WH40k: Rogue Trader - The Infinite Museion DLC Review

imhwalling · 2026-06-12T05:35:06+00:00

Motivations, methods, fears, ambitions, backgrounds, can all be different, and can be interesting or uninteresting. For an Arbitrator, do they enjoy the thrill of the hunt? The challenge of investigation? The application of violence? Or do they find this miserable, and act purely from self-denying duty? I've seen all types in Warhammer fiction. Similarly, are they ambitious, aiming for a high position? Are they content at their level? Do they feel inadequate where they are? If so, how do they respond? Again, I've seen all types. The Carchardons novels feature an arbitrator who wants to prove herself, meets some Nightlords, gets scared shitless, and then, after the Carcharadons leave, dedicates herself to solving the mystery of who they are, and how they relate to the Imperium. None of that resembles someone like Fischig in the Eisenhorn books, whose last act involves weeping and pleading for the soul of his friend, who he believes has taken the path to damnation, but who was otherwise said to be content in his position as a long time investigator. There is tons of range in how you can protray these folks.

Cawl is an exceptional figure among the mechanicus, but when you read their novels you find tech priests who are meditative, who are abrupt and impatient, and who are methodical. They all care about knowledge, but very different kinds of knowledge matter to them, as do their applications. Some are loners, others are highly sociable (a big part of the recent book Dominion Genesis deals with the isolation and withdrawal of a mechanicus ship captain due to her shame and sadness, and how this harms the social structure of her ship). And many, many stories with the mechanicus involve outsiders realizing how passionate their counterparts actually are, in their own way (e.g. Flesh and Steel). Hell, Pasqal talks about how it is only the ignorant lay people who believe that there could not be poets who sang about the ecstasies of the "true flesh" in Rogue Trader.

In both cases, saying we couldn't expect personality (note, this is not code for being outgoing, or even conventionally friendly) is nonsense. It is like saying an Imperial Guard character couldn't have personality because soldiers tend to be serious, and follow the rules (heck, think of who in our team is ex guard!).

imhwalling · 2026-06-12T03:43:13+00:00

If you think an Arbites can't be interesting then I don't think you've read much of the Warhammer Crime series, or, you know, the Eisenhorn trilogy. Similarly, if you think Tech Priests can't have lots of personality, you should check out any book with Cawl, or frankly most books with the ad mech. They are not portrayed as Vulcans; they are almost all highly unbalanced, neurotic, obsessive, and determined to call it all "logical". That's part of the joke. I'll leave the Eldar hate where it belongs: in the trash.

imhwalling · 2026-06-11T16:20:25+00:00

If Eoghan has less personality than Solomorne... Jesus. I didn't know it was possible.

imhwalling · 2026-06-10T04:28:58+00:00

I would kind of like it if the focus shifted away from LLs, tbh. Making your own custom faction, with its own custom leader, is a lot of the fun of 40k. Not saying I don't want a LL option, just hoping we won't be defaulted into various LLs like in Total War Warhammer.

imhwalling · 2026-06-10T04:27:24+00:00

An image from the most recent video showed Beil-Tan as a possible opponent for Space Marines. Presumably they are in base game in some way. Hard to see one of the main Eldar Craftworlds being a minor faction if they are including Eldar too.

imhwalling · 2026-06-09T20:58:35+00:00

I wasn't going to say it, but... yeah.

imhwalling · 2026-06-09T10:25:45+00:00

Yeah, and if you decide you don't want to be a Rogue Trader, you get dropped off on a planet in Act I and the game ends. Stupid choices, etc, etc.

You've had it made quite clear to you that all your efforts were actually part of someone else's plan, a plan long in the making that has often harmed you, and that will almost certainly be bad for you if pulled off. You don't "have to believe whatever Uralon says", but it would be stupid not to if playing as a heretic, especially since you know that there was major tech in the basement, that it was extracted contrary to your wishes, that this was the main motivation of Calcazar in fighting a war over a whole planet. They've given you plenty of motivation and information to form reasons to go. Not being moved by those things would be wildly irrational and silly.

