Everywhere you look it's like someone kicked open an ant mound.
Hello, yes, I really like these videos with lots of evil space bugs getting squashed by the giant space zealots. Every time I see one I watch it because Space Marine 2 is creeping up on us and the giant swarms of monsters to chew through are really, really delightful tech to look at—as evinced by this supercut of swarming monster footage that popped up on the Warhammer Community website this week.
It’s a combination of footage that showed up in previous trailers with a few things I’m pretty sure are new, but this is impressive stuff not just for the technical aspect but because it realizes thirty-some years of Tyranid concept art and puts it in motion. The sprawling two-page spreads of art that used to adorn Warhammer 40,000 books would have these kinds of swarms on them—and the artists made those as dynamic as they could—but the flocking, swarming motion of the bugs in these trailer is the kind of stuff a good adaptation should be doing.
Look at how those flying gargoyles move in twisting patterns like schools of fish, or how the onrushing hormagaunts join and twist like ants. This might be a small piece of creative design, but it’s vital in establishing how they move and interact as a single entity.
It’s also really fun to see the shots impact from long range into the swarms: You can watch as the bolter and heavy bolter shells fall into the swarm and leave individual critters staggered or falling over or just straight-up exploding from the bigger shells. While we have no idea how this actually affects gameplay it really is just compelling stuff to watch—even if the final product ends up being an underwhelming throwback to a bygone era of action games. That was our concern when we previewed it in 2023, but it’s had a delay for a year of work since then—so we’ll see.
If you missed it you can see an overview of all the game modes present in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, alongside some chilling on the battle barge, in the gameplay overview video. Space Marine 2 is the sequel to 2011’s cult action game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, an extremely of-its-time but still pretty fun take on the venerable Warhammer 40,000 universe—you can read PC Gamer’s 83% Space Marine review from back then right here.
You might’ve heard recently that the entirety of Space Marine 2 somehow made it onto the internet—it technically did, but the devs said the build was nearly a year old. That build was probably closer to what got delayed than what gets released this September.
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