Space Marine 2 takes its visual inspiration straight from the board game

In fiction Warhammer 40,000The Space Marines are the perfect bio-engineered soldiers, transhuman demigods armed to the teeth with bolter rifles, power fists, and heavily modified armor. They are the poster boys of this world and the original Space Marine video game in 2011 was one of the best manifestations of this ultimate power fantasy. As the release date gets closer Space Marine 2 In September, the game’s developer, Saber Interactive, revealed more details about how the game draws heavily on the board game, as well as its visuals to assist bring Titus and his squad to life.

In the campaign, Titus will be much more dour and reserved than in his original portrayal. “Titus was taken by the Inquisition and it affected him. It happened because he was very open and it cost him dearly,” Grigorenko said. “Now he’s back in the same company he led in the past and almost no one knows him.”

Titus must traverse two planets; the first is the Death World, a place barely habitable for humans. “The entire surface of the planet is covered in deadly and completely inhospitable jungles,” Grigorenko shared. “It was never a pleasant place to live, but now, due to the Tyranid invasion, it’s even worse.”

The second planet is a hive world, similar to the world depicted in Warhammer 40,000: Dark Adventure. Hive Cities gather billions of people into giant vertical cities that range from underground apartment blocks to massive Gothic spires. These are dense, highly detailed environments, and when Tyranids swarm in en masse, the game can get very dense. In a tech demo I tried out last year, Titus’ controls felt similar to how he felt in the original Space Marine. The enemies, however—the swarming, endless hordes of Tyranids—are entirely different.

“Tyranid swarms were of course a huge technical challenge. But we have our own engine that is ideally suited for such tasks,” Grigorenko said. “The previous version of the engine was used for World War Z; back then it allowed us to have 500 zombies on screen. However, with Space Marine 2“We had to go even further, both in quality and quantity.”

While the single-player campaign focuses on facing insurmountable odds against an asymmetric enemy, the multiplayer mode focuses on six-on-six Space Marine combat.

Photo: Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment

Ultramarines and Thousand Sons are two Space Marine Chapters that appear in the main campaign, albeit with completely different stories and allegiances. Multiplayer becomes even more detailed. Players can engage in Space Marine battles by choosing from six classes: Tactical, Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark, Sniper and Heavy. Through class loadouts and customisation, players can also change every element of their armour – gauntlets, battle gear, greaves, helmets, pauldrons and chest plates can all be swapped out. With this in-depth system, players can recreate the dazzling yellow Imperial Fists, the mysterious and cloaked Dark Angels, the Nurgle-infested Death Guard and the furious berserkers of Khorne.

It’s great to see so much love and attention given to the board game that gave us the original Space Marines. Hopefully we’ll see some fun board variants as original cosmetics, like classic helmet with beak. I didn’t play Space Marine 2 since the technical demo, but the snippets of multiplayer content are intriguing.

The board game can be a bit tardy, requiring dice rolling, movement timing, and the occasional check of the codex — but Space Marine 2 promises to be a much faster and more brutal version of transhuman combat and eternal war, while still paying homage to the roots of the game world.