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the problem with the "horror and menace angle" is it's unsustainable. it only works for so long before eventually it becomes a known old hat thing that inspires yawns not screams

BrianDavion wrote:
the problem with the "horror and menace angle" is it's unsustainable. it only works for so long before eventually it becomes a known old hat thing that inspires yawns not screams

I’m not sure I agree with that. I think it could have worked long term just fine, it seems to be working for the Tyranids after all. I think the issue was wanting to give the necrons their own perspective, especially with BL stories and stuff, which isn’t really possible with oldcrons I don’t think. You don’t exactly see BL with tyranid protagonists after all.

I would disagree with the idea that newcrons are less menacing. Firstly, not all are "mere" slavers, and whether they outright purge other races or not is not that important anyway, much like chaos the fact that they might overwhelm the galaxy and claim it for their absolute control, sooner or later scouring the galaxy whatsoever, is what makes them a menace.

What's peculiar about the necrons to my mind, as an immense thraet, is not the simple fact that they can wipe you mecilessly like pretty any other race in 40k could in its own way, but the "coming back" aspect, solowly emerging almost unnoticed. Which, in the same time, especially back when 40k was more a setting than a story, also help not having yet another utterly deadly danger able to wipe the galaxy any second but instead made them a looming threat. This has been kept from old to new crons. The newer lore added a "victim" flavour, a people which is on the one hand menacing to every other but at the same time trapped by what gives them the means to pose such threat in the first place, aka immortality earned through biotransference. I like it because it really adds much depths, complexity and I'd even push as far as to say "absurdity", that is (or used to be) the banner of 40k

I however absolutly agree on the fact that they are very human, but to be fair, apart from tyranids, who are modelled after bugs in my opinion and so don't even look alien but more precisly animal, all non-human races simple take human reasoning but go heavy on a few traits. Even the orks, although they prioritise defferently than humans, are extremly humanoids in appearances, and in behaviour (ranking leaders and subordonates by such metrics as who is the best at X thing or th most frightening in a way or an other is a thing in everyday life).

Thing is, something truly alien would be impossible or too hard to comprehend, what's more, in a game universe, where you need to be able to identify, relate or at least understand the characters and factions, creating something "too" alien might even be detrimental for enjoyment of the setting.

Of course anyone may disagree with my point, as stated it is a history of fictionnal plastic crack. But I really love the necron lore 2.0 and I feel like the backlash is quite unfair here.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I would disagree with the idea that newcrons are less menacing.

Perhaps it would be good to separate 'horror' from 'menacing' here.

Napoleon was menacing. Modern day China can be menacing. All that word implies is a looming threat, which I'd agree newcrons achieve.

But horror? Not so much. As Egyptian humans in space they're fully known quanitities to us from the bird's eye perspective. All good horror (and I'm excluding the 'ewww' and phobia factors here like gore and spiders) is ultimately drawn from the fear of the unknown and unknowable. Oldcrons had it. Newcrons don't. And that, to a large extent, is what I miss about them.

It's the difference in 'menace' between a bloke with a knife, and the weird invisible creatures in Birdbox that make people kill themselves. The 'unknowable' and 'horror' aspects magnify the 'menace' aspect to greater and more interesting proportions.

I personally can't help but feel that they should have gone with the best of both worlds. I don't have an issue with certain Lords having more personality for example; inserting some form of Trazyn into the oldcrons lore would have worked fine. Ditto for several of the new characters like the Silent King. But I feel like the base lore and motivations should have been kept as far as possible, and this (almost cartoonish) Egpytian theme avoided. Kept them alien and inscrutable as far as possible, but with some more characters and detail.

To the player, who is omniscient, were the older necrons actually more mysterious and thus did they inspire "horror"? I don't think so, as you knew very well what they where after: it was simplistic, it was straight forward, and you even knew who they worked for. In that state, the lore is pretty much copy pasted from the tyranids: no knowing wre they are from, only that they're in to kill. With such a race existing already, to a way more alien degree because you do know, however, with many details how they operate and live though, just mindless automatons feels redundant. The terminator/skeloton style, egyptian or not, remained unchanged, so the visuals don't matter much in this debate.
To this extend, I never felt like even the older necrons actually aroused fear or horror. I, on a sidenotes, I doubt that horror is even possible in a setting where you absolutly need to know what's going on (let aside a few cleverly chosen grey areas) to make the best out of it.

