Space Marine 2 creative director discusses new customization options, potential story DLC, and IP restrictions

The fact that Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 has turned out to be wildly successful doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, as it was pretty darned awesome. The bit that might be surprising, instead, is that Saber Interactive may be working on even more content than we know of.

This information comes from an impromptu Q&A held by the game’s creative director, Oliver Hollis-Leick, over on Twitter. According to him, there absolutely will be narrative additions to Space Marine 2, whereas up until now we only really knew about what was coming as part of the game’s first year of post-launch content. Broadly, the season pass focuses exclusively on cosmetics, while the “Battle Plan” for year one also references free PvE additions via Operations, Horde Mode, and so on. No story content was mentioned there, making Hollis-Leick’s commentary quite important in the grand scheme of things.

Creative Director suggests Space Marine 2 DLC is on the way, but there are restrictions in place on certain content

Now, to be perfectly fair, it’s not impossible that Space Marine 2‘s Creative Director was simply referring to sprawling new Operations here. Since all the Operations actually take place in parallel with certain campaign missions, they obviously have narrative significance even if it doesn’t seem that way at a glance. On the flip side, the campaign is done and dusted, which means new Operations are probably going to have to exist beyond the scope of the main story.

It’s an interesting predicament, especially since Hollis-Leick doesn’t outright deny the idea that all-new factions of combatants might make their way into the game down the line. So, an Ork-themed Operation is not out of the question at all, at least judging by the responses left by the creative director.

Fans of Chaos Astartes don’t need to worry, either. When asked whether the forces of Chaos might receive some manner of customization in the future, Hollis-Leick said that “it’s likely [Saber Interactive will] add it eventually.” For those who haven’t had the chance to step into the shoes of the Adversaries, Chaos Astartes cannot be customized in any meaningful way in Space Marine 2, even though they’re a fully playable faction in the game’s PvP mode. Obviously, this puts a dampener on things for fans of the faction, so it’s good to see that Saber is seemingly looking into upgrading the Chaos item roster down the line.

Hollis-Leick’s commentary is very interesting from a lore point of view, too, as he’s been freely responding to various questions from community members that help contextualize Space Marine 2‘s story. From a more practical point of view, though, the most interesting bit comes from the several comments that Hollis-Leick left when asked about certain weapons, such as the Storm Bolter.

It would seem that the IP rights holder for Warhammer 40K, Games Workshop, is being very careful with Space Marine 2‘s handling of the license. For example, when asked about potentially including the Chapter Mater of Blood Angels, Dante, would “need a big story involvement,” said Hollis-Leick. “Each of these characters are very precious to GW and they require a plot weighty enough to allow us to use them. Not something we could drop in a DLC probably,” he explained. Further, he also said that “We have a lot of IP restrictions on what [weapons] we can and can’t use with different characters and armor types.”

In summary, then, Saber Interactive won’t be able to go mad and allow us to quad-wield Storm Bolters as a Scout Marine, sadly. More content is on the way, however, and if the base Space Marine 2 experience is anything to go by, we’ve got lots to look forward to. Now, if only Saber could buff those bolters in Operations Mode by a smidge…