Have you ever looked at a space marine’s legs? Like, properly looked at how their thighs connect to their hips and wondered what’s going on inside that armor? Their stance is so wide it’s impossible to imagine a normal man being able to stand like that, which is fine because space marines aren’t normal men. They’re genetically engineered transhuman supersoldiers and part of the surgical modification that makes them space marines is apparently letting them stand like their legs are bolted to the sides of their waist.
On the tabletop, this is fine. In fact, it’s great. The space marines have a powerful silhouette and are easy to paint. The gigantic shoulderpads give you a focus when you’re looking down at them from above, and their armor makes them pop in a way that, even with exaggerated hands and heads, 32mm human miniatures can’t really achieve.
In a videogame, it presents an issue. “When Games Workshop created the first space marine miniature, they weren’t thinking about him running and shooting with all that armor,” says Tim Willits, chief creative officer at Saber Interactive, in a recent interview with PC Gamer at Gamescom. “It was definitely a challenge to get him to run and land and jump and fight with armor that is kind of unrealistic.”
Yet in footage like the recent Angels of Death trailer, you stop thinking about their scale and instead focus on how badass they look in action. How did Saber get their movements looking smooth then? “Iteration, iteration, iteration,” is the answer according to Willits. “The team started on the walk cycles early, we had a space marine walking around wearing gray armor in gray rooms. The team really had to focus on just the walking and the running and stopping.”
In play, the size of the marines will be most significant when they’re swarmed by alien tyranids. Space Marine 2 uses the swarm tech Saber developed for zombie game World War Z, and has continued working on since. “When the same game director went to make Space Marine 2, he had entirely new and improved swarm engines,” Willits says. “In World War Z, the zombies come and they hit a certain spot, and they break up. They come after you individually, but they’re zombies and aren’t that smart. Because they’re zombies. But then in Space Marine 2, when that swarm finally hits this break point like a wave and the tyranids start to spread off, they all think, and they’re all thinking about kicking your ass.”
Whether simply being a big beefy boy will be enough to protect us when we’re being swarmed by those tyranids remains to be seen. We’ll find out when Space Marine 2 launches on September 9.