Well, apart from in universe characters but both lores would do!

Adding characters also forces this developpment to my mind. A few characters with almost no backgrounds are fine, but to make them substantial, they need purpose and backgrounds,sourcing in the history of the entire race, limiting the necrons to what they were in the older lore would probably make it difficult.

I can't help but feel like you stro nglyresent the "Egyptian theme", but to be honest, while it is your good right not to like it, i'd say it is more about aesthetic than lore writting.

The unthinking race that seeks solely to murder you and all of you by flaying is scarier than the race that demands vassalage and slaves.

Omniscient player and time does not change this fact.

For example, if tau met newcrons, it would be no different than tau v.s. imperium of man. But tau met oldcrons and they got harvested instead.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
To the player, who is omniscient, were the older necrons actually more mysterious and thus did they inspire "horror"? I don't think so, as you knew very well what they where after: it was simplistic, it was straight forward, and you even knew who they worked for

That really depends on when you entered the game. When Necron Raiders first hit, they were walking terminator skeletons that appeared out of nowhere at the Massacre at Sanctuary 101. There was four years before they got their codex.

In that state, the lore is pretty much copy pasted from the tyranids: no knowing wre they are from, only that they're in to kill.

Err...have you actually read any Tyranid fluff? The Tyranids kill to acquire biomass, not just for the gaks and giggles of it. They're a very visceral, physical, gribbly threat. The Necrons on the other hand, would appear, kill, and then disappear. Even the corpses teleported away. They were unfathomable, and nobody really quite knew what their deal was. There was a little bit of fluff about the Deceiver screwing things up and having a plan to seal off Chaos; but he was only one C'Tan of several. The faction remained, for the most part, faceless, hidden, and unknowable. Quite the polar opposite of Tyranids, who are after one very specific thing and coming from outside the galaxy.

The only part that's remotely comparable is that nobody knew if the Hive Mind wants anything more; but then again, the fluff even now is very contradictory on how the Hive Mind works.

I can't help but feel like you stro nglyresent the "Egyptian theme", but to be honest, while it is your good right not to like it, i'd say it is more about aesthetic than lore writting.

Well yea, I never said otherwise on the whole 'Egyptian' theme. I resent it because it is lazy. It's like taking the Kroot, and then covering them in ancient Greek iconography, giving them spears and hoplite helmets, and a terrain pack made out of pillars. Then chucking in a bunch of classical references and saying 'there we go, we fleshed out a faction!'. It's poor lazy writing. You can just about swing it when it's human factions; heck, it could be interesting to have a bunch of hive gangers themed after the Italian City States or something.

But...Kroot? The alien race with their own (if minimal) lore setting them apart?

Not only does it look stupid, it represents very clearly a dry well of creativity. And that's the position with regards to Newcrons being Egyptian themed. Poor, lazy, unimaginative writing.

But really, that's only half of it, and nothing to do with them being characterised as human. They could be covered in hieroglyphs and so long as they thought/acted alien, it wouldn't be so bad. That was the double barrel, not only did they paint a very lazy aesthetic theme across them, they then decided to characterise them all as basically Ancient Egyptian in social structure and behaviour as well. Necrons are just Ancient Egpytians in space with funky metal masks now.

BrianDavion wrote:
the problem with the "horror and menace angle" is it's unsustainable. it only works for so long before eventually it becomes a known old hat thing that inspires yawns not screams

Newcron fluff inspired yawns right out of the get go, imo. Seemed like every addition made to them made them less unique.

 Ketara wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
I would disagree with the idea that newcrons are less menacing.

Perhaps it would be good to separate 'horror' from 'menacing' here.

Napoleon was menacing. Modern day China can be menacing. All that word implies is a looming threat, which I'd agree newcrons achieve.

