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[EnigmaticHat]

A more direct explanation of the joke is that Imperial Guardsmen are ordinary soldiers in the sort of sci-fi universe where people say things like "space marines are the only hope of humanity".  AKA they die a lot.  Commissars are assigned to Guardsmen units and told to enforce morale by any means necassary.  If a guard unit routs commissars can and will execute the commanding officer on the spot.

Like most of what the Imperium does in 40K, this could be described as "ruthlessly ineffective".  I mean it helps in the board game but plausibly those guys would be murdered by their own men within a week of starting the job.  On top of that, why would you execute the officer if the rank and file run?  It makes no sense and in the 40K universe a single guy shooting you with a pistol while you and 40 of your buddies run away isn't nearly as scary as what that guy wants you to stand in front of.

[Mech#4]

I wish for a game, and point one out if you know one, for a game, an RPG preferably, that's got a very in-depth magic system, in the fashion that you have to prepare spells, collect ingredients, and generally don't have a lot of mana, so scrolls would actually be important. So unless your like the arch-mage who's extremely talented and practiced, you can't go around starting apocalypse-level firestorms willynilly. Similar, mayhaps, to the narrative magic of the DnD universe.

Hn, wracking my brain here. I remember playing a top down RPG that had ingredients for casting different spells. It was 3D and you had to mix different ingredients together to create spells, like "Green Moss" with something else to cast a fireball. It might've been a spinoff of the Might and Magic series. There wasn't any preparation though, it was using different combinations of ingredients to discover different spells.

Ultima VI and VII have in depth spell casting. You need to learn the spell by either buying from a mage or finding a spell book with it inscribed within, you then need to have the right ingredients to be able to cast the spell. So for a Create Food spell in Ultima VII you need Ginseng, Garlic and Mandrake Root in your inventory then you cast the spell from your spell book.

[boatie]

This is probably one that somebody will point out already does exist, but:

A game that looks like Ultima Underworld 1 or 2 and plays like Legend of Grimrock. Basically an old school graphics first person dungeon crawler with all of the modern fixings. Legend of Grimrock is a lot of fun but I feel like it's a little to "serious"(?) and just want to play Ultima Underworld without the dated GUI

[Parsely]

A more direct explanation of the joke is that Imperial Guardsmen are ordinary soldiers in the sort of sci-fi universe where people say things like "space marines are the only hope of humanity".  AKA they die a lot.  Commissars are assigned to Guardsmen units and told to enforce morale by any means necassary.  If a guard unit routs commissars can and will execute the commanding officer on the spot.

Like most of what the Imperium does in 40K, this could be described as "ruthlessly ineffective".  I mean it helps in the board game but plausibly those guys would be murdered by their own men within a week of starting the job.  On top of that, why would you execute the officer if the rank and file run?  It makes no sense and in the 40K universe a single guy shooting you with a pistol while you and 40 of your buddies run away isn't nearly as scary as what that guy wants you to stand in front of.

Nah man. Commissars are some pretty scary dudes. You should wiki more of their exploits. And they usually shoot just everyone who retreats, and they kill officers if they think they're doing a bad job.

[LordBaal]

Well in fact is a mismatch. Some are indeed as described by EnigmaticHat, others are more lax or practical. The latter tend to outlive the former. This is pointed out throughly (and is one of the main points) and even spelled out by Caiaphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM.

[WillowLuman]

Until someone told me it's not meant to be taken seriously, I always held Warhammer to be one of the dumbest franchises I'd ever heard of. I still don't like the Aesthetic, though.

Is it not grimdark enough for you? Needs more skulls!

A Metal aesthetic is fine with me. It's the "LOL ME STRONG BRANES R FOR PEOPLE WHO DESERVE TO DIE" look. I.E., giant armor with huge hands and shoulders, making the head proportionally tiny. Some designs have that as the character's natural proportions too. The aesthetic seems prevalent in most things with "War" in it: Warhammer, Warcraft, Gears of War.

[LordBaal]

I see Warhammer in two phases, the one of them is a meta, in universe outwardly propaganda of this huge idiots running around doing those great feats, dying by the dozen and everything so grimdark the reaper would look like a girl in a flower dress. The hype is high and this is where people like Matt Ward and his twisted version of 40k resides. This is the scary people that see the game as a dogma and take it seriously, forgetting how 40k started out as a simply parody. Of course WHFB is less prone to be into this place.

Then we have what I call in my head the real 40k (I know, I'm crazy), a place where yes, people die by the million, but still some of them get a laugh before being eaten/fried/raped/killed/blown up/eaten again and so on... I'm more into the histories of the lowly and humble, and the somewhat more realistic accounts of how humans employing stupid tactics, strategies and equipment get their asses handed to them most of the time.

I too dislike the huge gloves of doom which are utterly unpractical both on and off a battlefield. Starcraft being the only one giving some mild explanation as the suit and weapons simply being too big hence you actually pull some strings on the forearm of the suit, kinda like the ones in Avatar.

The intro video of Dawn of War, the classic one where marines fight the orks uphill shows marines with regular hands and gloves according to it.

[Jopax]

Well they're only kinda stupdly big in artwork and whatnot, and that's usually to be taken as an artists impression or propaganda art since it's always blown out of proportion and common sense.

Models and games have them mostly correct (models slightly less so because you need to be able to paint that shit properly, so they're kinda big headed there). Also do remember that spess mahreens are modified as much as a store bought tomato is nowadays so their physique is not exactly the same as a regular humans.

Edit:

And before I forget, I want a mecha/plane/tank figthing game of some sort. Think War Thunder or WoT but with vehicles being able to turn into mecha of various kinds and abilities.

[WillowLuman]

I don't care what justifications they have for it in settings. Tiny heads just look dumb. I don't like them in Warhammer, I don't like them in Warcraft.

[alexandertnt]

I strongly agree with HugoLuman. The aethetic is annoyingly common in video games, and it looks real dumb regardless of any fictional excuse made up to justify it.

[Graknorke]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Warhammer started the trend of 'huge bodies tiny heads' in a sci-fi military context. So it's not particularly jumping into the cesspool of identically ridiculously proportioned people.

[WillowLuman]

It's not a matter of originality, I'm not mad because it's overused or think it's ripping off anything: I just simply don't like the look.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Warhammer started the trend of 'huge bodies tiny heads' in a sci-fi military context. So it's not particularly jumping into the cesspool of identically ridiculously proportioned people.

Look, to be honest you're blowing it somewhat out of proportion (pun not intended), really it's like larger bodies, relatively larger, but proportionally slightly smaller heads. Really.

[WillowLuman]

It's the massive, oversized, view-blocking shoulder pads that really make the head look small.

[Parsely]

Uh, they don't have giant hands..

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He's wearing a power fist. Plus you'd have big meaty claws too if you were wearing that fucking armor anyways.

Spoiler: Their Proportions are Fine; Armor Just HUGE Bcz Sci-Fi (click to show/hide)

I'm totally with you guys about weird proportions (because it actually does occur in video games a lot (lookin at you GoW)), but I'm 100% positive that the only reason Space Marine heads look big is because the armor is gigantic in comparison to their actual bodies (they're wearing a shitload of it).