Roleplaying games fans may be looking forward to ending a year of incredible releases with Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader.
24.08.2023 - 18:19 / pcgamesn.com / Space
Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 is looking rather good. Building on the high-octane over-the-shoulder action of the first, this co-op third-person fantasy game will see you facing down huge swarms of Tyranids, with the insectoid xenos arriving in vast swarms courtesy of developer Saber Interactive’s World War Z tech. As Space Marine 2 creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick tells us in an interview at Gamescom 2023 ahead of the Space Marine 2 release date, the likes of Aliens and Starship Troopers were big influences on the team.
We’re in the second level of the game, fighting through a muddy, horrible battlefield reminiscent of World War I – explosions ringing and shouts echoing through the air. Then, they appear. Hundreds of meters away at first, hordes and hordes of tyranids running in packs towards us. In no time, we’re absolutely swarmed.
It’s a moment that’s immediately reminiscent of Starship Troopers, so we ask Hollis-Leick if that was an intentional choice. “We use some of the Starship Troopers scenes for references for how we wanted those swarms to take place,” he remarks, specifically picking out the attack on Whiskey Outpost, where the troopers attempt to defend a base as the hostile bugs pour over the walls.
The tone of Space Marine 2 is much more serious, however. “Whereas Starship Troopers is a bit more comical and cartoonish – and the first [Space Marine] was at times like that too – with this game we’ve got a very realistic approach.” The direction to the voice cast this time, therefore, was less one of jovial bravado, but rather “this should feel like a struggle for your life,” he notes.
Another key influence is the Aliens series. “A lot of these designs from when these creatures were first created were intermixed with H.R. Giger-type thoughts about Xenomorphs and things,” Hollis-Leick explains, “so those seeds were planted back then.”
As for how the swarms are brought to life, Hollis-Leick credits Saber Interactive’s former groundwork. “In World War Z, we developed our own technology, our own engine with the swarm engine, and that allows us to have upwards of 500 actual enemies on screen at the same time,” he remarks. “We had vistas in the distant background, thousands of zombies swarming down a hill, then the mid-ground slightly less propagated, and then 200 guys in the foreground.”
That tech brings the scale the team wanted for Space Marine 2 to life. “We felt that the story of a Space Marine cannot be told without that epic scale,” he continues, “there is a lot of programming wizardry that goes into it, we have to be very efficient with graphics. We’ve got much better machines now than we did ten years ago, so we’ve crunched the numbers in a way that allows us to fit all of that
Roleplaying games fans may be looking forward to ending a year of incredible releases with Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader.
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 will return players to the power-armored boots of Space Marine Lieutenant Titus as he dispenses ultra-violence in the name of the tyrannical Imperium of Man.
Saber Interactive creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick has revealed that the studio has been taking inspiration from a Warhammer 40,000 fan-made series for its upcoming action game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. In an interview with IGN, Hollis-Leick talks about how the series, Astartes, was a big influence on the game.
Space Marine 2 does an impressive job representing the ‘stompiness’ of the Astartes in video game form. It turns out the developers used Warhammer 40,000’s greatest fan-film as a reference point.
Titus is back. The unyielding Ultramarine captain from the original Space Marine was a huge part of its success, and now, despite things looking less-than-positive for him at the end of the last game he’s returned. In the interim he’s clearly been through a few trials. He’s been demoted to lieutenant, he’s now a Primaris – an even bigger, stronger and taller breed of Space Marine – and he’s now well over 200 years old. He’s still, however, just as firm and fearless as before.
Earlier this week I attended a hands-off preview for Owlcat's forthcoming CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, which is shaping up nicely, inasmuch as there's anything "nice" about a Warhammer 40,000 game. Rogue Trader is a party-based affair in which you play a sort of Warhammer East Indies Company, tasked with flipping outlying worlds to the Imperium. In order to carry out this goal, you're granted a lot more individual license than most human residents of the 40K universe. You can, for instance, recruit ungodly xenos to your grimdark troupe, operate a private armada, and even colonise planets and turn them into your own personal piggybank. Just watch you don't push the whole "heresy" thing too far.
A whole host of new units, including Space Marine Warhammer 40K reinforcements and a new addition to the upcoming Old World game, have just been unveiled at the Nova Open event in Washington DC.
Focus Entertainment has shared extended gameplay footage — and by 'extended', I mean 'a combined 25-ish minutes worth' — of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and the Don't-Nod-developed Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden as part of a mini-showcase aired this evening.
With Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 slowly stomping toward release later this year, publisher Focus Entertainment has dropped a new extended gameplay trailer showcasing our Ultramarine hero, Lieutenant Titus, strolling through some mega-gothic ruins and doing battle with a genuinely impressive number of Tyranid enemies.
Warhammer 40k fans are chomping at the bit for the next video game offering, Space Marine 2. After more than ten years since the first game launched, fans are eager to see more of the upcoming shooter title, and the game’s publisher Focus Entertainment knows it.
The setting of Warhammer 40,000 is known for two things: being grim and being big. It’s a galaxy of massive scale and scope, inhabited by the dystopian Imperium of Man, dozens of deadly alien Xenos, and countless worlds under siege. This is a setting where humanity often dwells in hive cities, urban sprawls that consume entire worlds and contain billions and billions of poor souls. Space Marine 2, due out later this year, looks like it embraces the sheer size and scope of 40K, taking the player through the infrastructure of the Imperium.
We still don’t know when we’ll be able to play the unexpected - but welcome - Warhammer 40k Gears of War-a-like sequel Space Marine 2, but we can at least get a look at who we’ll be shooting in the face when it arrives. 10 minutes of extended gameplay footage have teased the appearance of Chaos marines in the upcoming shooter, along with lots of slow, stompy walking through its grimdark universe.