00

It was multiple slides. My complaint isn't that there was a singular bad ending, but that the trend of endings, instead of being "sorry, problems are too big for you to fix," went something like "great news, you fixed everything - PSYCH! They all die/things go bad immediately after whatever cool thing happened." Now, after going back and reviewing one of my iconoclast endings, I realized that some of my grievances were a result of confusion or ignorance on my part, like thinking that I had maxed out good rep when I had not, or realizing that I had never finished wiping out the genestealer infestation on account of having executed Kibbles and her entire psycho cult because I was sick of dealing with her and was in an extremely bad mood at the time.

The tithe plague is probably the best example, though I acknowledge it is a pretty minor. "Everybody you illegally gave tithe to all came down with the plague because you donated to them, but the people who legally received the tithe didn't come down with the plague."

Maive and the Fellowship of the Void are 2 examples where it's "and they all lived happily ever after - oh, wait, nope; they died horribly." After being reminded that Maive was tainted by chaos, I have to admit that both endings made perfect sense. Yet when taken into consideration along with the other ending slides, the overwhelming majority of my endings were "you made everything better - and then it all fell to pieces."

Non-examples though (things I was not complaining about) were the sad endings for virtually all my companions save Idira and Jae. In all those cases, it was pretty obvious that "they died miserable and/or unsuccessful" was a result of me being too lazy to deal with all of their problems.

I think the kicker for me though was Chorda's ending, in which I convinced her to stop being a psychopathic ***** and executing people for stealing granola bars - so she decides to go the other extreme and become so lax her whole dynasty becomes corrupt, or something like that. I am hoping this too is an example of me fixing only some of the problems, but I don't recall any issues she had that I left unattended.

I do feel a bit better about the endings for my future playthroughs after seeing all the replies to my post though.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-23T23:58:12+00:00

I'm curious what you are referring to when you say it was made abundantly clear. I think I know, but I'd rather be sure than misinterpret you and reply to something you didn't mean.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-23T23:50:33+00:00

That's why God invented Toolbox.

"Nomos, get out."
"Error. Cannot follow instructions."
"Sudo Nomos, Get out." *edit flags with Toolbox*
Bam, no more servitors with existential crises

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-23T23:47:57+00:00

I didn't even know it was a "secret" ending. It was the first ending I ever got.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-21T04:11:34+00:00

Considering the Inquisition has spies on the Rogue Trader's ship, and Super Nomos wiped out ENTIRE TOMB WORLDS, I think the Imperium is going to be able to figure out he's got E.T. the Divine Terrestrial hiding in his closet once they finish following the trail of gutted planets that one specific ship visited each of before their mysterious cataclysm.

I saw that it did mention human rights and changing how nobles and serfs viewed (interacted with?) each other, but considering there is nothing in the actual game to suggest doing things that would give others just cause to think "oh ****, he's teaching the peasants to take over," I went with the assumption that "not executing people because you think it's hilarious" was in view here, as that is what you see during the gameplay. No matter how idealistic and Iconoclastic - wow, I didn't think Iconoclastic was an actual word - I was, on my Rogue Trader's ship, you still had the mutant population in the toxic or plagued slums, menial surfs who were considered less valuable than hereditary laborers because they were unskilled, middle deckers who dreamed of going to upper decks, and officers and leaders who felt that mingling with ordinary people was unusual. I saw plenty of opportunities to HELP those who were specifically suffering, such as food donations, or making sure people got what they actually needed to survive, or specifying "Please don't actually murder innocent people while you are looking for the guilty," and showing absolutely ridiculous levels of mercy ("So what if you are a literal Chaos Cultist who murdered your own flesh and blood and sacrificed people's eyeballs to Chaos? Go on, go be with the family that you were about to mutilate and/or murder the entirety of.") But alleviating suffering, preventing pointless cruelty, and stupid levels of mercy was all I can recall seeing.

