Another small thing about warhammer 40k that make me sad: too little unique worldbuilding/speculative biology.
I feel like, 80% of the time, the way writers create planets in 40k is "take an environment of earth. Make it planet size. Maybe add one or two funky creatures, still vaguely recognisable. Here we go, a full ecosysthem!"
And like, okay. I am not asking for "the future is wild" level of sillyness, the writers have other worry like plot and characters to think about, and a in universe ecplanation is that human collonized a LOT of the galaxy before the Imperium even start looking.
But still.
I feel like there is a distinct lack of alien lifeform that are completely remove from human stuff, especially non sapient one. We sometime get cool teasing of world building, like the walking forest of Tanith, or the frozen world at the beginning of the first Eisenhorn book where people go into cryo sleep (I need to try that book again), or even the drakes of Nocturne!
But it's still...
Idk. Lacking?
This is a galaxy, full of life. You would think that, on occasion, they encounter giant gaz planets full of floating fauna. That sometime, SM would stop at some some kind of weird, biblically accurate angel that is just the equivalent of a local racoon and go "what the actual fuck". You would think that those world arent just there to be weird, semi gimmicky enemy for various factions. That on some home planets, human uss giant isopod as beast of burden because everything is 100th time the size of earth due to high level of oxygen or something.
Things get mentioned, usually once or twice, and then never used. I *know* the galaxy is suposed to be human-centric, and that most of the wonder of the galaxy probably got terraformed away, but... Idk.
I still think there is many missed opportunity.