Space Marine 2's lead dev says more games can trace their DNA back to 40K than people might think: 'Many young gamers probably don't realize the influence it had on your favorite game'

A group of space marines of different classes in Space Marine 2.

(Image credit: Saber Interactive)

Everyone loves a space marine. But is it just a coincidence that so many of our favorite franchises feature heroes fully encased in hulking power armor? Not so, says Tim Willits, chief creative officer at Saber Interactive (and, I imagine, most people who've seen more than one flavor of space marine). In an interview with PC Gamer at Gamescom, Willits said every Master Chief and Doomguy has a healthy amount of Warhammer under all that heavy plating.

Asked about how the gameplay of Space Marine 2 stands out compared to other action games, Willits said "it's very Doom" in its aggressive, forward-momentum combat. But, he continued, Doom—like many games—owes a lot of its impact to Warhammer 40,000. "The Warhammer 40,000 universe existed 45 years ago," Willits said. (Slight correction: The first edition of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader was published 37 years ago in 1987.) "Many young gamers probably don't realize the influence it had on your favorite game."

As an example, Willits pointed at the very first Doomguy. "He's a space marine," Willits said. "What'd he kind of look like?" As Willits describes it, Doom and Warhammer 40K have actually been in a cycle of recursive inspiration for years, stretching back to his time at Bethesda as id's studio director.

"When we were working on Doom 2016, we had discussions about the push-forward combat in the original Space Marine," Willits said, describing how the 2011 40K game influenced the similarly aggressive momentum of the Doom reboot. Doom 2016 would then influence Space Marine 2 in turn, with Saber pulling inspiration from Doom's Glory Kills for its own execution mechanics.

Willits traced the 40K DNA present in other games: the Space Marine chainsword echoed in the Gears of War chainsaw bayonet, the similar profile of the Fallout power armor. "Even things like Starship Troopers," Willits said. "Those aliens look just like Tyranids."

The Starship Troopers comparison is an interesting one, because the space marine trope itself is one that was originally cemented by Starship Troopers—not the '97 Verhoeven movie, but the original 1959 Heinlein novel. Where the film troopers aren't all that different from current-day infantrymen, the novel troopers laid the groundwork for what we'd recognize as the space marine archetype today: elite shock troops deployed from orbit in powered exoskeletons, carrying so much firepower that a squad's troopers typically kept a comfortable half-mile of breathing room between each other. If there's any Tyranid in the film bugs, that's yet another inspiration cycle that 40K's trading in.

To Willits, the 40K DNA spread throughout the videogame gene pool should make Space Marine 2 an easy sell. "If you're a Doom fan, if you're a Helldivers fan, or if you're an action game fan: This is the game for you," Willits said.

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.