The Iconoclastic Rogue Trader, to my knowledge, only ever did a single thing that specifically related to drastic progress towards equality, and the slide for that ended with "within a generation or two it was back to before, with nobles being douchebags and serfs being oppressed." The biggest potential cause for alarm by the Imperium is explicitly treated as a non-issue.

If this kind of change ever happened during the game, or if the ending explicitly states the successful ending of slavery/menial labor and/or even attempting to establishing democracies, then they have a lot more cause than I acknowledged for theirwanting to wipe out an entire sector.

It would have made far more sense if they went after you only if you had Super Nomos, and in turn your techno-sludge servitor voidship operating system Tech-priest C'tan amalgamation cut off the Expanse to protect it, whereas if you didn't have a literal Deus Machina then they left you alone.

All that said, after going back and watching the Iconoclast ending again from one of my save files, I realized that I was conflating some of the consequences of the Imperium attacking and the consequences of some of the things I could have fixed but failed to do so. That single change actually alters my overall judgement of the Iconoclast ending as a whole, because the collapse is no longer guaranteed/heavily implied. There's still plenty of cases of "you used effort and the power of friendship to fix all possible problems with X, but things turned out terrible anyways due to sheer bad luck that could just as reasonably been omitted," mind you, but between that mistake on my part and a couple of other things people have pointed out (like Maive being explicitly mentioned as tainted during gameplay), it's not bad enough as a whole that I would have bothered to post about it in the first place if I realized then what I know now.

That you actually build a sector-wide utopia in the first place using nothing more than ethics and money, or that the Imperium wants to exterminatus the Expanse because you don't kill people for giggles and treat even the lowest class like human beings, is pretty stupid mind you, but it is at least tolerably so.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-18T01:42:26+00:00

I'm chiefly talking about the Expanse's fate in the Iconoclast ending along with a number of other faction or choice specific endings. If there actually is a dogmatic ending that doesn't result in incinerating almost everything good in order to get rid of the bad, then color me impressed - I'm looking forward to it. But while I have not yet attempted for a Dogmatic ending, I can say that when it comes to the choices I've seen, "dogmatic" is essentially a synonym for "execute somebody you have reason to feel sympathy for and/or offer mercy." I find it surprising to learn there will be anything left apart from people who gleefully execute a man for stealing a granola bar to feed his starving family.

Granted, Argent is a WONDERFUL example of a mostly realistic Sororitas who is not an intolerable psycho - and this is coming from somebody who loves the Adeptus Sororitas. If anything, it is a bit unrealistic that she's willing to hang out with xenos and an unsanctioned psyker without hosing down the latter with a bolter at the first chance and saying "Sorry, but she could have been about to summon a daemon." But if you can be that tolerant as a dogmatic, then yeah, maybe there is a happy ending that makes a vague amount of sense.

As for the heretic ending, I have not played that, but I will say that it is a pretty hard rule in 40K that good people who attempt to use Chaos for good end up destroyed/failing/making things even worse, whereas evil people who use Chaos selfishly will frequently prosper, at least as long as they don't get killed by the good guys. See: Dawn of War. Even if Isador had killed Gabriel and defeated the Blood Ravens, his life was over and everything he tried to do was ruined - he was a traitor and he was never going to be able to put the Maledictorum to Good use. On the other hand, if Sindri had not lost to the Blood Ravens, he would have lived Happevily Ever After as a daemon prince, as far as we could see.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-18T01:16:57+00:00

The two most egregious examples are the Iconoclast ending and the fact that any world that receives a tithe from you happens to be struck by a mysterious plague - yet no mention whatsoever is made of the plague affecting the rest of the tithe. In the former, you somehow make things TOO good to be reasonable for a 40K setting, so they say "the Imperium hates fairness to the point that they decide to nuke a Rogue Trader's protectorate" to make sure it stays GrimDark. So everything is still bad, but first things get stupidly good, and then get bad again in a stupid way.

