When you think of Warhammer 40K, you probably think of space marines. You know the ones: big, grumpy death machines in power armor, killing legions of baddies with their bare hands while communicating exclusively in grunts of "brother" and "Emperor". Just a few of these super-sized soldiers can change the course of an interplanetary war – a power fantasy sold phenomenally well in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, in which you play one aforementioned grumpy death machine tasked with saving several planets from alien hordes and Chaos-worshiping cultists.
As I've already mentioned in my Space Marine 2 review, the game excels at making you feel as powerful as a space marine should – puny humans die with a single shot from your boltgun, while even towering Tyranid warriors are no match for a few well-timed parries. Yet just as impressive is developer Saber Interactive's eye for scope, which captures the immensity of the 40K universe like nothing else. War constantly rages in the background of your own battles, and it genuinely feels like you're just one small cog in a much larger fight. Besides leaving me craving more of its campaign, it's also got me wondering if there are other 40K stories ready to be told in game format.
First and only
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Enter Gaunt's Ghosts. For those who haven't read author Dan Abnett's book series, it follows Commissar Ibram Gaunt and the Tanith First and Only: a regiment of Imperial Guard whose home planet was destroyed whilst they were being drafted into the military. Excelling at stealth operations, they're often deployed when brute force alone can't win the day. They're sneaky, vulnerable, and still very human. In short, they're everything a space marine isn't.
It's a breath of fresh air, because let's be honest: it's hard to make space marines, as characters, interesting. Their over-the-top oo-rah attitude is enough to make even the most over-enthusiastic military recruiter blush, their interests beyond killing are virtually non-existent, and the rule of cool leaves little room for anything else. I'm not saying they're always dull – there are plenty of 40K books that explore their lives and kinship incredibly well – but it's hard to scratch beneath that surface at the quicker speed an action game necessitates.
On the other hand, a setting like Gaunt's Ghosts serves character drama up on a silver platter. The Tanith First start off as a highly dysfunctional gaggle, with each member of the regiment still processing the trauma of losing their loved ones whilst fighting in near-endless wars. Some characters are brought closer together through their shared bonds of violence, while others are pushed closer to the evil they're meant to be battling. It's a human lens that, on the game side of things, has been significantly under-explored.
40K's best shooters, Space Marine 2 and Boltgun, are both set in the big stompy boots of space marines. It works incredibly well for that power fantasy I mentioned earlier, but it's a perspective that warps everything around it. Demons beyond mortal comprehension have no chance at being intimidating when you can burst them with your bare hands, while a single Tyranid Hormagaunt – capable of dicing up humans like a chainsaw through soggy paper – can't so much as scratch power armor. But as soon as you start pitting space marines against equal foes, you lose the all-powerful fantasy that makes them fun to play in the first place.
The answer, then, is to branch out from space marines. Stories like Gaunt's Ghosts work so well precisely because its protagonists are tiny, squishy underdogs. There's a brilliant moment in Space Marine 2 where you're stalked through service tunnels by Tyranids, who scuttle in the walls and cast ominous shadows around every corner before disappearing. It's very cool, but not quite as intimidating as it could feel – whereas if we were tip-toeing through those corridors as an Imperial Guardsman, it would be downright terrifying. With that shift in perspective, you're the expendable one. A series like Gaunt's Ghosts offers the perfect middle ground between frantic horde survival and tenser, more grounded action – our protagonists are still fighting in the thick of planet-wide battles, but aren't one-dimensional killing machines capable of bolt-gunning their way through anything.
In a practical sense, there are plenty of books from the series that could be adapted – my personal favorite is Necropolis, which is about a hive city besieged by Chaos – but you could set a game within (or between) any of the Tanith First's campaigns. Even if we forget Gaunt's Ghosts, I'd be happy with the spotlight turned back on regular ol' humans. Space Marine 2 will rightly remind most players of Gears of War, but my immediate reaction was that it felt like a Black Library story made real. That's down to its phenomenal art direction and sense of scale – not so much its floods of Tyranids, but the way that its hive city on Avarax genuinely feels like it can house billions, or the muddy battlefields of Kadaku seemingly spanning for miles. It's proof that we've got the technology to bring Warhammer's world to life – so why don't we see who's really living there?
