Henry's Warhammer

 Ratings for the Ratings god!

To be Henry Cavill is to be largely blessed and a little bit professionally cursed. On the blessed side, you'd be one of the most handsome actors in the world with significant talent who is beloved by the fandoms he touches the world over. On the otherhand, it seems you are cursed to never have a role you can call your own. Or maybe that is blessed, Henry can't really be typecast as anything other than a well-built handsome white guy. (And in Hollywood that ain't a type; it's the whole buffet!) Still, Henry has the star power and charisma to draw swathes of fans, and his face would certainly look fine on the front cover of a movie poster; but for some inexplicable reason the industry just don't want it to happen. Maybe he's secretly difficult to work with behind the scenes? (Really secretly; you'd have thought stories of that would have gotten out after all these years if it were true.) Maybe when he was a child an old crone knocked on his door and he cussed her out for being ugly only to discover the old crone was a vindictive old witch who cursed him to never nail a movie franchise. What? It could happen!

Whatever the case, it just hasn't ever worked out for him. He was one of the leads of the very fun spy action thriller 'The Man from Uncle', which many exuberated declared to be his James Bond; only for that movie to go unloved and never earn a sequel. He became Superman for the DC Cinematic Universe, and fans of Superman seemed to genuine like the take that Henry brought to the role. (I can't say I saw what they saw from that movie; but then I'm not a Superman fan.) But that iteration of the DCEU just seemed to slowly become worse and worse until now when it's slowly been executed out the back of the barn and Henry Cavill has been kicked out of the Superman role before he ever got a sequel. (Which is a shame. The movie titles could have made for sick posters. 'Man of Tomorrow' and some other 'Man' themed title somewhere probably.) Oh, and he was Geralt for Netflix's The Witcher; before that sort of went off the rails and he parted ways with the creators.

Like I said, the man is cursed. Probably since a child. He needs to kidnap a French peasant and make her fall in love with him through dubious methods. (What's that? He's currently in a relationship? Hmm, she doesn't look French to me or like a Peasant... you're only delaying the inevitable Cavill!) But fandoms love him, and why? Because everytime he's ever hinted as his personal life the man seems to be dialled directly into what it's like to be a fan of franchises and fantasy, and not just a fan of movies. Every actor is a fan of movies, it seems; and hearing them gush about their first time rushing to the cinema is cute but not entirely relatable to a world of people who like seeing cool stories more than they do the delivery method. I'm sure Henry is a movie lover as well, but the man is also a franchise fan of so many nerd icons. He plays video games when he has spare time; and not just mobile games- the man is a fan of actual action RPGs! He loves Warcraft and he seems forever reverent to the source material of anything he works on; which is rumoured to be one of the key reasons why he left The Witcher to one of the Hemsworth clones. (I think it was the... Australian one...) He's a nerd like one of us! You know, just... jacked and handsome and successful and... Okay, he's nothing like us; but man does he make for a stunning spokesperson for our hobbies!

In fact, it's actually his passionate nerd-side which is the reason for this topic today, as you've probably clued onto because this news is everywhere. After being kicked out of everywhere in Hollywood it would seem, Henry Cavill is harnessing his time spent in the industry, reaching out to his contacts, and doing the ultimate fan move; he's jumpstarting his own adaptation of his favourite franchise. (Potentially. I don't know if Warhammer is his favourite franchise, but he definitely loves it.) The franchise that Hollywood would absolutely never touch with a tenfoot pole because of how expensive and untraditional it is, the Gothic Grim-Dark (I looked it up this time) Universe of mutual evil known as 'Warhammer 40k' will see a Amazon funded series executive produced by and starring Henry Cavill. And the Warhammer fandom went wild.

Now if you've hung about these woods you might have heard me express my long history with the Warhammer franchise. Or lack thereof. Because I've never managed to get into the franchise through any of it's thousand caterpillar leg entry points- but I've always been curious. Throughout all my explorations into different games, the idea and militarist fascistic pseudo-religious imperialism of Warhammer 40k doesn't really have much of an equal in Sci-Fantasy, so of course I'm going to wonder about something I've never experienced before. Recently, however, the 'try everything and see what happens' approach has been striking ever closer to my sweet spot of interest. Space Marine 2 looks like a stupid amount of violent fun. I just found out about an X-Com style tactical game in the Warhammer Universe called 'Chaos Gate', oh- and then there's 'Rogue Trader'. The game I have sweaty dreams about at night. That's pretty interesting too. And now Henry Cavill is going to be fronting a series? Consider me intrigued!

