The best games inspire the next. That’s the connection between 2016’s Doom and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, according to Saber Interactive CEO Tim Willits, who used to work at id Software, so he took inspiration from that frantic shooter for his new game.
Speaking of influences, Willits also mentioned in an interview with GamesRadar at Gamescom that Warhammer 40,000 served as an inspiration for other games, including Gears of Wars and Fallout, but also Doom:
“One of the things that I don’t think many gamers realize is the influence that Warhammer 40,000 has had on many games. The original “marine” in Doom was very similar to a space marine. The chainsword in Gears of War wasn’t the first chainsword. Even the power armor in Fallout is very similar to space marine armor.”
Saber Interactive’s CEO claims that some of the mechanics created for the original Space Marine influenced those of Doom 2016: “I don’t know anything about the team at Relic that worked on the original Space Marine, but I would imagine they were clearly inspired by Doom and Quake.
What I do know is that when we were working on Doom 2016, we looked at how the original Space Marine implemented the push-forward approach, and we were targeting that kind of combat, which is the signature of Doom 2016.
And then in Doom we added glory kills, and the Space Marine 2 team looked at that and thought, “This is awesome, we need something like that.” So you see these over-the-top glory kills in Space Marine 2 – obviously, you can guess where they were inspired by.
The “Glory Kills” Willits mentioned are the brutal finishing moves that the Doom Slayer has been performing in recent games. This is present in Space Marine 2 as we can see in the various gameplay trailers that have been released so far.
“There are a lot of similarities,” the executive says. “For me, working with the team on a Space Marine game after working on many Space Marine-inspired games is a great honor.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is coming out on September 9. The next Doom is still a long way off.