But horror? Not so much. As Egyptian humans in space they're fully known quanitities to us from the bird's eye perspective. All good horror (and I'm excluding the 'ewww' and phobia factors here like gore and spiders) is ultimately drawn from the fear of the unknown and unknowable. Oldcrons had it. Newcrons don't. And that, to a large extent, is what I miss about them.

It's the difference in 'menace' between a bloke with a knife, and the weird invisible creatures in Birdbox that make people kill themselves. The 'unknowable' and 'horror' aspects magnify the 'menace' aspect to greater and more interesting proportions.

I don't agree. Body horror and existential horror (which is what the necrons evoke), don't work if the victim is functionally mindless, and its basically the only real horror schtick the necrons have. (And like most of 40k, its a horror for reading about in the background, not the tabletop). A shortlived race that sacrificed everything for a devil's bargain upgrade has the potential for horror in a way that killy robots doesn't.* For one thing, its somewhat relatable- the original necrontyr make for good stand-ins for lives that are 'nasty, brutish and short.' The only hurdle is barring memory failures, it looks like they actually made a good trade- they don't dwell on that aspect enough.

As a table top army for a miniatures game, necrons in battle are never going to be scary- everybody is running around killing their enemies on a bloodless and plastic scale, and for the same reason 'unknowable' isn't an achievable goal- they shot people with slightly better boltguns and stabbed people with knife fingers (and both those basic units are objectively pretty terrible in 8th edition- they can't be scary because they're laughably incompetent)

They're one of several evil aliens in warhammer that will kill you or skin you alive and a lack of motive for it doesn't make that childlike bloodletting more interesting.

Voss wrote:

I don't agree. Body horror and existential horror (which is what the necrons evoke), don't work if the victim is functionally mindless, and its basically the only real horror schtick the necrons have.

In the older codex, the Necron Lords still had vestiges of consciousness. Frankly, that's an aspect that could have been really drummed up in subsequent codices if we hadn't taken the 'Egyptians in SPAAAAACE' route.

Also, I don't agree with the first assertion about existential 'mindlessness' not being horrifying either. George Romero would like a word about that one.

(And like most of 40k, its a horror for reading about in the background, not the tabletop)....As a table top army for a miniatures game, necrons in battle are never going to be scary- everybody is running around killing their enemies on a bloodless and plastic scale, and for the same reason 'unknowable' isn't an achievable goal- they shot people with slightly better boltguns and stabbed people with knife fingers (and both those basic units are objectively pretty terrible in 8th edition- they can't be scary because they're laughably incompetent)

They're one of several evil aliens in warhammer that will kill you or skin you alive and a lack of motive for it doesn't make that childlike bloodletting more interesting.

I feel like your issue with my post here boils down to you thinking that since nothing can actively scare us as a tabletop miniature, it doesn't count as horror. Which....well, lore/setting and tabletop are two very different things in my book. YMMV. I can make a tabletop figurine of Alien, it doesn't stop a book or film with it in being a horror concept.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
To the player, who is omniscient, were the older necrons actually more mysterious and thus did they inspire "horror"? I don't think so, as you knew very well what they where after: it was simplistic, it was straight forward, and you even knew who they worked for.

I don't think you truly understand what their motivations were. It wasn't death. It had more to do with turning all the sentient races into cattle, breeding Pariahs, and sealing off the warp from the galaxy.

With Tyranids you die and they move on. Oldcrons keep your race alive, starve your gods to death, make you live in perpetual fear and then periodically harvest that fear with slaughter or the C'tan. It was the grimmest of the dark.

Edit: Oh yeah, and they were robots that didn't communicate with you, so you couldn't negotiate/plea/trade with them at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

As a table top army for a miniatures game, necrons in battle are never going to be scary- everybody is running around killing their enemies on a bloodless and plastic scale, and for the same reason 'unknowable' isn't an achievable goal- they shot people with slightly better boltguns and stabbed people with knife fingers (and both those basic units are objectively pretty terrible in 8th edition- they can't be scary because they're laughably incompetent)

That's also why the 3rd ed book was great. They were deliberately OP, but with an out. They had the "Phase Out" rule. They were designed to be really tough to compete with, and you had to really play against their strengths in order to win. Plus, the basic Warrior was better than a Space Marine, and lore-wise couldn't die.

