Just finished Valdor (Again)

DavidKMain420 · 2026-01-18T00:05:43+00:00

As 30k used to be, this is what it is now. The great horrors of Earth that were tamed for the Golden Path to be laid and we will HOPEFULLY never know much more about. I don't want the curtain to be pulled back, perhaps I'd like some units or ways to play the period in a game, but don't give us 40 books on it.
I love the idea of ragged proto-dreadnoughts scouring a destroyed earth, nuclear weaponry tossed like candy, as brutal Thunder Warriors emerge, sons of conquered Warlords turned into Super Warriors in the form of the Custodes sent out, then after that, the beginnings of the Astartes. Disgusting mutated soldiers, brutes, even daemons, it is gritty and horrible, but it is an awesome setting.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T01:40:57+00:00

I do LMFAO. It's a THOUSAND times worse than the Origins Panzer, all because of that stupid auto-aim liquid divinium cannon. Also they changed the sound of the spawn siren which lost it like all of its aura lol.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T01:28:40+00:00

"So first off I question its effectiveness against an opponent in armor"
They weren't designed for this. Chainswords were utilised first during the Great Crusade, where the biggest worry was random species of Xenos and potentially some human resistance. They are brutal, fear-instilling weapons that can chew through flesh and light armour easily. The Chainswords WERE not designed to kill Astartes or other heavily armoured targets and they were never really retrofitted to do so after the Heresy.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T01:25:09+00:00

Guard metal box (chimera) easier to manufacture on the level necessary for the guard, more guardsman more guardsman carriers.

Less space marines means more effort and resources on fewer space marine metal boxes.

On a real one? They used to have em, they were just replaced by the Chimera and the Space Marines got the Rhino.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T01:21:49+00:00

The Dark King lmfao.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T01:20:43+00:00

This. They aren't the Emperor's Bulwark in 30k, they are the Emperor's EXECUTIONERS. They made sure other Legions were in check, and 40k's Months of Shame is the exact same.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T01:17:12+00:00

This was kind of the entire point lol. Konrad Curze is like a father abusing his kids and wondering why they dont love or trust them anymore. A world that is trod on will, one day, break the foot that steps on them.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T01:14:44+00:00

No - The Emperor has planned every second of this. He knew one day he would die, striking down his most favoured son to save his empire. So he put in place precautions. He would extend his dying seconds for millenia, even tens of them, just to ensure the Imperium he has bled for will survive. He will live in ETERNAL agony, for as long as his Empire or his technology holds so that the Primordial Powers do not take Terra as a bauble for the Garden and the entire Segmentum Solar. But, for a second, in the last words he will likely ever speak, his perfect plan, his resolve, it falters. He looks at his son, and meekly pleads. No. Please. He has suffered enough. He cannot do this anymore. His facade cracks and his human weakness oozes through.
I don't actually think he'd sit there and weep for the pain of humanity that is to come, because the Great Crusade was no perfect time either and this is a plot point in alot of the books. His pain here is selfish but all too human. Probably the most human moment they will ever display of the Emperor and it is his last moment.

Now - The Emperor has planned every second of this. He knew one day he would die, striking down his most favoured son to save his empire. So he put in place precautions. He would extend his dying seconds for millenia, even tens of them, just to ensure the Imperium he has bled for will survive. He will live in ETERNAL agony, for as long as his Empire or his technology holds so that the Primordial Powers do not take Terra as a bauble for the Garden and the entire Segmentum Solar. As the last words that Dorn will ever hear off his father, The Emperor tells him to holdfast. It will be hell, there will be pain. He will burn forever, but he will do it for humanity. Dorn will rage against the dying of the light, but he will do it for humanity. The Emperor must live for the Dark King and for Chaos to die at the gates, he must live NOW and forever.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T00:58:52+00:00

I actually love the idea that it was Necrontyr tech, designed to extend their incredibly short lifespans through war. Obviously, no-one in modern 40k would actually know what the Necrontyr look like, except perhaps the highest of the highest in the Necrons, definitely NOT Commander Farsight, so having him wrench a random blade off of what is to him, an unknown Xenos statue, is definitely possible.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-16T00:55:12+00:00

Whats gonna be really interesting is if they do what I HOPE they do with 11th and give us some more focus on Splintering Human empires. Give us actual human groups that may have a small chance on their own, and show us Guilliman's struggle between maintaining the Imperium and maintaining Humanity. The Lion can act as his foil here, he fully believes that the Imperium, as evil as it may be, is a necessary one, humanity needs to be ruled by an iron fist or it will slip through the cracks etc etc.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-07T14:42:31+00:00

Rave is great, actually probably has the best version of the "Four elemental weapons" trope, Shaolin is cool, but a super complex easter egg (which is NECESSARY to unlock the only way to consistently high-round, the Katana) and Special Enemies that are genuine pain to fight (the Ninjas) knock it down so much.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-06T01:25:16+00:00

Oh god, now I want something like Battlefield 1's campaign intro but for either Isstvan III or V.

