Have you ever looked at the legs of a space marine? For example, have you ever looked closely at how their thighs connect to their hips and wondered what’s going on under that armor? Their stance is so wide that it’s impossible to imagine a normal male standing like that, which is fine, because space marines are not normal males. They are genetically engineered transhumanist super soldiers, and part of the surgical modification that makes them space marines is apparently to allow them to stand as if their legs were bolted to the sides of their waists.
On the table, they’re fine. In fact, they’re great. The space marines have a powerful physique and are effortless to paint. The giant shoulder pads aid to focus when you look down on them, and their armor makes them stand out in a way that even with overly exaggerated arms and heads, 32mm human figures can’t achieve.
In a video game, that’s a problem. “When Games Workshop first created the marine miniature, they didn’t think he’d be running and shooting around in all that armor,” Saber Interactive inventive director Tim Willits told PC Gamer at Gamescom recently. “It was definitely a challenge to make him run, land, jump, and fight in armor that’s a little unrealistic.”
However, in footage such as the last one Angels of Death Movie Traileryou stop thinking about their scale and focus instead on how awesome they look in action. How did Saber make their movements look fluid? “Iterate, iterate, iterate,” is Willits’ answer. “The team started early on with walk cycles, where we had a space marine walking around in gray armor in gray rooms. The team just had to focus on walking, running, and stopping.”
In the game, the size of the marines will matter most when they are attacked by the alien tyranids. Space Marine 2 uses the swarm technology that Saber developed for the zombie game World War Z and is still working on. “When the same game director came to make Space Marine 2, he had completely new and improved swarm engines,” Willits says. “In World War Z, the zombies come in and hit a certain spot and then they disintegrate. They come in one at a time, but they are zombies and they are not very astute. Because they are zombies. But then in Space Marine 2, when that swarm finally reaches that tipping point like a wave and the tyranids start spreading out, everyone thinkand everyone is thinking about kicking your ass.”
Whether simply being a large, muscular boy will be enough to protect us when those tyranids attack us remains to be seen. We’ll find out when Space Marine 2 launches on September 9th.