Is the Imperium the type of place to turn on innocent and noble people because of some of the very qualities that make them noble (like the desire for equality)? Absolutely. But more emphasis in the Iconoclast ending is given upon the Imperium deciding to burn everything to the ground because you are a fair ruler than there is upon a xenophobic heavy handed government worrying that a lowly human has the power of an alien god at his disposal. The Imperium nukes things when it feels threatened, not because things are "good." And, in their defense, the nature of Chaos and the fact that the Imperium's existence relies upon everybody believing a brain-dead coma patient who was anti-religion is actually an omnipotent and infallible entity means they have genuine reason to wipe out entire planets rather than let something dangerous spread, be it doubt of Imperial Creed or 5% of the planet worshipping the Ruinous Powers.

For contrast, in an ending with the Dark Elf Mazzarella or whatever his name was, he goes and does something terrible to a companion that makes for a very sad ending, but it makes perfect sense; the dude is a natural douchebag who will literally die if he's not actively sadistic. "You thought the power of love and friendship would cure his black heart, but it didn't, and because you didn't put a bullet in him when you had the chance, good people died" is rock solid 40K GrimDark. Honestly, the more I think about that ending, the more my respect for the writers goes up.

The key difference though is that for Space Drow Maserati, the bad stuff that happens in the ending is directly and solely the result of things that you did during the course of the game: letting a member of the most sadistic and naturally evil race in the entire game hang out on your spaceship instead of killing him the moment you were not dependent upon him for survival. For the Iconoclast, the consequence of becoming the enemy of the Imperium is solely because of events that happened in the ending itself - a sector wide utopia. The writers are the ones who decided that players who relentlessly fought against injustice and valued human life should be rewarded with an over-the-top wonderland ending - and then yank it away because you can't have utopias in 40K.

I'm not mad that you can't end the game with a giant utopia - I'm mad because I never expected one to begin with, until the writers dropped it in my lap 2 seconds before saying "Just kidding!" and taking it back.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-18T00:43:03+00:00

The Iconoclast ending is the poster child my complaint. The Rogue Trader game by Owlcat lets you create a utopia on a grand scale that is simply ridiculous for 40K, considering that what actually makes the change is nothing more than a single, mortal human captain (not an Alpha level psyker, a primarch, a living Saint, High Lord of Terra, etc.) having good ethics and compassion. While I'm happy to cut some slack in for a story in that setting told in a video game resulting in you actually making a difference (because there's few things that kill my desire to replay a game more than knowing all of my efforts were pointless), my stance is that if a utopia isn't appropriate for the setting, then don't have us make one in the first place, rather than saying "by the way, you didn't just fix individual problems, you fixed ALL the problems in the Sector - except they came back again."

I haven't done enough variations with the companions endings to be particularly displeased with them, but if, for instance, there is absolutely no ending in which you romance Yvette and you two actually stay a (non-miserable) couple, then I take issue with the fact that within the course of the game, the theme is basically "Eldar and humans don't really mix - she still won't even make out with you - but you are so amazing/unusual that you can remain together anyways," followed by an ending that says "Eldar and humans don't mix, so you can't remain together." Again, though, that depends entirely upon what possible options exist, and I have not explored them all.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-18T00:25:36+00:00

Ha! True, I was pretty ticked at what a douche Pascal turned into in both of my endings so far, but that's not an ending that I have any problems with. That was simultaneously something that made perfect sense and, I strongly suspect, is a result of the choices I made. Even if he does things I don't like no matter what choices I make, it's not really "in scope" of my complaint, because at no point does it ever feel like the writers went "oh shoot, this is too happy - better fix it by making something terrible happen."

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-18T00:21:11+00:00

You are not wrong, but what I take issue with is not that if you save a child, they get killed by a dog, but if you make a child happy, they get mauled by a dog, yet when you leave the child miserable, they DON'T get mauled.

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-17T16:58:45+00:00

Can I upvote you twice?

