Everything you need to know before playing Space Marine 2

Space Marine 2 is a highly anticipated title in the upcoming fall lineup, and it even scored a coveted spot on the Secret Level animation anthology coming to Amazon Prime. You may be intrigued at the promise of playing a massive, armored Space Marine, exercising that raw transhuman power by ripping alien hive-mind creatures apart with your bare hands or swinging a chainsword into the face of a traitorous sorcerer. There’s a very immediate and understandable appeal to that kind of rip-and-tear gameplay.

But there’s a lot of lore — and we mean a lot — in the Warhammer 40K setting. Luckily, much of it is irrelevant to the enjoyment you’ll get out of this game. We run you through what you do need to know to hit the ground running in Titus’ enormous armored shoes.

In the setting of Warhammer 40,000, human civilization is united under the banner of the Imperium of Man, which the setting repeatedly describes as “the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable.” The Imperium rules a million worlds, and as such, has a bunch of smaller factions jockeying for power and position.

Titus is an Adeptus Astartes, also known as a Space Marine, serving with the Ultramarine chapter. At the end of Space Marine, Titus saved the Forge World of Graia from both Orks and Chaos. However, he did all of that a little too well, without suffering any ill effects. This was enough for one of Titus’ squadmates to get suspicious and turn him into the Inquisition, the secret police force of the Imperium responsible for rooting out anyone who might undermine the Imperium’s authority.

Fans were left to wonder if Titus was executed, or simply imprisoned and tortured eternally. That is, until Space Marine 2 was announced, and we saw Titus in the promotional materials alive and well. The Ultramarine seems surly and beat down — a far cry from his comparatively chipper countenance in Space Marine — but a run-in with the Inquisition, and a stretch serving with the militant order of the Deathwatch, will do that to a man.

Space Marine 2 opens on a very obvious threat: Tyranids. Tyranids are the inspiration for lots of sci-fi baddies, like Starcraft’s Zerg, because these space bugs love nothing more than to eat anything that gives them even a speck of biomass. Titus needs to stand with the humble Imperial Guard, also known as the Astra Militarum — non-transhuman members of the Imperial military who are not clad in power armor — on the jungle planet of Kadaku. Titus will also fight across a Forge World, which is a planet dedicated to housing production facilities managed by the mysterious cult of the Machine God known as the Adeptus Mechanicus.

The Imperium may be a terrible place, but the voracious enemy race of the Tyranids, who want to digest all sapient life, are definitely the worse of two evils. Titus will have to stomp, smash, rip, tear, shoot, and blast his way through endless hordes of Tyranids, but just in like the original game, there’s a second enemy faction. In the first game, Titus fought through a feeble faction of Chaos Space Marines known as the Chosen of Nemeroth. Chaos Space Marines are former soldiers of the Imperium of Man who have been corrupted by the power of the eldritch Chaos gods and now fight on their behalf.

In Space Marine 2, the Chaos Space Marine faction is a much more powerful and sorcerous one: the Thousand Sons. These 10,000-year-old warriors are masters of the arcane who command legions of Rubric Marines, empty suits of armor full of dust. Their role in the plot isn’t quite certain at the moment, but since they serve the scheming Chaos God Tzeentch, there’s doubtlessly some secrets in store.

Space Marine 2 has a single-player and co-op narrative campaign, and then a selection of PvP modes between squads of highly customizable Space Marines. While there’ll likely be plenty of other customization elements and Easter eggs from other Space Marine chapters, both heretic and loyal, the nitty-gritty of those warriors likely won’t be important to the overall plot.

Space Marine 2 will be released on Sept. 9 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.