Devoneaux said:
My argument is that it's hard to feel invested in the overarching story thus far because almost nothing of consequence has really happened. One battle amounts to about as much as the next. If the Imperium and the chaos marines have managed to last this long at each other's throats, then how important can one planet or another really be?
Warhammer 40k is choc full of planet sized battles consisting of near limitless armies biting it by the tens of thousands. How can one really care when that's all there ever is; constant battles beyond the scope of human comprehension? Does it never just come off as devalued after awhile? "oh look, another big battle over a planet containing a super weapon. How quaint. It's not like I haven't seen this a million times already..."
That said, if what you're saying is true and there's gonna be some sort of big massive finish where important stuff happens to vital places/characters? Well, I guess i'll withhold further judgement till then.
I would say you might be missing the point... a little. I know everyone else is screaming this at all the naysayers, but... 40k doesn't work as an epic narrative. The story isn't the war, the story is the characters.
It's easy to look at the location in Space Marine or Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and say, "well? So what?" But that's kind of missing the point. The point of Space Marine wasn't the planet, that was just the arena. The point was Captain Titus. The story of Space Marine was the journey of Titus, and the people he interacted with. Just like the story of DOW2: Retribution was the story of Apollo Diomades (and the other various factions' heroes).
When you look at it all as a single world, it is pretty overwhelming, and to be honest, in that respect, it's a bit like the real world: when you step back, and look at everything that happens all at once it is a bit more than most can handle, so they filter it down to what they can understand and shove the rest in a box marked "do not open until the end of days" and forget it.
When you're looking at the reason, there is a fatalistic element to 40k, but the real focal point is the characters that inhabit it and their individual fates, not the course of the galaxy, which is beyond anything they can really comprehend.
) I can see there is apparently a very strong stylistic resemblance (memoires, annotated by someone else) and reading through it there are some very strong direct links to the Cain novels. While Flashheart obviously took a cue from Flashman I don't think the Caiphas Cain novels got the Flashman element from Flashheart.
