Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine arrived at an interesting time in the gaming timeline, as Gears of War and other cover-based shooters still cast a long shadow over the action game genre. Relic Entertainment’s Space Marine game was a major divergence from those games, an anti-cover-based shooter where players would dive into a mob of Orks and carve their way to victory with a high-powered chainsaw-sword.
In Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, developer Saber Interactive is aiming to retain that signature combat while building on it to make players feel like a seven-foot-tall engine of destruction. Speaking to GameSpot, Space Marine 2 creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick explained how Saber Interactive wanted to combine violent warfare with quick-thinking tactics on the battlefield.
“We wanted to create a combat mechanic to sustain a player through the whole of a campaign, and so we wanted to be more nuanced,” Hollis-Leick said. “The Tyranids are a more tricky adversary, and especially with the Swarm mechanics which you didn’t have in the first game, we needed a system that would allow you to move through large numbers of enemies in a sort of strategic way that would characterize the unique combat style of a Space Marine.”
This approach was designed to reflect the “hundreds of thousands of hours” that Space Marines spend in training simulators, forging them into human weapons that can come up with unique ways to handle every single enemy they encounter. In Space Marine 2, battlefield training isn’t just brutal when put into action, it allows a player to seamlessly flow through multiple actions as they clear the area of threats.
“To be able to throw a grenade, blow up, thin the swarm, move in, tackle a few enemies, one jumps at you, you grab it by the tail, smash it, shoot the head of another one, parry the warrior come back, stab him, rip his head off, and then move on to the next guy, I think that was the kind of feel that we wanted to create for the player, that they were sort of flowing through the enemies,” Hollis-Leick said.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 doesn’t have a confirmed release date yet, but it is currently scheduled for a 2023 launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. To find out more about the return of Captain Titus and the Ultramarines, you can read up on how Saber Interactive has modernized the Space Marine experience and hands-on impressions from the Gamescom showfloor.
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