Space Marine 2 Developer Used the Best Warhammer 40,000 Fan Film Ever as a Reference Point
Space Marine 2 does an impressive job representing the ‘stompiness’ of the Astartes in video game form. It turns out the developers used Warhammer 40,000’s greatest fan-film as a reference point.
The fan-film in question is Syama Pedersen’s Astartes, an impressive animation widely considered the best representation yet of Warhammer 40,000’s iconic Space Marines.
Astartes does a wonderful job of getting the weight and the surprising agility of a Space Marine across without them devolving into farcical Buzz Lightyear territory. The atmosphere is perfect, the action intense, and the Space Marines themselves devastating.
Syama Pedersen did such a wonderful job with Astartes that Warhammer 40,000 owner Games Workshop hired him to create a sequel exclusively for its subscription offering, Warhammer+.
In an interview with IGN at gamescom 2023, Saber Interactive creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick namechecked Astartes as his favourite reference point for the look of the game's Space Marines.
“He got the sound of them walking down those corridors… ker-klonk, ker-klonk-ker-klonk… but when they move it’s straight away like they’re predatory animals," Hollis-Leick said.
Saber Interactive also met with Jes Goodwin, the renowned artist who designed the original Space Marines, to get an understanding of the science fiction underpinning an Astartes’ armour.
“He brought his old notebooks and all these drawings and diagrams and he explained to us exactly how that suit works,” Hollis-Leick said. “He explained to us about the shoulder pauldrons are suspended on a magnetic field, it's part of the under armour, which gives them a lot of maneuverability, so it's not restrictive. He told us that yes, it's weighty and they do stomp, but they also
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