Most of Those Creepy Flying Things in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Aren’t Lobotomized Babies — the Truth Is Much Weirder

ign.com:

Space Marine 2 has broken free from the shackles of its Warhammer 40,000 setting and made inroads into the gaming mainstream, and that means there are plenty of players new to its grim dark far future.

For them Space Marine 2 is a somewhat bewildering experience, as it leans on much of the lore that Warhammer 40,000 owner Games Workshop has built over decades, with hundreds of novels, rule books, and magazine articles fleshing out the background fans know intimately.

Warhammer 40,000 fans have enjoyed seeing newcomers react in shock at just how grim and dark Space Marine 2 is. And it’s not just the extreme gore, mass death, and terrifying alien enemies that appear in the game either. Perhaps the most disturbing element of Space Marine 2 that newcomers are seeing for the first time are lobotomized babies.

In Space Marine 2, I really respect how cherubs are one of the first sights to see when on the barge. It's a good tone setter for those who don't really know what they're in for pic.twitter.com/D3ZHWUiEQY

A tweet from Forbes writer Paul Tassi, below, sums up the reaction to Space Marine 2’s winged babies, who seemingly fly about the Battle Barge, the spaceship on which the Space Marines live and plan their missions, performing monotonous busywork.

uhhh what pic.twitter.com/j7BvzzcHv3

On the face of it, the apparent “good guys” of Space Marine 2’s story have lobotomized babies cleaning up their mess. Sound messed up? Welcome to Warhammer 40,000’s Imperium of Man, a fascist regime always on the brink of extinction and an extreme vision of the far future in which pretty much anything goes.

Warhammer 40,000 is intended to be grim and dark, and so stuff like this is par for the course (lobotomized babies aren't close to being the most disturbing thing in the setting, if you fancy some light reading, check out what the Drukhari get up to in their spare time). Space Marine 2's far future is a truly miserable place to be, a place in which countless humans die every day from all