Board Thread:Warhammer 40k Video Games/@comment-178.36.99.9-20130504142427/@comment-6078851-20130607035118

when things are considered to have a 'mature theme' that generally implies blood and guts and/or sex. however the vast story behind warhammer 40k is a mature theme. while blood and guts (and twisted sex if you follow slaanesh) are in abundance throughout 40k they are not at the heart of 40k - vast crumbling empires and individuals fighting for their souls, for me at least, is what 40k is really about. and while this can be told in a child friendly manner the bottom line is that it isn't, and shouldn't be.

now i'm not one to tell people what they should and shouldn't choose to get into (i was around 5 or 6 when i first saw alien, i never had nightmares, it became my favourite movie and still sits in my top 3) as different things affect different people differently. that being said though i feel 40k should have at least a 15 rating given the level of graphic detail that goes into the universe of 40k - acid eating faces to the bone, space marines standard ammunition which literally explodes enemies, the torture someone endures when trying to keep their soul to their self and by extension the torture most sentient beings are subject to at one time or another in the defence of their beliefs, not to mention the eternal torment awaiting those who fail to resist the dark demptations of the gods - these are genuinely mature subjects which are generally told very well and very graphically.

i think GW get away with such a young rating because so much of the universe is told in text, and for a reason i have yet to fathom the majority of books don't have certificates, and considering the content of so many books i'm stunned that this is still the case. while tabletop 40k can be played by children (if they have the attention span to learn the rules) without any knowledge of the lore the fact is that 40k isn't the tabletop game (it used to be), or the computer games, or the card games etc, these are all tiny facets of the galaxy and millenia spanning lore, lore that is told through the most horrific of circumstances.

isn't the world being 'dummed-down' enough? 40k (for now at least) remains refreshingly unapologetic about the complexity of itself, lets keep it that way.