Space Marine 2 takes its visual inspiration straight from the tabletop

In the fiction of Warhammer 40,000Space Marines are the ideal bio-engineered soldier, transhuman demigods armed to the teeth with bolter guns, power fists, and heavy-duty armor. They are the poster boys for the setting and the original Space Marine video game in 2011 was one of the best manifestations of that ultimate power fantasy. As we get closer to the launch of Space Marine 2 In September, developer Saber Interactive revealed more about how the game borrows heavily from the board game and graphics to bring Titus and his crew to life.

“(Our visual inspiration) is 99% based on tabletop models and almost nothing else. Believe it or not, the production of every character in our game started with building the miniature,” Dmitriy Grigorenko, lead game designer, told Polygon in a recent email interview. “It’s easier to understand how the model works and how to animate it when you can rotate it with your own hands. Of course, there were some adjustments that had to be made so that the final character doesn’t look like a scaled-up toy, but it all starts with miniatures. In the end, even people who weren’t Warhammer fans have a huge collection of miniatures on their desks.”

In the campaign, Titus will be considerably more somber and reserved than his original portrayal. “Titus was taken by the Inquisition, and that took its toll. It happened because he was very open, and it cost him a lot,” Grigorenko said. “Now he is back in exactly the same company that he led in the past, and almost no one knows him.”

Titus must navigate two planets; the first is a Deathworld, a place barely fit for human habitation. “The entire surface of the planet is covered in deadly and completely inhospitable jungles,” Grigorenko said. “It was not a nice place to live anyway, but now with a Tyranid infestation it’s even worse.”

The second planet is a Hive World, similar to the setting of Warhammer 40,000: Dark Tide. Hive cities contain billions of people in giant vertical cities that range from subterranean housing blocks to towering Gothic spires. These are dense, highly detailed environments, and when the Tyranids swarm en masse, the game can get busy. During a tech demo I tried last year, controlling Titus felt similar to how he did in the original Space MarineThe enemies, however—the swarming, endless hordes of Tyranids—are very different.

“Tyranid swarms were of course a huge technical challenge. But we have our own proprietary engine that is perfect for this kind of task,” Grigorenko said. “A previous version of the engine was used for World War Z; it allowed us to have 500 zombies on screen. However, with Space Marine 2“We had to become even bigger, both in quality and quantity.”

While the single-player campaign is all about taking on an asymmetrical enemy, the focus in multiplayer is on six-on-six battles with Space Marines.

Image: Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment

The Ultramarines and Thousand Sons are both Space Marine chapters that appear in the main campaign, albeit with very different histories and allegiances. Multiplayer gets even more detailed, with players able to jump into Space Marine combat choosing from one of six classes: Tactical, Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark, Sniper, and Heavy. Class loadouts and customization also allow players to swap out every single piece of their armor: gauntlets, wargear, greaves, helms, pauldrons, and breastplates can all be swapped out. This in-depth system allows players to recreate bright yellow Imperial Fists, mysterious and cloaked Dark Angels, the Nurgle-infested Death Guard, and the raging berzerkers of Khorne.

It’s great to see so much love and attention put into the board game that gave us the original Space Marines artwork. Hopefully we can see some of the fun tabletop variants originally as cosmetics, like the classic beak helmet. I have not played Space Marine 2 since the tech demo, but the glimpses emerging from the multiplayer content are intriguing.

The table game can be a bit slow, with dice rolling, move counting, and the occasional codex check – but Space Marine 2 seems like a much faster-paced and more visceral take on transhuman struggle and eternal war, while still paying homage to the roots of the setting.