The appeal of Warhammer for me comes from the proposition of a universe without any good people or righteous hero. There are the loyalists, the heretics and the hedonistic xeno scum who litter the stars. Everyone one of them a vain and selfish subculture beholden to their rigorously fascistic formalities and a society driven by warfare. The key visuals of this universe are the bloodied and violent Space Marines with their oversized cauldrons and Chainsaw swords; demonstrating exactly everything you need to know about the Warhammer world. These are a people born and bred for endless battle in a holy war against basically the entire rest of the universe. Which is what makes the scope of an actual series set within this franchise pretty much endless.

Of course, Games Workshop are renowned for their tendency to give the licence for making games based off their franchise to anyone with a spare fiver in their back pocket. Quality control hasn't been super on point with this series and recently the table-top fans have started to feel a little forgotten by the main manufacturers. But a series with Henry has the potential to change all that and I just know that Games Workshop are feeling their buzz of opportunity on the air. D&D has that honestly middling looking movie coming out, but a Henry led Warhammer series could leapfrog that just by the merit of who's leading it. This could be the rocket into the mainstream that Warhammer fans could never have dreamt of and, judging from the few Warhammer fans I've met in my life, are probably decently afraid of.

I'm chuffed about so many in-roads to this new franchise opening up, and am only vaguely worried about the inevitable congestion this is going to cause. Inevitably even if one of these projects turns out to be a total crapshoot, the others will raise the profile of the franchise regardless, and now the efforts of all these disparate and largely unconnected creatives is going to be subconsciously filled away under 'The Henry franchise'. I know that there's an unspoken trust that is filled upon fandom heroes like Henry, but I'm a realist at heart so I'm going to have to remain cautiously optimistic. If he can get the money, maintain the creative control, and not screw it all up in the creator's room; we could be looking at a new age of adaptation, of gaming relevance and of TV. So no pressure, Mr Ex-Superman. No pressure at all... 

Okay, I'm going to geek out about Rogue Trader some more

 New trailer, new rant.

Oh, it's no secret how not-immune I am to the throes of fandom and getting lost in the steam of excitement for an upcoming game, but I managed to supress that irrational side of my quite deftly in recently times. Largely because there just haven't been a great many recent games that have caught fire in my old little shrivelled heart; but if there is one that absolutely has; it's Owlcat Games' Warhammer CRPG. You see, I've never actually had a chance to get into Warhammer, for as diverse and rich it's worlds of lore are, the hobby has been this dense and yielding web that no one wanted to open up to me. I knew someone who themselves was a miniature fan, but refused to talk about his hobby when pressed. There was just no avenue into the world of the dark future. And don't even ask me to muscle into the franchise through all of it's heady lore material, endless wiki pages and Books! Where does a guy even start there? And then I found Owlcat.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned what drew me to Owlcat, but it was delightfully circumstantial. I had just started getting into Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and was looking around for CRPGs to pick up once that game was over; not wanting to end my fun with the game genre. I found a video on Youtube just listing off a bunch of CPRGs and one of them caught my eye for the title 'Kingmaker', in which you serve a kingdom as king. "Huh" I thought, "I've heard of RPG's that try similar concepts, but they always turn out undercooked. I wonder if CRPGs could do the idea any more justice." And so I threw that game at the top of my back catalogue list. Fast forward a few months later and I was trying out, and falling in love with, Pathfinder: Kingmaker. A truly unforgiving and challenging RPG unlike any other I'd played before. That was what solidified Owlcat Games as my RPG developer of choice for this age.

RPG developers seem to go through this cycle, for whatever reason. Unlike FPS makers or driving game developers, they're not content in sticking to what makes their games great and enjoyable; they're always looking to change up their craft and become something more. It's admirable, if it weren't also consistently so tragic. Bioware kept reiterating upon themselves and rewriting their core, until they grew and rewrote themselves so much that they forgot how to be an RPG developer in the first place. Implacable iconic RPGs started to become pastiche and flaccid. Depth gave way to bloat. Bioware trickled out into a façade of a developer that shares the same name on the building, but none of the talent inside of it. (A shame.) Bethesda went through something similar, although on an even bigger stage given their fame. It didn't help that they were undermined and outperformed by a guest developer on one of their flagship franchises. But now even their up coming Starfield looks okay. Like a game more interested in treading any waters that aren't RPG related, rather than a AAA evolution upon what an RPG can be.

Owlcat haven't lost themselves yet, and they don't yet appear to be on that path to self ruination. And I want to drink deeply of their glory days for as long as they last because I really need a consistent hit maker back in my radar to renew my excitement in this art we call game making. As such I've given myself over to trusting them fully. I had never really heard of Pathfinder before I played Kingmaker, and allowed their experienced eyes to introduce me to the franchise and what is so great about it next to D&D. Wrath of the Righteous will give me even more of that, once I get around to it, and I'll surely enjoy that just as much. But then they turned around and offered me something I didn't know I wanted out of them; an accessible in-road to the Warhammer sci-fi universe. And what could a growing boy like me do but salivate at the mouth?

