Saber Interactive CCO Tim Willits thinks ‘Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines 2’ is successful because the title stuck to the franchise’s “core pillars” of gameplay.
Saber Interactive CCO Tim Willits thinks Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines 2 is successful because the title stuck to the franchise’s 'core pillars' of gameplay
The third-person-shooter - which was developed by Saber - has been enjoying plenty of praise since its release last month, while other games like ‘Star Wars: Outlaws’, ‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ and ‘Concord’ disappointed.
Now the studio’s head has explained ‘Space Marine 2’s is successful because it maintains what made the franchise special in the first place.
Speaking to IGN, Willits said: “It is not necessarily the genre that has moved on, because great games will always do well.
“One of the things that we try to do at Saber, and this is part of my job as creative officer of all the teams, we have a core belief that what you do every second and what happens when you push these buttons and that core gameplay loop is so critical. So we focus on the moment-to-moment interaction in the gameplay and the feeling you have.
“And then we adhere to our core pillars, like be the ultimate ‘Space Marine’, melee, ranged, swarms, that's it.”
The Saber boss said some AAA studios tended to “over-scope” their projects which would lead to their games underwhelming.
He continued: “A lot of teams throughout development will over-scope games. They look at some other game that just came out and say, ‘oh, we got to do that, let's add this, we got to do this.’ And they lose focus on the core, what actually makes the game fun.
“We are not in ‘Space Marine 2’ doing things that … well, the swarms are new technology, but there isn't some revolutionary new gameplay mechanic that no one's ever seen before.
“There are gameplay mechanics that people are familiar with, but we do it really, really well. And we execute really, really well.”