at 41my Millennium, there is only war. Humanity – under the totalitarian rule of the Imperium – is struggling to survive. Anyone capable of holding a lasgun in their hands is conscripted and sent as cannon fodder to fight off waves of Tyranids, an alien race controlled by the Hive Mind. Alone against this scourge, Imperial soldiers are as effective as a fly swatter against a nest of rabid hornets. Fortunately, they can count on the support of the Space Marines, supermen transformed by gene therapy and surgical modifications. the video game space marine 2, Available from 9th September, it offers you the chance to play as one of these illustrious soldiers, Lieutenant Titus. This is Warhammer 40,000 made real.
Warhammer 40,000? This is the flagship game from the English company Games Workshop, which allows you to create battle scenes with 28-millimeter-high plastic figures that you have to paint and collect. A more modern and playful variation on the traditional toy soldiers. And around these figures a whole science fiction story is built. An epic that is available in the novels of Black Library, the publisher of Games Workshop, in dozens of video games and soon on screens, since Games Workshop has partnered with the Amazon Prime Video platform. However, rarely has this universe been as well illustrated as in Space Marine 2.
“We wanted to realise the epic scale of the conflicts in Warhammer 40,000,” accurate Interactive Saber in Worldthe officially American developer, but some of the equipment is still located in Russia. All under the watchful eye of Games Workshop. If new interpretations are possible, Warhammer 40,000 remains a very codified universe and fans, like the license owner, can be wary: “We had weekly calls with Games Workshop to make sure our interpretation was correct and everything was approved.”
Space Marines have continued to evolve.
To understand what a Warhammer 40,000 enthusiast feels when launching it Space Sailor 2You have to imagine yourself a fan of The Lord of the Rings discovering the battles of Helm’s Deep or the Pelennor Fields in the cinema. “The miniatures we used to play with on the tabletop are now represented in stunning artwork and gaming environments. rejoices Bob Naismith, who was involved in creating the first Space Marine figure in 1987. The public can see them as if they were “real.” »
As codified as the figure of the Space Marine is, it has evolved since 1987: with a clever cocktail of initial influences (the US Marine, star wars, terminator or comics like 2000 AD) Other ingredients have since been added. “As the game evolved, it became necessary to add a surprise factor to the miniatures, analyses Bob Naismith, who no longer works for Games Workshop but continues to sculpt miniatures on his own. One simple way to achieve this was to offer new, larger sculptures to give them more presence on the table. » Its latest version – the one that is represented in Space Sailor 2 – appeared in 2017.
Over the years, the dystopia of Warhammer 40,000 has gathered new influences to flesh out its story: the icons of the Imperium, the regime that rules over humans, are reminiscent of fascist aesthetics. “It is a monstrous civilization, and its monstrosity is obvious to all.” Games Workshop clarified in 2021, reminding that Warhammer 40,000 is “a satire”. If you show up to a Games Workshop event or store with symbols of real-world hate groups, you will be asked to leave. »
“A time of ignorance and superstitions”
Another aspect of the Warhammer 40,000 universe that is regularly criticized and that may surprise you Space Marine 2: the absence of women in the game. A bias, however, consistent with the folklore of the miniatures gaming universe, according to which Space Marines are invariably men. “There were prototypes of female Space Marines early on.specifies Thibaut Claudel, author of Warhammer 40,000, Sculpture Wars (2023, third edition)But stores reported that shoppers, especially men, were not interested. » So the narrative of Warhammer 40,000 has protected the masculinity of the Space Marines. Today, however, a part of the community would not be against a change.
“The 41my The millennium is an era of ignorance and superstitions, Andy Thomas-Clark recalls in the August issue of white dwarf, the official magazine published by Games Workshop. For him, the archives that, in this fictional universe, document the way in which the different chapters of the Space Marines are organized. They are buried under dust or behind forgotten access codes and therefore virtually lost.” In a word: nothing prevents a new discovery from shaking up the established universe. “We must accept that the truth of one day is not the truth of the next, Thibaut Claudel sums up. It is the complete opposite of other franchises like star wars or Marvel, which canonized its story. Games Workshop loves to throw new ingredients into the pot and watch people make their own soup. »
This does not prevent some fans from crying heresy when Games Workshop paves the way, through a feminine pronoun used in a rulebook published in April 2024, for the feminisation of the Custodes warriors, the Emperor’s trans human bodyguards. A warrior even plays the role of a heroine in an episode of the animated series The Tithes, produced and broadcast by Games Workshop on its streaming platform. “The controversy surrounding female Custodes is perhaps the first to explode beyond the bubble of the Warhammer 40,000 fan community. observes Thibaut Claudel. Gamergate figures took over [nébuleuse de joueurs antiféministes] and unsympathetic people who saw it as another example of “wokization”. This gave a lot of room for this small change, which in reality does not involve any new figures. And, above all, we saw in turn many people taking up the subject to defend this change and explain that nothing was stopping it. »
What is Games Workshop’s responsibility in this climate? “When creators themselves are historically in a kind of male environment, this obviously spreads to the entire universe, even if they have good intentions. Thibaut Claudel analyzes. Of the forty authors listed in the Black Library, there is only one woman. The founders of Games Workshop are also men, as is the initiator of Warhammer 40,000, Rick Priestley.
In recent years, the publisher has shown that it is willing to question the foundations of its universes. Games Workshop has thus taken the radical decision to end another of its most popular games, Warhammer Battleslaunched in 1983, to replace it with another, Age of Sigmar. “We feel like it’s a universe that was created in 2015, explains Thibaut Claudel. The spearhead is, therefore, the [guerriers] Stormcasts, who are either male or female. » Would Games Workshop be willing to do the same with their Space Marines who are almost 40 years old? There is nothing to suggest this at the moment, but at 41my millennium, everything is possible.