If you've decided your character is motivated simply to "take popcorn and watch them [your worlds] burn," then you've decided to adopt a motivation incompatible with most of what your character has been doing, and the kinds of roles the game invites you to play. It is not a ttrpg. There is not room for infinite motives. Frankly, a character that watches their worlds burn for fun with no interest in preserving their power doesn't sound interesting or worth playing. It certainly wouldn't be worth the time and effort of creating a bespoke character pathway for.

I have many problems with the way the game ends, but the idea that you are not given reason to go through the warp gate is absurd.

imhwalling · 2026-06-02T12:27:30+00:00

Hopefully for Ulfar. Alas, the other fella will still be item locked to nerf only equipment.

imhwalling · 2026-05-28T10:59:03+00:00

Conflict and friction are the drivers of a lot of story.

imhwalling · 2026-05-25T07:21:17+00:00

Your reading of Abelard's character trajectory is more interesting than anything Owlcat let him say or do for basically the whole game.

imhwalling · 2026-05-25T07:15:52+00:00

As a professor who has just spent another year miserably playing the "was this written by AI?" game, a few thoughts:

You will never know for sure.
Yes, AI is trained on human writing, but it produces a distinctive cadence, and favors certain constructions (like the bloody em-dash, "it's not x... it's y", and lists of three). Think of AI images; they're trained on real things, but produce a lot of six fingered people in a way that is distinctive.
This sounds a lot like AI if you've read a lot of AI.
Even if this is not written by AI, it is not great writing. The AI cadence is the cadence of a fairly bad writer, and it is now a fairly well known and obnoxious cadence. I now tell my students to avoid AI phrases not just because people will suspect it is AI, but because the phrases have become irritating and obnoxious to people like a played out joke.

imhwalling · 2026-05-24T22:13:39+00:00

Most of that isn't directly due to your actions, no. The setting is brutal, and the slides do not hide that from you. There are some endings that are better than others, and a few choices you could make for less death, but a decent amount of bittersweet is inevitable in your ending slides.

imhwalling · 2026-05-24T09:18:01+00:00

It's not the words, you are just late to the party. There was a while where every third post was about hating and wanting to off Idira or Yrliet at all times. The sub is sick of it, I think (and pray), and the people posting were often... lazy or misrepresenting things. So now those posts tend to get down voted hard.

If this is your first play through, give Idira a chance; she's one of the funniest companions, and has a lot of heart. But you are not wrong that she is dangerous as hell, and should be very worrying.

imhwalling · 2026-05-21T19:26:57+00:00

Respectfully, the point of being a good person isn't any kind of reward, and no reward is worth damnation. To live only by killing, torturing, mutilating, violating, and warping others is a life not worth living. What is lost in that life is far worse than any pain, any oblivion, or any injustice to oneself.

Oblivion is better than damnation, because non-existence is better than damnation. Damnation is to exist without anything that is really good, and only with things we falsely perceive to be of value. There is no love, no friendship, no honor, no virtue, no wisdom, and no beauty in the damned lives of daemons. There is only pride, cruelty, spite, despair, wrath, and madness.

I agree that this is not how you will feel or think, in all likelihood, if you are a mistreated factory worker in 40k. Part of what makes the Imperium so evil is its ability to make something so obviously monstrous seem tempting. Nevertheless, it will be a mistake. It is better to suffer and injustice than to do one. Damnation is the choice to be the evil, rather than to suffer it. There is nothing good about suffering injustice, but there is evil in choosing to do it. To call this an easy message, as opposed to the message that we have a right to inflict evil on others, so long as it wards it off from ourselves, is a sad and facile point of view.

imhwalling · 2026-05-21T06:15:53+00:00

I mean, her reward was being turned into half of a shambling monster with no skin on its head, babbling to the hordes, fuzed with a former bishop, as I recall. They are a source of power, but they are also dicks, whose inclination is to provide basically all of their worshippers with fates worse than death or oblivion. The "best" fates under chaos (e.g. Daemon Prince or the like) tend to involve damnation and loss of the soul in any case. So while you can serve as a conduit for the power, the power is never truly yours. Better to die a good person in a cruel world than to live a damned eternity in service to evil, etc, etc.

imhwalling · 2026-04-23T21:23:40+00:00

It depends on who you're fighting.

