“We then went back and looked at the actual game and, of course, it didn’t quite marry up. All those elements were there, but games have moved on a lot in that time. So then we thought, OK, well, how can we take everybody’s memories of what that game was and honor them, while taking them to the next level of current day gaming?”

The answers are myriad. Space Marine 2 feels gratifyingly similar to the original when it comes to ranged combat – Bolters fire with a satisfying thud, your Marines move with real weight, and enemies arrive thick and fast (and die just as quickly). But Saber has injected action game mechanics into the mix – improved melee, parries, finisher moves, and more. Tweaks have also been made to make the game challenging while still offering the sense of playing as a superhuman soldier:

“We always try to place the Space Marines in a context that makes them seem powerful. We begin the game with manageable enemies – we set the stage with, ‘Wow, this guy’s tough. He can take on 20 enemies at a time and succeed.’ Once we’ve set that tone, we increase the pressure, so it goes from 20 enemies to 50, or 60, or 100. Then we add 2 extra Space Marines – you’re always fighting with two brothers – so then that allows us to increase the pressure even further. Now, you’ve got three guys fighting 200 enemies.”

Saber’s bringing its own experience to bear with those huge numbers – where the first game saw sizeable Ork hordes, the switch to a Tyranid invasion allowed the team to go so, so much further.

As you might expect, Warhammer creator Games Workshop has been heavily involved in helping Saber find that path – and Hollis and his team have had some conversations that’ll be the envy of Warhammer fans.

“Games Workshop were incredibly helpful to us. At the very beginning, they opened up some of their personnel to us, gave us access in a way that they just don’t normally do. So I got to meet Jes Goodwin, the creator of the Space Marine, and he explained how all the armour works, or what each of the little ports does in the armour for injecting combat stims – he was incredible.”

Games Workshop stayed in touch throughout development, explaining things like how Space Marine weapons should be balanced, and even informed the team on deep lore around more obscure elements, like how computers need to be turned on in the world of 40K (“a lot of rites and rituals, incense burnings, offerings, and sacred ointments”). And they also gave Saber the key to telling a new story with the original game’s hero: “We were told from the very beginning that this was a Primaris game.”

Primaris Marines are a new, enhanced breed of Space Marine – introduced to the 8^th Edition of the tabletop game in 2017, meaning they hadn’t even been dreamt up when the original Space Marine arrived. In many ways, Titus’ (very violent) ascent to become a Primaris is a metaphor for the game as a whole. Space Marine 2 offers a bigger, stronger, more modern version of the original.

“People love to be bad. We created Chaos Marines not just as a as a tool to make PvP work, but because people love to play them. We’ve built so many systems now that that’s just begging for expansion.”

Similarly, Hollis has plans for PvE to go further than it already does: “Operations is definitely an area that we can continue to explore. If you think about World War 2 movies, there’s always a new one coming out about some crazy operation that was going on under the radar that nobody knew about. That’s the thing about a war – there are so many untold stories.”

But the burning question for fans is, with all this work put in, does Saber see this as not just a return to a long-awaited game, but the rebirth of a series?

“I really believe in this game,” Hollis enthuses. “This is a really, really solid offering – we’ve built so much tech and so many systems to support future stories, that we’re in a really good place to move straight onto another game, if that’s how things work out.”

I’m very hopeful that it won’t take another 13 years for a Space Marine sequel – and in the meantime, Space Marine 2 seems destined to evolve in itself. The Emperor himself would be proud.