I'll try to order my answer a bit, the debate is indeed interesting but with this couple posts it's tricky to keep good track:

-When I entered the game is interesting, I'd underline as well that it is important but more in the sense that oldcrons, as far as Ive seen across the various threads, are part of a nostalgia thing. Not to say one can't love it because they find it better written, but still, I believe it more often than not finds itself in the "praise the older for it must have been better before" thing.

-The old necron lore, as it developped from almost nothingness (need to start somewhere!) did mention explicitly that they were once living ancient killing machines at the orders of soul hungry gods who descended onto planets to ripe it's population and harvest it. Sure a few things like Parias make sense, but they are sidenotes and since most of the older, simpler necron lore was known, the player can't really find them scary. You know pretty much everything you need with this.

In the newer lore, if you look more closely, you'll notice that the guideline is almost the same: their actual core, on with the "horror" elements might be relying (even if I still doubt it is even possible in a game of plastic soldiers where you know all you need to), is that they strike fast, are virtually undestructible, and only aim at the domination or temporary slaving of all other life - most likely to scour them afterwards. In the end, even if they won't feed you to somebody, it pretty much ends up the very same way as before. From an in-game universe, same thing: they are getting more often encountered, but always with different puzzling faceits, their resilience and technology is uncomprehensible to Mankind and maybe even anyone save for the eldars. Few realise the threat they pose or understand a bit of what they are, to most they are still those silent, goshtly attackers with unclear goals.

On the whole, they've retained most of their core characteristics but they added more details or us the players to situate us, relate to this faction, and feature it. Quite side they dropped the Pariahs though, they absolutly fit the "trying to reverse biotransference".

-Rulewise, I don't know, I didn't play at the time so nothing to answer.

-Weren't the necron visuals created before newcrons appeared? Plus actually, it is just as lazy as making bugs out of the nids, pseudo roman empire of the imperium? I again firmly believe this is more a matter than an objective reproch to make against the newcrons writting since it could apply to other significant factions, secondly in that regards, angry space skeletons/undead are the laziest of lazy things!

I would like to once again point out that they to my mind have in the process earned a "victim" side, the've become traped by what makes their power and even try to escape it for a few. This, just as the space marines are actually more like conditionned mass killers than heroes, as the guards die courageously in their billions for a regime that oppresses them, as the eldar are arrogant and confident in their old superiority and ridiculously hanging to it espite their dire situation, on the brink of inxtinction... It gives it a very "40k" side as well. But let's say that is more personal.

-As far as the tyranid thing, I mean obviously from in universe view. The wider Imperium knows no more of nids, oldcrons nor oldcrons. Nor any race actually. The point mostly being that from in in universe perspective, they're pretty much as scary as anything, and to us, that's not really scary anyway. But I admit it was not very precise in my explanation there.

-On the tau vs necrons, well, once again, in the old lore or in the newer, no difference: the Imperium being what it is, a race as expantionnist as the tau will only find extermination if the imperium get the least chance of it, or reduced to slavery if they surrender in case the imperials find themselves original. If encountered by newcrons, same scenario. If encountered by oldcrons, same scenario: either wipe out or reduced to a cattle.

I could try to sum this entire post up and make my position clearer this way: the fundamentals seem to be roughly the same. But they've gained structure and detailled writting a major factions wants. It is as if they had gone from being hrud levelled lore to geeting some love and develloping, which is what I like.

Sorry for the atrociously long post, you may have at it if you've found the courage to read it through!

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
-On the tau vs necrons, well, once again, in the old lore or in the newer, no difference: the Imperium being what it is, a race as expantionnist as the tau will only find extermination if the imperium get the least chance of it, or reduced to slavery if they surrender in case the imperials find themselves original. If encountered by newcrons, same scenario. If encountered by oldcrons, same scenario: either wipe out or reduced to a cattle.

