Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Preview

You’re going to have to forgive us, but with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine still early in development, there isn’t much to see yet. Not only did THQ not let us play it at E3 this year, but they didn’t even have a playable version that we could watch someone else play. But they did have a trailer handy, and we were allowed to ask questions after we watched it, so here’s what we can tell for now.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine E3 2009 Trailer 

The game is a third-person action-RPG that, if the trailer is to be believed (and we don’t see why it isn’t) will be more along the lines of God of War than Diablo. It is currently being developed by Relic Entertainment (who’ve made such RTS games as 2004’s Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and 2006’s Company of Heroes) for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. 

In the game, the primary conflict is between the humans and the orcs (though one big Warhammer 40,000 fan in my group did notice some other species from other games in the trailer), with you as one of five members of a squad of humans who are intolerant of orcs. Which would explain why you’re going to spend your time slamming them with a big electrified hammer, slicing them with a chainsaw sword, and airing out their internal organs with a machine gun. And while they will obvious try to do the same to you, your organs will be protected by a suit of armor so large that even Marcus Fenix would have to wonder how anyone can move in such a thing.

Being an RPG, you will be able to level up and upgrade your stats, and while the stats page in the trailer only had three categories, we were told there will be more. Still, it seems like the game is decidedly leaning more towards the action side of the action-RPG scale.

The developers also said that there would be a strong focus on multiplayer, and that including a five-player co-op mode was “a strong goal,” but they didn’t elaborate any further.

It should be noted, though, that while the game has strong ties to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, its story is, apparently, unconnected to other games in this series. This is neither a prequel nor a sequel, nor even a parallel tale, to any previous game.

And that’s kind of it. Sorry. We were going to torture the THQ people into giving us more information about the game, but it was kind of late, and we didn’t have any feathers, so we just gave up and went home. But when we know more, you’ll know more. Cuz' that’s how we do it on G4tv.com.