I first heard of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine years ago, when test footage leaked online. I was hooked from the get-go, but things went silent and we’d heard nothing about the game until fairly recently, where it was suddenly being developed by Relic Entertainment. So, what happened to the game in that time?
“Space Marine was originally developed by one of our sister studios in Australia, at some point they decided to ship it over to Relic,” says producer Andy Lang. “That was just before I started working at Relic, it was already moved to the studio. Relic knows the IP really well and THQ knows this, so what Relic decided to do was build out a console team that had the same desire to deliver the same quality we have for our RTS games but as a shooter.
“So, we completely started from scratch. Everything you saw in that demo today is completely new. Nothing was taken over from the previous version of the game.”
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The original test footage showed the titular Space Marine fighting the corrupted forces of the Chaos Marines, but this completely rebuilt title now has Captain Titus facing off against a horde of Orks. Why was Chaos dropped in favor of the greenskins?
“The Orks are a nice contrast to Space Marines,” Andy reveals. “Space Marines are very serious, very stoic, and the Orks are this messy, violent race. So we felt they would really contrast the Space Marines better and not just be a one-to-one challenge. A Space Marine killing a thousand Chaos Marines isn’t really believable, and we really wanted to get you fighting hordes of units.”
As to whether or not Chaos will still make an appearance alongside any other potential races, Relic isn’t saying. Boo!