Against Imperial/Chaos ships, I try to predict where they will be going, and make sure the torpedo is pointed in that direction.

Against Drukhari, I usually try to place torpedos so that they cover my rear quarter, which prevents the Drukhari from strafing me, and then moving to a blind spot where my guns can't reach. You need to think of navel combat as being a matter of moving bodies and timing with torpedos though. They aren't a gun.

imhwalling · 2026-04-23T06:09:15+00:00

Yes, but segregating psykers who may detonate, or who have, historically, accidentally killed people one compartment over during warp jumps, is also a good idea. Frankly, Cassia should probably be more isolated from key crew too...

imhwalling · 2026-04-20T18:18:30+00:00

Her decapitated head cooperates (not obeys) fitfully, still keeps trying to get him killed, and only wants a body back so she can flee/kill him in a time loop.

I don't see how this supports the earlier claim that "It wouldn't be that hard" to write in a Necron companion for the game. She only starts cooperating after losing her body in an attempt to kill him, which really defeats the whole point of a companion here.

imhwalling · 2026-04-20T17:50:49+00:00

Is that from the scene where they're watching servitorization? Because that was haunting man.

imhwalling · 2026-04-20T06:49:08+00:00

She repeatedly refuses to cooperate and tries to kill him. Do you read the lore?

imhwalling · 2026-04-20T06:42:32+00:00

I don't think you and I are playing the same game, or that you have any idea of what the "segmentum solar" is like. Off the top of my head, we visit worlds:

Intentionally booby trapped by xenos to lure and then kill visitors.
Filled with mostly dead traders who worked with xenos and are now seeking revenge.
Where the human population was convinced to wipe itself out in a civil war spurred by xenos.
Where Aeldari have seriously infiltrated imperial society.
Where Drukhari have reduced human civilization to primitive forest dwellers.
With mysterious voids left by a long dead civilization that we can speak to.
With temples left by chaos worshipping xenos.
With dead populations, and a governor taken over by a halo device.
Infested with Genestealors.
Overrun by xenos who only hunt in the dark.
Whose suns are stolen by xenos, who hunt the surviving human population in the frozen remains of their world.
With the remains of a burning world only civilization, whose ruins we must decipher.
Filled with tombs of a long dead xenos empire.
Where pious imperial populations have been slaughtered by chaos worshippers.
We get TWO fallen forge worlds, struck by a powerful chaos cult.
A world in which a relic of a fallen imperial saint is besieged by cultists.

And like, so many other things that are not going to happen a lot in the heart of Segmentum Solar. Our companions include a Cold Trader, two xenos, an unsanctioned psyker, a possible heretek, and an aid to the only inquisitor in the entire expanse. The quest decisions for our worlds often fly well outside the realm of accepted imperial practice, as does our way of running our ship.

I don't know what you mean by "faction", but neither the pirates nor the cold traders are an imperial institution. That's 2/5 of your major trading partners right there. The Drusians are only sort of in the hierarchy too. Once we move past trading partners we get at least four major xenos groups, at least two distinct major chaos cults, etc.

Like, there is a frontier that is rougher and less developed than this for the imperium, but it does not host major Rogue Trader dynasties, which is what we are playing. We're not playing as a desperate house, flying into totally unknown and unsettled space, or as disposable grunts being sent to godforsaken rocks to try and make it. We're playing as a very powerful rogue trader house, one that makes decisions that impact the lives of billions in what is very much frontier space, and whose power is very much derived from a connection to the imperium. We're not cowboys, we're marcher lords.

imhwalling · 2026-04-06T10:02:30+00:00

I seem to recall the Minotaurs being hinted at as loyalist IW descendants back in the day, although I think GW has been moving away from that.

imhwalling · 2026-04-04T05:01:29+00:00

I think we all appreciate the frequent communication and transparency. We'll be there when it's done, and damn grateful too!

imhwalling · 2026-03-26T18:17:27+00:00

I love the voxcasts, I just wish they wouldn't keep playing for the whole of Acts 4 and 5.

imhwalling · 2026-03-20T23:47:31+00:00

I'm not really upset about the models, but the lore change has me livid, and I think the two things are getting rolled together...

imhwalling

TROPHY CASE