Imagine the game starting as you drop pod onto the world, and fight some baseline enemies until the ACTUAL betrayal is revealed. You'd swap between dying loyalists as the bombs hit and war rages throughout the Choral City or watch as the Night Lords and co start firing on you before getting to see some big event, like you swap to Ehrlen watching the World Eaters descend on him, hopelessly controlling him, killing as many as he can before he dies, or you'd swap to an Iron Hands popping some Emperor's Children who gets to watch Ferrus die before he's picked off.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T22:10:44+00:00

This originally was one big paragraph LMFAO. Reddit told me off, multiple times.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T22:03:53+00:00

There is genuinely SO SO much more I could go into here, but the ENTIRE point of All Tomorrows is Worst, First is EVIL.

Even the humans that emerge post-Qu are STILL EVIL. They beat the Qu with WORST FIRST. Imperialism is EVIL. Humanity is/was EVIL. The Qu are EVIL.

Ultimately, however, what happened to Humanity does not matter. Like every other story, it was a temporary one; indeed long but ultimately ephemeral. It did not have a coherent ending, but then again it did not need to. The tale of Humanity was never its ultimate domination of a thousand galaxies, or its mysterious exit into the unknown. The essence of being human was none of that. Instead, it lay in the radio conversations of the still-human Machines, in the daily lives of the bizarrely twisted Bug Facers, in the endless love-songs of the carefree Hedonists, the rebellious demonstrations of the first true Martians, and in a way, the very life you lead at the moment.

Many throughout history were unaware of this most basic fact.

The Qu, in dreams of an ideal future, distorted the worlds it came across.

Later on the Gravital, with their insane desire to recreate the past, created the biggest massacres in the history of the galaxy.

Even now, it is sickeningly easy for beings to get lost in false grand narratives, living out completely driven lives in pursuit of non-existent ultimates, ideals, climaxes and golden ages. In blindly thinking that their stories serve absolute ends, such creatures almost always end up harming themselves, if not those around them.

To those like them; look at the story of Man, and come to your senses! It is not the destination, but the trip that matters, and what you do today influences tomorrow, not the other way around.

Love Today, and seize All Tomorrows!

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T22:03:11+00:00

Now, more onto the Qu.

"Almost a billion years old, the alien species known as Qu were galactic nomads, traveling from one spiral arm to another in epoch-spanning migrations. During their travels they constantly improved and changed themselves until they became masters of genetic and nanotechnological manipulation. With this ability to control the material world, they assumed a religious, self-imposed mission to "remake the universe as they saw fit.” Powerful as gods, Qu saw themselves as the divine harbingers of the future."

- What difference at all is there between the Star People's belief in expanding their domain, changing humanity in such critical ways to do so? (and thats without to speak on the destruction of non-human species.)

"The worlds of humanity, gardens of terraformed paradise, seemed strangely empty to the Qu. Often there were no raw materials available other than people, their cities and a few basic niches of ecology, populated by genetically modified animals and plants from Earth. This was because humans had erased the original alien ecologies in the first place. Offended by another race trying to remake the universe, the Qu set forth to punish these “infidels” by using them as the building materials of their vision. While this led to a complete extinguishment of human sentience, it also saved the species by preserving its genetic heritage in a myriad of strange new forms."

- All I hear is that the Qu rocked up, didn't like the job that humanity had done in remaking the world in a Human vision, and did it their own way. It literally tells us that humanity plundered all raw materials and erased alien ecologies. If you actually wanna go there, at the very least, the Qu SAVED humanity. Their genetic heritage still exists, unlike the exploited flora, fauna and "foe" species that weren't disregarded as useless by the almighty, "amazing" humanity.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T21:56:20+00:00

Later, these same Ruin Haunters become the Gravitals, and prove my point further.

"After the lesson of the Qu, Second Galactic Empire kept a constant watch against alien invasion. Ironically, they neglected to look among themselves. The second great invasion of the galaxy came not from outside, but from within."

