After job advertisements and some exquisite leaked footage prematurely lifted the lid on the game last year, THQ have just officially announced Space Marine, a Warhammer 40K “Action RPG”.
A few things to note: while the original material suggested that “THQ Australia” were working on the game, the official announcement says that Dawn of War and Company of Heroes developers Relic are behind it. Strange. Also, while the original title was clearly an action game, this one has really upped the number of on-screen enemies (as you can see in the clip below), in line with its apparent shift in genre from brawler to action-RPG.
If you’d like to know anything else about the game, tough: as with IGN’s other pre-E3 “exclusives”, the announcement consists of an announcement then a whole bunch of “this developer isn’t disclosing this information at this time”, so we’ll have to wait until next week to learn more/anything.
Michael
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:12 PM“A few things to note: while the original material suggested that “THQ Australia” were working on the game, the official announcement says that Dawn of War and Company of Heroes developers Relic are behind it. Strange.”
THQ Australia *were* working on it. I knew some of the guys that were at the office. However, they lost the license sometime late last year and had to let a lot of the team working on the game go. I guess Relic were the ones to pick up the slack.
David Wildgoose
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:54 PMI’m not sure of the details, but yes, THQ Australia started development before it was handed over to Relic at some point. Whether any of that original work remains intact, I’d be surprised.
Mr Waffle
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:17 PMLet me be the (maybe) first to say:
FOR THE EMPEROR!
Mr Waffle
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:45 PMI just risked the wrath of the bosses and watched the trailer in my lunch break. HOLY CRAP. This is the game I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I can die happy ;_;
Shoitaan
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 1:49 PMA video that works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbjbbzOrCIg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esevenstring%2Eorg%2Fforum%2Fcomputers%2Delectronics%2Dit%2Dand%2Dgaming%2F66520%2Dleaked%2Dfootage%2Dof%2Dbr00tal%2Dnew%2Dbrawler%2Dgame%2Dwarhamme&feature=player_embedded
Looking fun as hell for a first build and that overkill system makes me happy (in my pants).
But anyone else find the movement mid-combat a little awkward? There’s all these bullets flying around and a chaosmarine trying to slice him.. but he’s happily got his back turned and is wandering around. I hope in the final they include both a quick turn button as well as “battle-ready” stances for combat.
Mr Waffle
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 2:47 PMThat footage is ancient as the hills, and doesn’t really resemble the trailer at all. I doubt it reflects what the game is really like now. I sure hope it doesn’t anyway, as the constant “cinemaction” moments are terribly overdone…
keender
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 4:16 PMThis new version looks like crap, like they used a slightly more detailed version of the dawn of war 2 engine. That footage of the THQ Aussie version a year ago looked like Unreal-powered beauty by comparison. Such a shame, I was looking forward to a solo action game in the vein of God of War, and not a team-based grindfest again like Dawn of War 2 turned out to be.
melancholyink
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 4:38 PMWas actually speculating about this the other day with a friend. He had heard from his friend that most of the assets were complete when the project was put on hold and THQ Australia got the boot.
It will be interesting to see how many of the concepts from the leaked footage (last year?) that Relic keeps.
Still at least that ends our speculation. Now where is the MMO at?
keender
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 6:25 PMThe ork and space marine assets look like they could have been ripped straight from Dawn of war 2. Also, the squat cartoonish look of the characters does not suit an action game.
Damaddok
Friday, May 29, 2009 at 4:19 AMSquat? I don’t see anything squat. Just guys in really big armor.
OPM881
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10:42 PMLooks preety good, i am thinking it will be an action rpg setup in that you select one of the characters to control, and they gain access to certain upgrades along the way, but at the same time i am thinking a team based set up similair to L4D, with the 3(or how ever many other) members there are being controlled by npc’s unless you choose to play a co-op campaign. Either way, looks better then DOW2
Alex Williams
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 11:05 PMSee, way i heard it (from inside sources) is that the game build that they had for the one they showed us was mostly broken after 2 years of work. Thq gave it to Relic because they already have the 40k Assets. If you look closely at the Texturing and modelling of the space marines there is a massive difference in poly count and texture qaulity. Not to mention the fact that if you look close enough they pretty much are the higher quality DOW 2 assets. and note how its gone from being an Action oriented ‘ballet’ of death to an Action RPG?
Alex Williams
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 11:07 PMeven down to the animations (assault marine jumping) etc. They have take the DOW 2 engines and scripted it to look like a new game basically.
Y-Ty-Awda
Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 3:51 AMDoes anyone know if the “Heroes of the Space Marines” novel has a version translated in Japanese?