I know, there are too many Warhammer games, and this is only adding to the list, but there are exceptions to my opposition, and this is definitely one of them.
A sequel to Space Marine has just been announced at the Game Awards, and it was certainly a pleasant and unexpected surprise. The original is one of the best Warhammer: 40K games ever made, and was a fine brawler in its own right, so seeing it languish while 175,249 other shitty 40K games were made and released in its stead over the last decade has been a weird thing to see.
Space Marine II is coming to Xbox Series X |S, PlayStation 5 and PC, with a release date yet to be announced.
Look, as a 40K fan and someone who loved the original, I’m excited for this. The best thing about the first game was how it gave us such a ground-floor look at a universe we normally see only from high above the battlefield. But there’s also something slightly off about the timing of this trailer. It was only last month that Games Workshop had to come out and denounce fascism, saying that 40K’s Imperium Of Man weren’t the heroes of the story, and were actually very bad dudes, so please don’t admire them.
It was a statement that rang true for long-time fans of the tabletop game, whose earliest days portrayed Space Marines as satirical anti-heroes, but in the decades since the armoured soldiers have moved into the spotlight as the heroes of the story, something this trailer (and years of video game tie-ins) have only reinforced: the entire point of it is to show a regular human solder watch in awe as the Space Marines crash in and save the day.
Which is it going to be!
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