Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 studio went to the 40K museum for research

Well worth the wait

The highly anticipated sequel to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is over a decade in the making, and fans are thrilled to finally be getting some more info about the game. It was officially announced at the start of this year with a thrilling new trailer, and today during the PC Gaming Show, we got to hear from the devs at Saber Interactive themselves about their experiences bringing Space Marine 2 to life.

Saber’s chief creative officer Tim Willits is a developer with a ton of experience, going back to 1990’s id Software days when they were making influential titles like Hexen and the ever-iconic Quake. Willits let us in on the origins of the space marine trope, which is well known in games from the Doom series: “I bet many people do not know that the original DoomGuy was actually a space marine inspired by an even older space marine, which is the Warhammer 40,000 space marine.”

Willits also told us what we can expect from the gameplay, and from the sound of it, we can expect quite a lot. “The combat in Space Marine 2 is a mix between in-your-face melee combat, along with some really cool over-the-top weapons. We looked at the original Space Marine game where they had a lot of this ‘push-forward combat’, which has inspired many other videogames,” he said. “That ‘never-stop, never-take-cover combat’ is integral to Space Marine 2, along with these really cool, powerful weapons. You’re either tearing up enemies in front of you, or you’re blowing ’em away from the back of the battlefield. It’s the best of both worlds.”

One of the most endearing details of development the team mentioned, though, was their trip to the Warhammer museum in the UK, which is known as Warhammer World. Creative director at Saber Oliver Hollis-Leick said that upon seeing the cases full of beautifully painted and posed Warhammer 40,000 figures, he and Willits turned to each other and said, “We need to make this come alive. I don’t want to look at this, I want to be inside this. I want to be gunning down tyranids by the thousands.”

You can tell by this last statement alone just how much love the team at Saber has put into this project, and I for one can’t wait to see what they have in store for us. Even without any kind of release window on the horizon just yet, we’ll still be looking forward to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2‘s upcoming release on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.