“It was a huge amount of work.” A deep dive into the challenges of getting Space Marine 2’s story right

There is probably no other IP with as much detail, world-building, or lore as Warhammer. It’s been around for almost 50 years. 50. Everything done within it has to match the ridiculous amount of knowledge that has been written in books and magazines over the years. As you can imagine, faithfully recreating Warhammer in another medium is tricky. That’s something Tim Willits, Chief Creative Officer at Saber Interactive, was keen to talk about at the Space Marine 2 booth at Gamescom.

The long-awaited sequel to the cult classic from the Xbox 360 era, Space Marine 2 immediately exudes respect for its source material. You don’t even have to play it, it just oozes from the trailers and screenshots. Every piece of armor, every NPC, every building. It’s impressive to look at, and playing it takes it one step further. It feels like a labor of love, with an emphasis on labor.

“It’s a huge challenge,” says Willits, pounding the table in line with the aspects of Warhammer lore that the Sabre team had to incorporate into their upcoming action game. “The Warhammer universe is 45 years old now? You had Space Marine 1, Titus was on the Deathwatch for 100 years. Most people are like, ‘What the heck? I’m already lost.’ The Warhammer universe is so big, with thousands of planets, so many different Legions, so much Chaos, so much Warp influence… so there’s so many tools to bring into this story, and the team has had a lot of fun bringing them all in.”

“But I get lost sometimes! Our game director Dmitry Grigorenko and creative director Oliver Hollis-Ryke know the universe like a Games Workshop employee. They were the ones who went to Games Workshop in 2019 and convinced them to give us the license!”

But, gosh. How much work actually goes into a typical game? It’s just big blue guys with big guns, right? Willits pulls back the curtain on a completely different reality where every little detail counts. “Working with Games Workshop – they’re really strict! The armor was the wrong size at the ankle – at the ankle! And they were like, ‘Oh, the ankle is wrong,’ and we were like, ‘Okay, we’ll fix that! ‘”

So how much goes into making the Space Marines feel right, and the fight between them and the horrors of the galaxy feel true to the lore? The answer? A lot of different moving parts to tweak and adjust. This includes a pretty impressive AI director who uses an enhanced version of World War Z’s swarm technology to control a variety of enemies, like Tyranid hordes, as well as various teams within Saber improving various aspects of the game.

“The AI ​​director did a really great job,” Willits said. “Because you’re a Primaris Space Marine! A beacon of death, but sometimes you’re like, ‘Fuck me,’ but you somehow manage. Beyond that, the team worked really hard on everything from the fast melee attacks to the hits and grapples. I know it’s really hard to play a shooter, but the only thing harder than a shooter is a melee game. People don’t realize that. It’s iteration, trial and error…”

“That’s what the team was working on first. Titus was running around in a grey box, and we were like no, no, no. Then we went to Games Workshop and they were like no, no, no. It was just a lot of work to get the balance right.”

That’s the gameplay, the feel, the fun of the game, but also the aesthetics of the game. Perhaps even more so when Willits tells an anecdote about designing the Space Marines and getting them approved by Games Workshop. “It was a huge amount of work. Every insignia had to be right. Everything had to be approved. Games Workshop has a dedicated system where they review what you upload with the right people, check the boxes, and then it comes back to you. If they didn’t have that dedicated system, oh my god.”

“And do you know how many fans we have, 40,000 of them? If we messed up the banner? This game is a mess! Even the way enemies reacted had to be adjusted and tweaked. It had to be fun and approachable in a video game, but it had to behave like it would in a real game. There were some things that had to be tweaked, like spawning different creatures.”

“There’s a rule in Sons of a Thousand Sons that you can’t summon demons from the warp. But it’s a video game, so we had to do it somehow. (Here I interjected that only wizards can summon demons, and not dusty Rubik’s Marines.) “Yeah, that’s right! If there were no wizards on the battlefield, you couldn’t summon people from the warp. So it was like mental gymnastics.”

But even just playing the game briefly on the Gamescom show floor, the rewards of all that hard work are clear. This is a Warhammer game that fans should be excited about. In fact, they already are, and fans already know it. Of the team, Willits says this is Saber’s best game to date. “The team loves this game. It’s their masterpiece. A lot of the lead came from World War Z. 25 million people played that game, but this is a whole new level for them. They’ve worked really hard, and I hope people understand it.”