Rogue Trader is going to take a very brave divisive step with it's gameplay, they're going full turn-based without stop and pause like their previous titles have had. Now personally I'm a huge fan of games built for turn-based action, as for me it speaks of a confidence in the tactical suite to be robust enough that slowing down the gameplay and allowing the player to go over all their tools, rather than instinctively default to their favourites in the heat of a full action battle, won't unravel the complexity of the gameplay. Having no idea how the Table Top of Warhammer is even played, I can't say whether this is a fitting choice or not, we're just going to have to see on the day of release. I will say, however, that I did not expect the game to go this route. Not with the plethora of guns on hand. I figured that's be ideal for stop and start gameplay; so I'm curious right now.

The scale of the game the team have embarked on is what really gets to me, with a galaxy map that is going to cover dozens of differing worlds across solar systems that I can only assume the Rogue Trade is going to steadily assume governance over as they stamp their Imperial zeal over the cosmos. Making all these worlds feel diverse and different from one another is going to take a hell of a lot of work from the asset department; at the very least. This just might be their most ambitious title yet, and Owlcat has not been a company to lack for ambition in their relatively short career! Already with this game I'm noticing a lot more complexity with environmental textures, as required given the setting, which has the potential to provide some really impressive sights for us once we start getting glances at some of the oppressive opulence of the Imperium. (Although this game does take place far away from the heart of the Empire. As, from what I can tell, does most Warhammer.)

I'm also very interested in the array of companions we're going to be introduced to throughout Rogue Trader and want to just dive into their stories and motivations. I think one of them is an ex-Space Marine, unless I totally misunderstood his character bio. There's also a Sister of Battle joining the crew and even an Alien! (Or 'Xeno' to use the game's parlance.) I roughly know of the very stringent rules of the Warhammer universe, and the intense xenophobia that the dark future dwells in, so I was actually somewhat concerned about the breadth of really interesting and tied up characters we'd get to interact with. It's one thing having companions that are individually interesting, but to have them also tied to significant pillars of this universe, and thus serve as an ambassador for that pillar, whether through their adherence to their creed or defiance of it, is what makes companion characters the best they can be, in my opinion. Right now we're getting crewmates from just about every interesting corner of Warhammer. I'm still holding out hope for an Orc mate though; maybe that'll be the DLC down the line... 

What I've loved about this whole process is how involved Owlcat has been with the community. Dropping beautifully scripted articles going into depth about the factions of the universe and the companions we're going to meet, to frankly discussing gameplay systems and even giving us fun time-lapses of assets being modelled in real time. It's a very unique development-consumer relationship for a game of this size which makes someone like me, interested in both the game and the process which makes it, glued to their Youtube community page. It makes it easy to surround myself in the world of Rogue Trader and never let that candle in the window die out for what I hope is going to be another entry in my list of 'must play CRPGs'. I love the RPG resurgence we're seeing this decade, and companies like Owlcat are, currently, the leading reason why.

Warhammer 40K: Rouge Trader

 For the Emperor 

Writing my way through this blog sometimes feels like going through a series of baring confessions where I'm forced to reveal my embarrassing shortcomings in my presentation as a 'nerd' or 'proponent of geek culture'. Each time it sort of feels like I'm stamping on my own foot as I bare myself, but there's no better place to write my truth than out here on this blog so I guess this is simply the way it's going to be. And yes, those of you who are particularly perceptive might be seeing where I'm going with this. Despite being an ostensible nerd I have never actually played, or even gotten interested in, the famous role playing universe known as 'Warhammer'. Aside from a small amount of time playing Vermintide, but even then I was more interested in the actual concept of a first person horde-mode game than I was in the world and universe. (Which was not exactly helped by the fact that Vermintide straight up introduced itself as taking place in a setting that was bordering on the end of the world. No hyperbole either, the entire setting was being retired completely and so it just felt like there was no point coming to learn anything about the dying world before me.)