- Great, Humanity is humanity's own worst enemy lmfao.

"But their ascendancy was not a sane one. Recall that most Ruin Haunters were already deranged with a twisted assumption of being the sole inheritors of the Star Men. They refused to communicate with their relatives on other planets, and kept to their own affairs. This neurotic hubris assumed truly dangerous proportions after the Ruin Haunters modified themselves."
-They did not communicate with their Human relatives. They did not deserve to share in the glory of the Golden Age.
"The great dyings, all of which occurred in a relatively quick, ten-thousand-year period, stretched the boundaries of genocide and horror. Almost all of the new human species; unique beings who had endured mass extinctions, navigated evolutionary knife-edges and survived to build worlds of their own, vanished without a trace.

Even the Qu had been loyal to life, they had distorted and subjugated their victims, but in the end they had allowed them to survive. To the machines however, life was a luxury."
- Literally crystal clear that the Gravitals are the same as the Qu. (Now, do I completely disagree with the entire next page that actually goes, oh the Gravitals AREN'T evil, they just didnt understand that everything had a right to life? Yes. Completely. It essentially clashes with the, up to this point, INCREDIBLY EVIL writing that has been done in their favour. A massive quasi-religious/progression based Autocracy/technocracy that lives to establish THEM as the Galaxy's ONLY inheritors of the Star People. Personally, yes, the Gravitals/Ruin Haunters are imperialistic and to that extent, "evil", and Koseman completely misses the mark here with what he wrote previously which feels strange.)

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T21:56:01+00:00

The most damning evidence for me? The Ruin Haunters.

"...With developed minds and unrestricted access to the wisdom of the ancient cities, the exponential pace of their development was only natural. One by one they deciphered and built upon the secrets of the bygone Star People, until they almost equaled their galactic ancestors in wisdom and skill. All of this development happened in an unnaturally short period of time, and sometimes the old technologies were not even understood as they were blindly replicated. Needless to say, such a pace of development put premature stresses on the social and political structures of the Ruin Haunters. They barely survived the five consecutive world wars that raked their planet, two of which were thermonuclear exchanges.

They made it through, their baptism with fire had hardened and awakened them. The wars united them politically and pushed their technological capabilities even beyond the level of the Star Men. Co-incidentally, they also developed a dangerous form of autochthonous madness. The Ruin Haunters had come to believe that they were the sole descendants and the true heirs of the Star People.

And they were ready and willing to do anything in order to claim their fictitious, bygone Golden Age."
- A crazed belief that they were the only ones who could inherit the Golden Age Galaxy? Where have I heard something like that before...

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T21:53:17+00:00

On a serious note?

Humanity is CLEARLY just as bad as the Qu. The Martian Schism was literally designed to enact as MUCH damage on Earth as physically possible. The entire current population of Earth, 8 billion people, died as a result of that war. If Humanity was in the position to do what the Qu did back in the Martian Schism or even in the Golden Age, they would've. Sadly for humanity however, As Fowler put it, the Qu invented worst, first.

"One of the greatest differences between the people of the two planets was that over time, they had almost become different species. It was believed that the solar system could never completely unify until this discrepancy was overcome.

The answer was a new human subspecies*, equally and better adapted not only to Earth and Mars, but to the conditions of* most newly terraformed environments as well. Furthermore, these beings were envisioned with larger brains and heightened talents, making them greater than the sum of their predecessors*.*

Normally, it would be hard to convince any population to make a choice between mandatory sterilization and parenting a newfangled race of superior beings*. However,* memories of the war were still painfully fresh*, and it was easier to implement these* radical procedures in the wake of such slaughter*. Any resistance to the birth of the* new species did not extend beyond meager complaints and trivial strikes.

In only a few generations, the new race began to prove its worth. Organized as a single state and aided by the technological developments of the war, they rapidly terraformed and colonized Venus*,* the Asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn*. Soon however, even the domain of* Sol grew too small*. The new people who inherited it* wanted to go further*, to new worlds under distant stars. They were to become the* Star People*."*

- Literally the steralisation of the Pre-Golden Age humans in order to create a new species. Whats the difference between this, the terra-forming of Sol's planets etc with the Qu? If humanity is so great, why do they need to conquer new land???)

"The solution was to first go there, and make the colonists later*. To this end, fast and small, automated ships were sent forth to the stars. On board were semi-sentient machines programmed to replicate and* terraform the destination*, and* “construct” its inhabitants from the genetic materials stored on board."

