Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior

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For the Greater Good!

Welcome, new Fire Warrior. Here is a shitty weaboo dagger, shitty 'pulse' guns that are weaker than a cap gun, and here's your first sortie... You'll take weapons that won't suck from the enemy. You'll face every human stain known by this moment. Worry not, they're completely brainless. You'll also have to wreck a bunch of machines and demons. Worry not, they're differ only by HP amount. No, you won't get to ride a Battlesuit or vehicle, you wouldn't get to ride anything, rookie. You won't even see them in action. Have a shitty day.

THQ released a piece of shit called Fire Warrior soon after the initial release of the Tau Codex. Taking the role of Kais, a Shas'la about to undertake his first trial by fire in an attempt to rescue an Ethereal, it was a thoroughly unremarkable introductory FPS, similar to many that follow any successful or hopefully-successful movie. More so that it was made to be console-compliant, so you could say your farewells to anything good in gameplay mechanics and shooting in particular, which is damning for a game that supposed to portray and promote an exceptionally shooty faction. Play this only if you are a hardcore Tau fan, otherwise go hulking or smurfing. But even then Tau were represented much better in the Dark Crusade, so you're better off skipping this one. There also are Tau-mods to many actions and RPG's that outclass this crap. The only good thing about this game (and book, which is worse than the game by a fair margin) is the cover art.

Also this is the only known occasion of a Fire Warrior a) killing someone in melee, and b) killing a greater demon. Whelp, even you could poke someone to death with a dinner knife given unreasonable amounts of trying, and the demon in second question is a birdie of Tzeench, and they're notoriously brittle plus it's brain-dead like rest of the game enemies, and since the mind supposed to be its greatest weapon... Still, that's not the Tau way.

Highlights include bolters working pretty close to the fluff: semi-automatic mini-rocket launchers (actually, they're pretty close to a goddamn Soundstrike Missile Launcher now that we think about it), some badass dialogue, Tom Baker and Sean Pertwee (son of John Pertwee, the Third Doctor, who is becoming a recurring guest star in 40k), and BRIAN BLESSED and somewhat interesting level design.

Not-so-good highlights include shitty hit detection, pulse rifles acting like assault rifles (They aren't suppose to fire in an automatic pace; that's what Pulse Carbines are for), pulse rifles with the same range as lasguns, shooting down a Valkyrie with Pulse Rifle fire, killing a LORD OF CHANGE ON YOUR OWN. Managing to sword a Space Marine is hilarious though. The fact that you're essentially a one-man unstoppable killing machine is rather silly, for better AND worse, especially considering you're just a Shas'la on his first day of duty (If you were around a Shas'vre or Shas'O in a functioning battlesuit, it would have been slightly more realistic to be the Tau version of Rambo).

If it makes you feel better, try to pretend you're the half-crazed Tau version of Sly Marbo, sole survivor of a butchered squad and chopping people up with the Shas'ui's (supposedly purely-ceremonial) bonding knife and screaming like a maniac as you fire a burst cannon into a squad of stormtroopers. Disregarding all that is canon really helps the atmosphere and generally helps make the silliness a little more enjoyable. Don't forget to scream "WRRRYYYYYYYY"!

Building upon the above, it's entirely possible, nay, nearly probable, that you're actually the Tau version of Grendel, the single most awesome (not to mention lucky) man ever to grace the Imperium.

The novelization of the game suggests he was being helped by Khorne (which makes even less sense that you're eventually trying to stop a Lord of Change that for some reason has Khorne's favor). If anything Kais could be being influenced by a certain self-loathing asshole that loves to fuck with his fellow Chaos gods because reasons. Hell, it's also implied that Kais was being guided by the Lord of Change himself in his Tzeentch fetish for Just as Planned. Needless to say, said Lord of Change got his feathered ass handed to him.

