Perhaps no other IP has as much detail, world-building or lore as Warhammer. It has been around for nearly 50 years. 50. Any work done therein must be consistent with the ridiculous knowledge written down in books and magazines over the years. As you can imagine, faithfully recreating Warhammer in other media is tricky. Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits was eager to talk about this fact at the Starfighter 2 booth at Gamescom.
Starfighter 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to an Xbox 360-era classic that immediately oozes reverence for the source material. You don’t even have to play it, it’s leaked from trailers and screenshots. Every piece of armor, every NPC, every building. It’s impressive to see, and even more impressive to actually play. It feels like a labor of love—emphasis on labor.
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“It’s a very big challenge,” Willetts said, banging his head on the table as he aligned himself with every aspect the Saber team had to incorporate Warhammer lore into the upcoming action game. “What is the Warhammer Universe, and it’s 45 years old now? There’s Starfighter 1, and it ends with Titus going to the Death Watch for 100 years. Most people would be like, ‘What the hell? I’ve lost my way.'” Warhammer Universe It’s so big, there are thousands of planets, different Legions, Chaos, the influence of the Warp… so, we have a lot of tools to bring into the story and the team is excited to bring them all into it.
“But even I get a little lost sometimes! Our game director Dmitry Grigorenko and creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick, these guys know the universe as well as the people at Games Workshop. They were the ones who went to Games Workshop in 2019 and convinced them Gave us a license!
But like, come on. Just how much more work can it take on than a typical game? Just big blue guys with big guns, right? Willetts pulls back the curtain on a completely different reality where every detail is considered crucial. “Working with Games Workshop – they were very strict! The armor at the ankle was the wrong size – at the ankle! They were like, ‘Uh the ankle is wrong’ and we were like, ‘Yes sir, we’ll fix it’!
So how much effort does it take to make Space Marines feel good, and to make the battle between Space Marines and galactic terrorists feel real? What’s the answer? Lots of tweaking and tweaking with lots of different moving parts. These include an impressive AI director, which uses an enhanced version of World War Z’s swarm technology to control various enemies like the Tyranids, and various teams within Saber improving different aspects of the game.
Willetts elaborated, “The AI Director does a great job because you’re a Primaris Space Marine! So you’re a Death Beacon, but sometimes you’re like, I’m going to get fucked, and then other than that, the team is A lot of effort has been put into everything from quick melee combat to striking to snatching, and from what I understand, being a marksman is very difficult, but what’s even more difficult than being a marksman is melee combat…”
“That’s what the team does first. Titus walks around in a gray box and we’re like no, no, no. Then we go to Game Studio and they’re like no, no, no. It just A lot of effort went into balancing this.
That’s the gameplay, the feel of the game, and the fun, but so is the aesthetics of the game. Perhaps more importantly, Willetts tells an anecdote about the process of designing Space Marines and getting them approved by Games Workshop. “It’s a crazy amount of work. Because every badge has to be right. Everything has to be approved. Games Workshop has a whole dedicated system where you upload stuff and then they check it with the right people. , and then they’ll check a box and get back to you if they don’t have a dedicated system, oh my gosh.
“You know how many 40k fans there are. If you screw up badges? This game sucks! Even the way the enemies react, we have to tweak and adjust. We have to make them fun and easy to use in a video game, But the way they behave in the actual game is something we have to tweak a little bit, such as spawning in other mobs.
“There’s a rule that the Thousand Sons can’t summon demons from the warp, or anything like that. But this is a video game, so we need to generate them somehow. [Here I interject to say only sorcerers can summon demons, not regular dusty Rubic marines]. “Yes, it is! You can’t summon people from the warp without wizards on the battlefield, so it’s like mental gymnastics.”
Still, the payoff for all that hard work was clear, even in my brief time playing the game on the Gamescom show floor. This is a game that Warhammer fans are clamoring for. In fact, they are already clamoring for it and the fans already know it. As for the team, Willits said this was the Sabres’ best game yet. “The team loves this game. It’s their magnum opus. Most of the protagonists have made World War Z — like 25 million people have played it — but this game is completely new to them. level.