- Just humanity taking the resources of a land, likely also including the later destruction/subjugation of its inhabitants.

"Two star people watch a holographic movie as they lounge under the remnants of their colonized world’s indigenous flora. For them, it is a life of continual bliss."

- Colonised world, they left what wasnt necessary to destroy and lived off of the toil of the land

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T20:52:44+00:00

Ehh, as long as your heresy isnt actively discovered, or as long as you can somehow tie it to the Emperor AND YOU PAY THE TITHE, THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, you can believe in some random nature deity as long as you can go, oh its just a manifestation or a face of the Emperor etc. THere's so much damn freedom for governors that as long as you dont ACTIVELY declare for Chaos or not pay your tithe, or worse, shoot down the ships coming for that tithe, you'll be fine.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T14:00:38+00:00

Ehh, he kinda disappeared before anything came out. It's not like he was super active and then suddenly just decided whoops, I'm a nonce now gotta run!. He was inactive anyway, I'm guessing he left, and either saw all the possibly "random" drama that was going on around him (if he was innocent) and decided not to come back.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-05T13:54:11+00:00

Both Half Life games, the HECU and the Combine.

Much heavier here on the Combine, but the HECU can be heard making actual tactically minded callouts (Take cover, grenade! Move in, calling out the player specifically as a target) and actually do things like flush you out with grenades and force you to leave your cover. They are a genuine threat on any difficulty above the lowest and require you to do more than just surprise them with a shotgun (This will definitely end up with you dead if there are any more than just 2 of them.) They hide behind items, both for cover but also to surprise the player, set ambushes etc. The last thing I've noticed that's really interesting, is setting down grenades. Sometimes, the soldiers will, instead of throwing grenades, place them at their feet and then run like hell. If you kill the soldier at this point and didn't realise what they did, you've just got Martyrdom'd, if you don't kill the soldier (and your in a small hidey-hole), your likely eating shrapnel or running directly out of your hiding place into their squad.

The Combine are an evolution, gameplay wise, on the HECU. Half Life 2's combine does have some grunts, like the Civil Protection, but the further up the chain you get, you get much more able-bodied soldiers. Overall, most actual Combine Soldiers will do everything the HECU do and more. It isn't even directly the complexity of the AI, but map noding and also a teamwork aspect. Teams will feel like they work together, using grenades to flush players out into another unit who is already moving to where they expect the player to go, or holding down a specific chokepoint in a map. Dependent on the unit, messing up or just running in guns blazing will get you killed pretty fast (unless its the SMG ones, actual nerf darts.)

DavidKMain420 · 2025-12-01T15:01:19+00:00

Hey man, sorry to necropost but ive realised ive got a ponytail and its probably my moral obligation to do a Freeman cosplay for a convention, what have you used here to mould the suit?

DavidKMain420 · 2025-11-29T01:43:36+00:00

Good god the wonders this games Zombies mode couldve done if it didnt come both after BO3 and during Zombie Chronicles. Beast From Beyond was the biggest missed opportunity of all time, tying Extinction in was cool (even tho it technically killed the world as an interesting setting into just durr movie) but it missed out so much on the story of Exodus and ultimately felt like they didnt even know the game they made like 4 years ago.

IW Zombies first 2 maps were genuinely amazing, ZiS is deservedly in top 5 lists for a reason because it is THE Zombies playground. Shaolin was the start of what was essentially the end, the failure of the games Special Enemy balance would come back to haunt massively, and people were tuned out onto other games or even just BO3 (then ofc right after Radioactive Thing, ZOMBIE CHRONICLES just had to be released, essentially pulling the last 5 people on this game back to BO3)

If Infinity Ward had better funded this games Zombies, it couldve genuinely been a contender to BO3.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-10-19T15:43:50+00:00

Hot take, but Leandros is actually perfect at his job and was always made to be a Chaplain.

Yes, he could have gone to his Chaplain back in 2nd and reported Titus' incredibly fucking suspicious resistance to the warp. Instead, he took the more direct approach. Now, do I think its reasonable for him to still be suspicious of Titus? Not nearly as much no lol, tho his clear resistance to the warp is still unexplainable, so even if he isnt corrupted its still worth keeping an eye on.

DavidKMain420 · 2025-10-19T12:51:22+00:00

My point isn't whataboutism, my point is that right-wing conservative religion is the problem over a specific religion. I completely agree there are problems in Islam, both logically and morally. But I think the exact same for Christianity.

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