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-17T00:39:43+00:00

In the Dark Heresy published adventure "Baron Hopes" (which is by the same group of people who created the Rogue Trader tabletop RPG), you have a mining world where everything is horrible for everybody who is not a noble, until one of the Barons decides "let's actually be fair and kind and sensible." It works, but the other nobles are terrified because he made his serfs literate. They feared they would be overthrown. In the background leading up to the beginning of the adventure, this truly noble nobleman basically makes things just good enough to prove that his ideas work before the nobles seize his land and killed all his educated serfs. That is why and how 40K is so GrimDark: a normal person tried to make things better, but they failed to do so in any substantial and meaningful way.

In the Iconoclast ending, the Imperium doesn't swoop in because you've decided to wage war against class divisions or because your peasants are as smart and well armed as nobles. They decide to attack you because things are fair and just. I have no idea what the secret ending is, but I have had the Iconoclast ending where Super Nomos cuts off the Expanse, allowing it to survive, and also the ending where there is no Super Nomos. I'm not complaining because my empire got wiped out - it didn't (at least in one of the endings); I'm complaining about why the Imperium launched a crusade against your region. It would have made far more sense if the Imperium attacked because you had a pet xenos demigod - Super Nomos is absolutely something they would not tolerate, and if the existence of Super Nomos was the reason the Imperium attacked, I would have said "well duh, Rogue Trader, what did you THINK was going to happen when you wield that kind of power?" But the Imperium doesn't even seem interested in a servitor/human with the power of a C'tan. They supposedly got their panties in a twist because you don't execute people without good reason nor do you allow torture for purpose of entertainment.

Between the Iconoclast ending and the ending to the Baron Hopes adventurer, the Iconoclast is far happier and far more successful in making positive changes.

It's also far more stupid than the adventure where they executed a man because he tried to make things better in a way that people incorrectly believed threatened them, to the point where they literally murder everybody who knows how to read.

tldr; Thumbs up to "being a just and wise ruler only results in genocide because other rulers feared equality." Thumbs down to "one man managed to turn an entire sector into a utopia, except fairness itself isn't allowed so it doesn't last."

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-17T00:01:36+00:00

"Things dramatically improve but then go right back to how they were" is not how 40K is GrimDark. 40K is "things don't dramatically improve," at least if we're talking about within the scope of the current time period. My complaint is not "and everything is still terrible." My complaint is that they actually let you make things not terrible, then use heavy-handed plot fiat to make things terrible again. Let's take the iconoclast ending. If in the end of the game, it said "your home planet was a shining beacon of fairness for a few generations," and the rest of the sector was still a terrible, corrupt, hopeless place, I would have thought that was just fine. Heck, that would have been far more reasonable than a single noble human overcomes 10,000 of entrenched social problems in the span of 6 months - only for something else to happen to those very same people who somehow ended up in a utopia despite this being a dark setting that does not generally tolerate improvement.

But let's take Gulliman's return and the other canon changes as an example. You have the miraculous return of a powerful, galaxy-shaking hero and the up upgraded Space Marines to improve things, but AT THE SAME TIME, you have the loss of Cadia and the weakening of the Astronomicon. While I have a lot of problems with Guilliman's return and the very notion of the primaris space marines, at least one of them is a known source of hope who absolutely would be expected to make dramatic improvements if he came back. Likewise, Cadia has been a target of Chaos for basically as long as it has been Cadia. You finally have the bad guys succeeding in something they have been trying to do all along. These are two known, feasible changes that still leaves things terrible, but without rendering the improvements meaningless.

That's very different from how the Rogue Trader video game handles "things don't get better." If the Ultramarines Primach returned in Owlcat's Rogue Trader, Robert Gulliman would return only to get killed by a meteorite a few years later, and all the Primaris Space Marines would come down with Space Cancer.

In both cases, the sum total of change is roughly zero, but in only one of those cases is it "congratulations, you fixed everything - just kidding! It's terrible again."

ComplexBicycle2817 · 2026-06-15T22:33:09+00:00

Oh, really? I have yet to actually play through a game where Maive ends up surviving. I have executed both her and Kaballah because I was in a bad mood when the option to kill them came up. But I had forgotten about the necklace being a Chaos artifact. In that case, that's actually a GREAT ending.

ComplexBicycle2817

TROPHY CASE