During its ‘Big Autumn Preview’ event, Games Workshop unveiled a new Astartes II trailer — and the detail fans had been straining to spot is now plainly on screen: Deathwatch and Terminators, lurking in the dark, doing precisely what you’d imagine.
Warhammer+, the company’s streaming service, gets it this December.
The Space Hulk influence isn’t subtle
Space Marines tramp through a gloomy interior that is obviously concealing something horrific. The real tell, though, is a first-person shot looking down a corridor where spotlights provide the only illumination. That’s the beloved tabletop game Space Hulk, dropped straight into the frame. Games Workshop admitted as much in a Warhammer Community post, telling players of the game that plenty here would ring familiar.
The company had more to say about what viewers can actually see.
“We knew already that this was likely to feature Deathwatch and Terminators, from the unsubtle hints dropped at the end of the LAST trailer, and now we see them, they look like they mean business,” Games Workshop said. “The imposing line of storm bolter barrels and the crackle of a power fist, combined with the ominous surroundings, are certainly giving off some strong Space Hulk vibes.”
Then came the detail destined to spawn a thousand forum threads.
“Somehow even more intimidating than the blank visage of the Terminator helms is that unhelmeted Space Marine veteran, who could certainly be described as ‘grizzled.’ And we think we clocked at least three different characters and Chapters of Space Marines in that trailer,” Games Workshop said.
It’s going to be longer, and that matters
Tucked into the same post was another nugget: Astartes II will run “significantly longer” than the first outing. Anyone who has replayed the original on a loop hoping it would simply carry on should hold onto that line.
Why this one carries so much weight
For the uninitiated: the original Astartes was the work of superfan Syama Pedersen, who was subsequently recruited to produce the official follow-up. Astartes enjoys near-universal recognition as the greatest Warhammer 40,000 animation ever made, whether official or fan-made. Its sole genuine rival is Amazon’s Space Marine 2 animation from the Secret Level anthology series.
Its influence extended well beyond animation, as well. Astartes proved strong enough to inform how the Space Marines themselves look and feel in Saber Interactive’s enormously successful Space Marine 2.
About that earlier teaser
The teaser released last year advertised a scope and polish never before seen from Warhammer 40,000: melee combat, gunfights, vehicle battles, even clashes between spaceships. Several Space Marine chapters waging war across a range of environments. Tyranids, Orks and Tau.
None of it appears in the animation.
“This teaser trailer is not actually clips from the new animation, instead showing a compilation of shots that represent the former lives of the characters that will appear in the show,” Games Workshop said in a post on the Warhammer Community website. “There’s a pretty unsubtle hint at the end as to the nature of the final story… We’ll leave you to speculate and start putting the pieces together yourselves.”
The showy montage, in other words, was a CV rather than a preview. What remains is a Deathwatch squad probing a Space Hulk, a rank of storm bolter barrels, and a single bare-headed veteran who looks like he has crawled through a few of these hulks already.