Like we said, this is a silly game. Then again, it was written by the same writing group known to contain a Black Irish Leper and as such must be treated as such; also remember that it came out before Tau's 4th edition codex, when they were still ironing out all the wrinkles of Tau's fluff (Khorne still has no excuse).

tl;dr: Fun, perhaps, but unbelievably stupid. saved by the fact that you can shoot some Ultrasmurfs if you are so inclined.

But Then Suddenly

Word of god from Dark Crusade's development team is that Shas'o Kais, the protagonist of Fire Warrior, is the very same Kais that is the Tau Commander in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. This is actually kind of clever, since after all the shit Kais wound up drowning in pulse fire/photon grenades/railgun slugs/etc in Fire Warrior (including a Greater Daemon, apparently), Kais was certainly qualified for the position. According to interviews, it's never fully stated that such is the case in-game (Kais is an extremely common fire caste name, as evidenced by the fact that Commander Farsight has it, among others, but that him being the same Kais from Fire Warrior was expressly intended as a polite nod towards the earlier game.

....They're both THQ games.

You shouldn't be surprised; Eliphas the Inheritor came back like 3 times able by chaos bullshit which a Tau does not have.

The Novelization

Believe it or not, they made a book about this game. Written by Simon Spurrier, it is a lot less goofy than the game, thought that alone is not saying much. It still struggles a bit in the sections where it cannot avoid some of the more egregious crap that happens in the game, but it balances those out with several moments of awesome too.

It goes into a lot of Tau philosophy and psychology, often switching perspectives between characters both to give a wider view of the conflict and to bring their views of the situation into contrast. Lots of pointless characters get introduced to give the narrative weight and get the reader empathizing, and many of those characters are killed off a paragraph or so after their introduction and exposition of their back stories and aspirations just to underscore how fucking Grimderp the setting is.

It is also interesting in that it gives snippets of Ethereal perspectives that both impart the evidence of them making Blatant power trips, using pheromone conditioning, and displaying their absurdly derp levels of ignorance towards the dangers of Chaos counterbalanced by their genuine desire to bring prosperity to the Tau race, foster order and cooperation between the castes, making a cursory attempt to get along with the rest of the galaxy, and wrecking the shit out of the races that are a threat to everyone. Though one could dispute the last statement since the fluffy Tau, at the time of Fire Warrior, were kind of trying to give three-fingered handshakes to factions like the Dark Eldar and Orks. At least they were smart enough to yank said hands back from the Nids before they were bitten off, because the mere thought of them jetting some Por'el diplomats to a Hive Fleet just epitomizes failure.

There is lot of semi-poetic description going on, with characters observing to themselves the vagaries of the universe they inhabit. For example, this is an excerpt from a scene in which Kais comes on the remains of some Fire Warriors and Imperial Navy Armsmen in the wake of a Chaos attack:

• "Here a tau arm lay, knuckles clenched, beside a de-limbed human corpse. There was a symbolism here, perhaps. A sense of unity, a sense of physical sameness. Given a talented enough por'hui journalist, this scene might mean something. `In death, we're all the same'..."

Heavy shit right there. Khorne cares not from where the blood flows, red or blue is all the same to him, no matter what side of the conflict you are fighting on. In this universe, everyone ends up butchered meat, no matter which species they are.

Speaking of Chaos, the book does justify a lot of why Kais is kicking Imperial ass left and right. You know the big bad of the piece is a Changer of Ways of Chaos Undivided, right? Did you really think that a lone Fire Warrior doing improbably well would not be a case of Just As Planned? Or that Khorne himself is not also capable of pulling off a different plan of his own? The Tau are as a whole resistant to Chaos, but not completely immune. When they find one Tau with enough rage to get Khorne's attention, even despite the weak warp connection, that starts the Chaos Gods thinking about trying a few experiments.

This is probably the only time you will hear a Tau yelling Khorne's favorite line...

Which would certainly explain the cover art quite nicely.

The end also has the main character's commander talk about the Nature of the Greater Good in a Galaxy like 40k has. More or less the Tau ideals are impossible to truly reach, but what's really important is trying to reach them. In other words "the Galaxy is GrimDark enough as is, let's not add to it."