Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Previews and Interview

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Written by BuckGB on August 14th, 2010

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As you progress through the game, dispatching of enemies, your weapons build up their own levels of experience; bonus points awarded for flashy kills such as accurate headshots or messy dismemberment. The Bolter, for example, can be equipped with a Plasma Cannon or Grenade Launcher attachment for taking out large numbers of Orcs in close proximity. Seemingly, the thinking is that as the progress through the 10-hour long single player campaign, the armoury available to you changes drastically and provides you with a reason to stick with certain weapons that you may not appreciate initially, but will become viable options down the line.

Other tools of attack we got to see were branded as '˜set-piece' weapons, located in specific locations and either mounted and stationary or equipped with very limited ammunition. One such moment came during the Space Marines approach to the planet, in which you're tasked with commandeering a mounted machine gun and protecting the fleet from the Orcs' aerial assault. Another involved riding on a fast moving haulage train (being used as a battering ram) and wielding a rocket launcher to destroy an '˜Orc Flyer' buzzing around above you; the final result being the flyer falling out of the air and destroying the train, saving the day.

Ranged combat has its share of tactics as well, beyond choosing a weapon. Throughout the game, you gain proficiency in your weapons and abilities, based on usage. Lang doesn't think you can unlock all the upgrades for every weapon during a single playthrough, but at the very least, you should have a good assortment. The only specific example they demonstrate is a plasma gun that can charge up to unleash an area-effect blast. That, and melee attacks open up even crazier animations and specific attacks based on the weapon (i.e. a Chainsword versus a Thunder Hammer).

Besides the core shooting-and-slicing gameplay, the developers are aiming to provide "setpieces" to break up the monotony and pacing. For example, the demo mission opens with an inbound group of Valkyrie gunships -- Titus needs to man the sideguns and take out numerous Ork Stormboyz attempting to breach the other Valkyries. A later setpiece has Titus racing his way on a runaway train while dealing with Ork gunship raining down fire. This other setpiece is more about maintaining forward momentum until you can get to a heavy bolter emplacement to deal with the aerial menace.

Shack: During the demo it was said that the lighting engine in Space Marine was tech that Relic developed. What can you tell me about the engine you're using for this title?

Andy Lang: We took Vigil's Darksiders engine about a year and a half ago. We took a drop of it as our foundation. They had really great tools, a really great engine. Obviously, they were still in development at that point, it wasn't a "shipped engine" yet. We took it, we added a new lighting model in. It's all dynamic so we can do all real-time -- you saw on [a train level during the demo] with all the shadows, that was really important to us. Also, it's faster for production, you know "real-time lighting."

All the gameplay and combat stuff is all brand new. We're actually using Havoc animation, Havoc behavior. It's been heavily modified by our really senior technical animator we have here and our really senior animation programmer. The effects engine is pure Relic. That's actually the same effects engine we used in Company of Heroes, Dawn of War 2 and now we've put it into this thing. But it has been optimized for console.

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