That is not due to some inexplicable lack of exposure, either. Warhammer has been everywhere when I was growing up, from several Game Workshop shops being nearby my local shopping center, to odd school acquaintances being fans of the 40k setting. Although both seemed excessively embarrassed to admit to and share their obsessions with me, even knowing exactly how I was and the things that I liked, so I guess you could say circumstance just regularly danced around me when it came to this franchise wrapping it's claws on my throat. Which is just a huge shame considering the niches of this franchises offshoots really do seem up my street. You have the cool gothic sometimes close to dark-fantasy setting for the old Warhammer which I think just oozes character and atmosphere, you have 'Age of Sigmar', which I'll admit to being totally clueless on, and then there's the 40k space setting which is all intergalactic empires and bloody space wars and all the stuff I love seeing in my space operas. But it's all just a little- intense, I guess.

With my fictional worlds I love to feel as though I've really entered an entire foreign society that simulates life in times of peace as well as bitter strife. I want to be able to recognise what a normal life looks and feels like in this universe, so I can understand how out of the norm I can be when turning everything upside down. 40k doesn't seem to have that 'normal life'. Everything from the smallest degree to the wildest war is about tyranny and battles and space religion and alien war machines and chainsaw swords and Space Marines. It's all just a lot, you know? Which is why some fantasy worlds like this, and Halo for that matter, have had a hard time resonating with me even though they seem like my cup of tea. (With Halo the problem is more that it's 'normal life' aspects are totally boring and uninspired.) But if there is any developer who can not only challenge my presumptions on that, but totally and effortlessly change my tune; it's going to be Owlcat games.

Owlcat, for those that don't know, are the powerhouses behind the amazing 'Pathfinder' game series which brings that DnD derivative to the video game market in two tough-as-nails CRPGs that conjure entire full campaigns for the enterprising player to work their way through. Kingmaker being an extended journey of the trials and tribulations to become the fresh monarch of a kingdom beset by a powerful and ancient curse, and 'Wrath of the Righteous' detailing a holy crusade against an army of demons who threaten to enslave and wipe out the world. Both games are said to be incredible (I'm still going through my Kingmaker playthrough, and loving it) and at this point anyone who has had the pleasure to enjoy their games is going to be salivating at the mouth to try anything with their logo attached to it. Which is why I have absolutely no reservations when I'm told their next game is going to be 'Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader', despite my own lack-of-history with the source material.

'Rogue Trader' is apparently a title that reaches back into Warhammer antiquity as one of the first campaign books that introduced the world of Warhammer 40K to a great many people through the lens of a space Privateer licenced by the good graces of the Emperor. Fitting with Owlcat's design philosophy of mixing matured and complex CRPG systems with totally realised and important metagames, Rogue Trader is going to be presenting the player with a huge 'void ship' and the control of all the varied crewmates kept therein. It is the Trader's job to mount their mercantile empire as they expand the horizons of the Empire ever outward to cement the tyrannical dominion of the human empire on all who dare shun their graceful boot on their necks.

This game is offering to present a space hopping adventure across the fringes of 'civilised' space in service of an all-powerful deific ruler who demands subjugation, and not in the 'backwards anti-hero' manner that Tyranny does. (Not to knock Tyranny, I loved that game.) This is an invitation to explore the vast reaches of the Warhammer universe and do so alongside what sounds like a diverse cast that touches the various popular areas of this lore. Including a Space Marine. I had no idea they sometimes ended up planet hopping without their military cohorts, but I guess today is a day to learn. And being as this is Owlcat, you can fully expect some unforgiving and violent encounters that will totally rip you to shreds for the mere crime of approaching them even remotely unprepared.

I love this company and their approaches to RPGs. They're like Bioware if Bioware ever managed to go past their experimental stage of RPGs and created a totally focused and full adventure to the tune of Origins but bigger. Rogue Trader is set to be another sweeping epic from their studios and I'm absolutely willing to have their lens be the glass through which the light of Warhammer finally shines down upon me. I was very much in the same position of blissful ignorance towards Pathfinder before Kingmaker, and now I'm somewhat more invested and interested in their world than I am in DnD! This company is really good at introducing these long lived franchises to new faces, and I'll put my faith in their abilities any day of the week. Plus it's great to have a Warhammer game which isn't just constant action coming our way, which allows people like me to get involved with that 'normal side of the universe' I'm always harping on about.

Rogue Trader is still very much in the development stage, given the fact that they're still working on finishing up the season pass content for 'Wrath of the Righteous', so it makes sense for the team to be a little sparse on details right now. But this is a game I want to follow completely from conception to birth, because like Larion studios I consider Owlcat to be one of the great hopes of Western RPGs for this age. If you're a fan of CRPGs I would recommend taking a look at what they're doing for yourself, although I'm not sure if the pre-orders they're already taking are quite an advisable investment whilst we know so little of the actual gameplay of this game. I know I said I trust them and all, but CDPR makes me hesitant to trust even those I love. Oh, and if you haven't; play the Pathfinder games. Seriously.