I think you missed my point. Let me try to explain better.

Oldcrons v.s. Tyranids.
Eldritch Horror v.s. Eldritch Horror.
Both cannot be negotiated, bargained, or diplomacied with
Both are mindless souless killing machines
Both are created for the sole purpose of annihilating all life in the galaxy and nothing else
Both are tireless never ending onslaught of killing machines. And unlike orks, have no humor.
Both cannot be temporary allies with anything. Even if faced with total annihilation by a 3rd party, they will never stop trying to kill you.
Both will never stop.
I honestly wanna see who would win, and it would be an epic fight.
Both are terrifying killing machines.

Newcrons
Can be negotiated, bargained, and diplomacied with
Is not mindless or souless. Full of political dispute and personality
Is not created for the sole purpose of killing. They have other functions like culture, politics, etc.
They will talk to you and accept your surrender. You can avoid your death by talking to them.
When faced with total annihilation, they will ally with others.
Are not omniciders or genociders. Not even close. They don't pick fights needlessly. They regularly work with xenos (Trazyn especially).

At this point Egyptians in space is accurate because I cannot tell the difference between Newcrons, Eldar, Imperium of Man, or Tau. They all look like humans with different culture and technology to me.
There is nothing horrifying about newcrons. Celestial Orrey and stuff is just advanced tech, like Eldar artifacts and such. Not scary.

----

So is newcrons a good thing? I don't know. Maybe? Opinions differ. But they are definitely not even close to scary/horrifying as oldcrons, and as a fan of scary/horrifying things that don't involve gore, I like oldcrons better. Not saying Oldcrons > Newcrons, I'm saying I like Oldcrons more than newcrons.

Just a quick side-note, but I feel that the Fall of Orpheus Imperial Armour book and the recent Psychic Awakening books are a pretty good example of how horror can be done right with 'Newcrons.'

From Xenology (published in 2006)



At least at the command level, Oldcrons wouldn’t negotiate with you because they chose not to (would you negotiate with wild animals?) rather than because they couldn’t. IMO this is cooler than both the ‘metal tyranids’ and ‘tin humans’ extremes.

WRT personality, the new fluff is just a difference in degree in that there is more personality slightly lower down the rank structure (still restricted to characters only though).

IMO I think this was necessary, but I do think they swung too far the other way in making the Necrons too human and massively overegged the Egyptian theme. (As others have noted above)

Similarly I think the Necrons needed to step slightly out the C’Tan’s shadow, but IMO how the latter ended up was a bit of a travesty.
Maybe it was revenge for them being shoehorned in everywhere in 3rd Ed (which was super controversial at the time).

We already had a nameless faceless enemy with no dialog and no individuality, just a mindless faceless mass of killing machines, the tyranids.

We didn't need another one.

With the newcrons you never know exactly what they'll do. A necron force may attack an imperial system, provoke an imperial fleet to arrive then pull out mysteriously, and just then a tyranid force arrives. Maybe the necrons knew a tyranid force was heading to that system and deliberately attacked it first just to draw imperial forces to it so they could defend it.

Then when the imperials are in a fleet to fleet slugging match with the hive fleet the necrons pop back in and hit the nids from behind very hard.

Do they attack the imperial system after the nids are defeated anyway? Who knows? It's possible depending on the dynasty and circumstances.

I would have liked to see the C'Tan have split off shards of themselves as individual beings to control individual tomb worlds & appear on the tabletop, but have the core godlike entity remain intact. Then mix in that the shards on some tomb worlds have managed to get obliterated or trapped such that they are no longer present, leadership defaulting to Lords who may or may not regain personality in the process. Collectively, Necronsl motivations are ominous but also nonsensical, the unknown objectives of the C'Tan masters being diluted from the Shards which do not have the same cosmic comprehension, then diluted again when interpreted by Lords, and any of the above may be anywhere from cold machine logic to psychopathic.

Now people who want to have their old armies be the same they were have that, but room is opened up for characters with personality. And GW has model space to have C'Tan shard models without the whole star-god being squished into the context of the tabletop.

