Space Marine 2 does an impressive job representing the ‘stompiness’ of the Astartes in video game form. It turns out the developers used Warhammer 40,000’s greatest fan-film as a reference point.
The fan-film in question is Syama Pedersen’s Astartes, an impressive animation widely considered the best representation yet of Warhammer 40,000’s iconic Space Marines.
Astartes does a wonderful job of getting the weight and the surprising agility of a Space Marine across without them devolving into farcical Buzz Lightyear territory. The atmosphere is perfect, the action intense, and the Space Marines themselves devastating.
Syama Pedersen did such a wonderful job with Astartes that Warhammer 40,000 owner Games Workshop hired him to create a sequel exclusively for its subscription offering, Warhammer+.
In an interview with IGN at gamescom 2023, Saber Interactive creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick namechecked Astartes as his favourite reference point for the look of the game's Space Marines.
“He got the sound of them walking down those corridors… ker-klonk, ker-klonk-ker-klonk… but when they move it’s straight away like they’re predatory animals," Hollis-Leick said.
Saber Interactive also met with Jes Goodwin, the renowned artist who designed the original Space Marines, to get an understanding of the science fiction underpinning an Astartes’ armour.
“He brought his old notebooks and all these drawings and diagrams and he explained to us exactly how that suit works,” Hollis-Leick said. “He explained to us about the shoulder pauldrons are suspended on a magnetic field, it's part of the under armour, which gives them a lot of maneuverability, so it's not restrictive. He told us that yes, it's weighty and they do stomp, but they also have a lot of agility to them as well. So meeting with him was a real blessing and helped us figure out a lot of how it would work.
“That’s what we put together: the science Jes gave us with the descriptions, matched with the great example set by Astartes.”
Avoiding a silly Buzz Lightyear feel — a pitfall faced by all makers of video game Space Marines — was in the back of Hollis-Leick’s mind throughout the development of Space Marine 2.
“It's a really tricky balancing act because they've got to be able to move fast enough for them to be responsive to player input, but they're also huge and you can't break the physics of that amount of mass trying to move,” Hollis-Leick admitted.
“So it is a difficult balancing act and we had to think about it a lot of times and maybe rework things. With the walk and the run, it's fairly easy, but when they're in combat, we're trying to have more lightning fast, flowing in and out of different speeds, I think.”
Space Marine 2 has so far shown off the relentless alien Tyranids as the primary enemy facing Lieutenant Titus and his Ultramarine brethren as they battle to save the Imperial Jungle World Kadaku from disaster. In the recently released gameplay video, above, we see Titus and co also go up against Rubric Marines of the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion, which has sworn allegiance to Tzeentch.
For more on Space Marine 2, check out IGN’s hands-on preview from gamescom 2023. Expect a launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC at some point this winter.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
