Why Do We Even Want to Be Space Marines?

What is the fantasy of a Space Marine? When we look at those square-jawed men with their tactical crewcuts and buxom eyebrow ridges, what is the idea we are wanting to inhabit? This is the line of questioning I keep close at hand when I begin playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Do we really just want to be giant, fascist, gun-toting Winkelvosses in tank-like bodysuits, screaming into the vacuum of space about “the Xenos Menace,” a prayer candle of Nigel Farage burning at a makeshift altar in our sanctified dropship? Surely that can’t be it, can it?

My first encounter with Space Marines was happenstance. I wasn’t familiar with Warhammer or Games Workshop. There was just a box on the shelf at Electronics Boutique in 1993: Space Hulk. I’m sure I’d seen ads for it in Computer Gaming World, nestled alongside Sprint offers for two mediocre Sierra games with a new long-distance plan and Scorpia being unrelenting in her criticisms of the latest Might & Magic. I’m sure I was convinced the white-armored behemoth on the cover was the titular space hulk—firing a burst from the Storm Bolter in one hand while his Power Fist’s energy field crackled menacingly. Spot lights from his shoulders illuminated the six-limbed Genestealers lurking in the dark corners of the frame. It’s a tremendous image for a 10-year-old. My time with Space Hulk then was one of the inefficiency of youth set up against a game that demanded strategic and situational sense I’d yet to develop fully, directional sense I still haven’t got a hang of, all while multitasking a squad of Space Marines in two separate game layers in real-time. 

But let’s back up. In order to figure out the fantasy of what a Space Marine is, we need to understand what a Space Marine is supposed to even be. In previous editions of the 41st Millennium, they were humanity’s righteous bulwark against the vast, horrifying darkness of space. Now, in the Era Indomitus, with the return of the arisen ubermensch, Primarch Roboute Guilliman, they are its scourge. 

Simply put: They hate Xenos. They hate Chaos. They love the Imperium, their Brothers, and to varying degrees, the Codex Astartes. And they are expressly forged this way. That last part is key. 

Recruited as young teens, aspirants are plucked from the most brutal living conditions in the darkest, most violent and pressurized corners of the Imperium’s Hive Worlds, the rough and untamed Feral Worlds, or the too-hostile for settlement Death Worlds. Those who live long enough to receive the gene-seed—a catch-all term for the catalysts that transform a man into an Astartes—undergo a brutal transformation, and the survivors become truly massive. Eight feet tall, they have more bone, more muscle, more blood. Space Marines even have more organs—19, in fact, beginning with a secondary heart (like Time Lords) and culminating in the Black Carapace, an organic fiber substance that grows and hardens under marines’ skin and forms the direct link between the power armor’s “Machine Spirit” and their central nervous system. Like the indomitable Astartes Power Armor, many of these organs are designed to identify, seal out, and neutralize outside harm, blights, and contaminants in all forms. This is an enduring metaphor for these hermetically sealed, holy warriors. Anything that could corrupt the Emperor of Mankind’s perfect mass-market marauders simply must be kept out. They are armed to the teeth with boltguns of all manner, fucking chainsaw swords, plasma and Melta, a wealth of explosives, even the occasional sledgehammer or Power Fist. They are the squad of ultimate badasses. They are pure, they are terrible, they are God’s holy fist. 

But sometimes, it’s not enough. Strength falters.

Buying into the ultimate power of the Space Marines opens up the possibility for that power to be questioned, even challenged. Fear, horror, the exhilaration of near or total failure. For some the fantasy of the Space Marine can be its own catalyst for the release valve we think of in From Software games. Nowhere is this more potent than in Space Hulk. Upgrading the standard Astartes with the much tankier and more imposing Tactical Dreadnought “Terminator” armor, Space Hulk is a fantasy of managing a squad of marines through dark corridors in titanic derelict spacecraft. There is only one enemy type—the six-limbed and vicious Genestealer. Managing the tactical top-down layer is complicated by rotating between Space Marines in a first-person viewport for real-time combat. Switching between tactical pauses and active combat introduces a staccato frenzy instead of a chess-like calm. In the end it comes down to two things: Your marines are bulky and stiff, Genestealers are murderously lithe. This is Nazi tanks vs Soviet infantry. As RPS’s Alec Meer put it, “The panic and terror of facing 90 degrees away from your enemy, and knowing that you can’t do a damn thing about it before your lower intestine spills onto your feet, is still something pretty special.” Space Hulk taps into the paralytic fear of Lt. Gorman freezing at the wall of static calling the names of dead marines to no response. Like the Genestealers themselves, Space Hulk is brutally efficient in indulging you with the hard limits of industrialized power.

In contrast to Space Hulk, the more modern era of 40K has skewed toward the raw power fantasy of the Space Marine. But what even does that mean? In the modern era, beginning with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, the franchise has leaned heavily into the unassailable solitary hero as default. In the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, so much depends upon a blue space marine.

The hero of the Space Marine series, Demetrian Titus, is special. For starters, unlike the rest of his Ultramarine brothers, he views the Codex Astartes as less a strict doctrine, and more guidelines for interpretation. The spirit of the codex, not the letter. It is this difference that emboldens him to pop on a jetpack and blast his way out of an Imperial Legion Thunderhawk in mid-descent to crash into an Ork ship and go ripshit like a nightmare ’00s action hero. 