Lord Zarkov wrote:
From Xenology (published in 2006)

Spoiler:

Even with Old Crons the higher Necron Lords still had personality. The Lord at the end of the book is quite articulate, had spent a substantial amount of time masquerading as an Inquisitor, and conducted a one-to-one interrogation of the main character. He/she also notes that (while few in number) there are still ‘Lords and Ladies of another age’ amongst the Necrons who retain their personalities.

At least at the command level, Oldcrons wouldn’t negotiate with you because they chose not to (would you negotiate with wild animals?) rather than because they couldn’t. IMO this is cooler than both the ‘metal tyranids’ and ‘tin humans’ extremes.

WRT personality, the new fluff is just a difference in degree in that there is more personality slightly lower down the rank structure (still restricted to characters only though).

IMO I think this was necessary, but I do think they swung too far the other way in making the Necrons too human and massively overegged the Egyptian theme. (As others have noted above)

Similarly I think the Necrons needed to step slightly out the C’Tan’s shadow, but IMO how the latter ended up was a bit of a travesty.
Maybe it was revenge for them being shoehorned in everywhere in 3rd Ed (which was super controversial at the time).

You mean the Xenology that was released basically in between the release points of 3rd and 5th and contradicts a lot of stuff regarding Oldcrons and instead more confirms Newcrons becoming a thing eventually?

Except there was some individuality with the C'Tan. It's way better than all the 'characters' being senile old people from a society of idiots.

Oldcrons were actually a threat. They were the oldest beings in existence returning to harvest you because you taste nice. They're eldritch monsters that will kill a galaxy because they want to. Newcrons don't even make sense.

 Ketara wrote:

Voss wrote:

I don't agree. Body horror and existential horror (which is what the necrons evoke), don't work if the victim is functionally mindless, and its basically the only real horror schtick the necrons have.

In the older codex, the Necron Lords still had vestiges of consciousness. Frankly, that's an aspect that could have been really drummed up in subsequent codices if we hadn't taken the 'Egyptians in SPAAAAACE' route.

Also, I don't agree with the first assertion about existential 'mindlessness' not being horrifying either. George Romero would like a word about that one.

He probably would. But zombies are laughable, not scary.
But my point is a 'mindless' creature can't be horrified by its existential state. Its mindless condition makes that impossible.

(And like most of 40k, its a horror for reading about in the background, not the tabletop)....As a table top army for a miniatures game, necrons in battle are never going to be scary- everybody is running around killing their enemies on a bloodless and plastic scale, and for the same reason 'unknowable' isn't an achievable goal- they shot people with slightly better boltguns and stabbed people with knife fingers (and both those basic units are objectively pretty terrible in 8th edition- they can't be scary because they're laughably incompetent)

They're one of several evil aliens in warhammer that will kill you or skin you alive and a lack of motive for it doesn't make that childlike bloodletting more interesting.

I feel like your issue with my post here boils down to you thinking that since nothing can actively scare us as a tabletop miniature, it doesn't count as horror. Which....well, lore/setting and tabletop are two very different things in my book. YMMV. I can make a tabletop figurine of Alien, it doesn't stop a book or film with it in being a horror concept.

I'm struggling to see how zombies aren't scary. Some are laughable because let's face it - some films and such are bad. Very bad.

pm713 wrote:
I'm struggling to see how zombies aren't scary.

over saturation. it's hard to find something scary if you're over exposed to it

BrianDavion wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I'm struggling to see how zombies aren't scary.

over saturation. it's hard to find something scary if you're over exposed to it

I'd argue that overexposure to something scary doesn't stop it being scary but that strikes me as very off topic.

 Matt Swain wrote:
We already had a nameless faceless enemy with no dialog and no individuality, just a mindless faceless mass of killing machines, the tyranids.

We didn't need another one.

And we really needed another faction with human-like personalities? There's way more of those than the alternative.

Killer robots from outer space really didn't need accessible personalities.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
We already had a nameless faceless enemy with no dialog and no individuality, just a mindless faceless mass of killing machines, the tyranids.

We didn't need another one.

And we really needed another faction with human-like personalities? There's way more of those than the alternative.

Killer robots from outer space really didn't need accessible personalities.

How many of those personalities are accessible? Look at the topic with Trazyn. Look at Zandrekh. They have personalities we figured out but they aren't relatable whatsoever (unless you got the Alzheimer's in which case you can relate to Zandrekh).

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
We already had a nameless faceless enemy with no dialog and no individuality, just a mindless faceless mass of killing machines, the tyranids.

We didn't need another one.

And we really needed another faction with human-like personalities? There's way more of those than the alternative.

Killer robots from outer space really didn't need accessible personalities.

How many of those personalities are accessible? Look at the topic with Trazyn. Look at Zandrekh. They have personalities we figured out but they aren't relatable whatsoever (unless you got the Alzheimer's in which case you can relate to Zandrekh).

They seem about as accessible as an Eldar personality. Certainly much more accessible than a C'tan or a Norn Queen.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
We already had a nameless faceless enemy with no dialog and no individuality, just a mindless faceless mass of killing machines, the tyranids.

We didn't need another one.

And we really needed another faction with human-like personalities? There's way more of those than the alternative.

Killer robots from outer space really didn't need accessible personalities.

How many of those personalities are accessible? Look at the topic with Trazyn. Look at Zandrekh. They have personalities we figured out but they aren't relatable whatsoever (unless you got the Alzheimer's in which case you can relate to Zandrekh).

They seem about as accessible as an Eldar personality. Certainly much more accessible than a C'tan or a Norn Queen.

Which CTan are you referring to? The Deceiver, who is really about the only one we have a personality for, the Nightbringer which just hates about everyone, or the other two we literally know nothing about? I'd argue the Deceiver is as accessible as anyone else, really.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
We already had a nameless faceless enemy with no dialog and no individuality, just a mindless faceless mass of killing machines, the tyranids.

We didn't need another one.

And we really needed another faction with human-like personalities? There's way more of those than the alternative.

Killer robots from outer space really didn't need accessible personalities.

How many of those personalities are accessible? Look at the topic with Trazyn. Look at Zandrekh. They have personalities we figured out but they aren't relatable whatsoever (unless you got the Alzheimer's in which case you can relate to Zandrekh).

They seem about as accessible as an Eldar personality. Certainly much more accessible than a C'tan or a Norn Queen.

Not really. I can empathise which someone who wants to ensure the future safety of her children and desperately fights for that much easier than I can the thing that's waiting for the stars to align and is able to time travel for lolz.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
We already had a nameless faceless enemy with no dialog and no individuality, just a mindless faceless mass of killing machines, the tyranids.

We didn't need another one.

And we really needed another faction with human-like personalities? There's way more of those than the alternative.

Killer robots from outer space really didn't need accessible personalities.

How many of those personalities are accessible? Look at the topic with Trazyn. Look at Zandrekh. They have personalities we figured out but they aren't relatable whatsoever (unless you got the Alzheimer's in which case you can relate to Zandrekh).

They seem about as accessible as an Eldar personality. Certainly much more accessible than a C'tan or a Norn Queen.

Which CTan are you referring to? The Deceiver, who is really about the only one we have a personality for, the Nightbringer which just hates about everyone, or the other two we literally know nothing about? I'd argue the Deceiver is as accessible as anyone else, really.

That's an entertaining position for you to take, considering its very name.

Personally I'm hoping they don;t screw up Szarekh. I kind of liked him in "Word of the silent king." It was made clear he does not hate humanity. He simply acknowledges they seek to rule the galaxy and this is incompatible with necron goals. There is no acrimony, just an acknowledgement of reality.

He can even respect humans, if you count sanguinius as human, he was said to have had some favorable opinion of him. He even had a mask made in honor of Sangunius.

The latest release on him says he is in fact sane. It said he feels all the emotions of a living being due to the sophistication of his brain, yet his mind is too strong to escape into insanity.

I hope he acts sane and reasonably, clearly having a bias towards his own people but not having and unreasonable hostility towards humanity. It could be interesting to see a rational mind in the 40k universe once in a while.