He is also, as we learn at the end of the first Space Marine, impervious to Chaos’ corruption. Despite this, in the end, he’s hauled away by Inquisitors to be horrifically tested for some sign of Chaos, of corruption, of dreaded heresy.

Nothing terrifies the Adeptus Astartes like Chaos. Nothing terrifies the Adeptus Astartes but Chaos. Somewhere along the line, in an edition of Warhammer 40,000 that I simply didn’t pay attention to between the second and the current 10th edition, the balance for the Space Marines shifted to a pure war against Chaos. The Xenos Menace, rather than being a diverse array of terrifying threats in their own rights, is merely a vector for Chaos, something to soften up, entice, or distract the Imperium’s forces. This is the overriding stance of Space Marine and its sequel. Orks in Space Marine and Tyranids in Space Marine 2 each used to be compelling and menacing counters to Space Marine might, but now they exist only to swarm about for a few missions until Chaos Space Marines can show up as the “real” threat. But remember, our hero Titus is immune to the true hazards of Chaos, so does this even matter anymore? What is the balance to the Space Marine fantasy in this instance? Power needs friction to strike against or the fantasy can’t get enough traction for fulfillment. 

In art (both official and fan) throughout the Warhammer 40,000 universe, there are many depictions of Space Marines overwhelmed, mid-rout, swarmed by Tyranids, Orks, especially the forces of Chaos. A helmet-less Astartes surrounded by his dead and dying brothers in a mound of their broken bodies, a fleshmetal cairn of triumphant defeat. When I first began playing 40K in 1996, even the sales-pitch dioramas in catalogs showed asymmetrical forces of Blood Angels under immense pressure. 

None of that exists in the universe of the Space Marine games, not for the player, at any rate. By the start of Space Marine 2, Titus is cleared of heresy (obviously), and even in a scripted death to an endless swarm of Tyranids there is no obvious threat. Thanks to the terrifying operation to create new and more IP-able super marines known as Primaris Astartes, his narrative death is only temporary, and no one will dwell on it. Especially Titus. There can never be real danger to our Space Marine, not even his own thoughts. 

In the final mission of Space Hulk, there is nothing but time for thought. After 20 harrowing excursions into cramped hallways of Tyranid nest and the titular labyrinthine space hulk, Sin of Damnation, filled with heavy casualties and Genestealers bursting through walls to take out three Astartes before you can even react, “Avenged” is a sedate, solitary affair. There are enemies, but they go down quickly, and they aren’t plentiful. You walk from one end of the map to the other to retrieve a long-lost gene-seed. Without the constraints of disk space, a modern version of this mission would be laden with audio logs about Captain Lotharius’ century old last stand. As it existed in 1993, this level is simply a spartan pause for reflection. What have we done, what was the cost, and in the end, was it worth it? 

Consider for a moment the Space Marine’s relation to both the Doomguy and B.J. Blazkowicz. Both are straightforward: One punches holes in literal demons. One punches holes in literal Nazis. In the case of demons, who could argue with shooting make-believe demons? In the case of shooting Nazis, we take for granted how much of an overused cartoon we’ve made them. Doom as it’s grown has attempted to add layers of meaning to shooting demons externally through the origination of Demons. Wolfenstein has attempted to make connections between its comic book Nazis and the banality of American white supremacy. It’s not much, it’s not really successful and both fail in other areas, but it’s attempting to do something with the fantasy. The two Space Marine games both so completely remove the titular force from its thematic and symbolic place in the world-building of 40K that it can’t articulate the relationship to fascism the Adeptus Astartes occupies. The Inquisition is only a bad thing when it’s done to the player character, Titus, and only because we can point to the screen and say “but he’s not a heretic.”

Throughout Space Marine 2, the limitations of power are hinted at. The failures of the Imperium peek through at the edges. There is the real potential to explore what it means to wield a Space Marine’s power when every system that creates and supports it is gasping its last. But never is any of it engaged with. The Astartes are never questioned, and they’re not about to question themselves. Space Marine 2 presents an enemy that’s a hybrid between demon and cartoon Nazi and a hero who has already been cleared of the possibility of wrong doing. When a narratively impervious hero is paired with perfect parries, perfect dodges, and regenerating armor and health based on how many sick “glory kills” he does, it’s not just about the imposition of morality or not—it’s a dead end future of dopamine releasing button presses. Even Smash TV in all its juvenile absurdity engages with the hellscape of American Capitalism that we’re currently living in while racking up a body count that would make any Astartes super jealous. 

What is the fantasy of a Space Marine? I suppose that it’s ultimately having the appearance of limitless power in service of an ideal. On its own that’s not very compelling. It’s a fix you can achieve anywhere. Space Marine 2 feels ashamed or scared of asking questions, of making players feel uncomfortable, of engaging with the possibilities that Space Marines open up. It doesn’t want to ask questions about where our power comes from, who has access to it, or what any of that means—especially in the face of a system of empire that’s been in a 10,000-year-long collapse. It’s enough to go out and kill with it simply because that’s videogames. In the grim darkness of the present, can’t we at least demand more of our make-believe wars than something so impotently boring?

Dia Lacina is a queer indigenous writer and photographer.