Warhammer 40K: ‘Space Marine 3’ Announcement Seems A Tad Premature
Space Marine 3 has been announced but we’re still years away from a release date for this video game. This seems a tad premature.
Space Marine 2 launched just last September in 2024. It was a massive hit and sold very well. While the player count numbers have dropped off, that’s mostly due to the fact that players beat the campaign and moved on. I know I’m waiting for the upcoming horde mode to be launched to come back and fight against the Tyranid swarm myself.
That said, this game still feels relatively fresh. In fact the development team has been working through a full years worth of road map. There’s still loads of stuff planned for the game for the foreseeable future. And yeah, we’re coming to the end of the road map for 2025. But I was expecting maybe a new road map update. Or even an expansion to the campaign or some other sort of announcement. But instead we got a rather “big” announcement that Space Marine 3 was in development.
Space Marine 3 Announced
Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m excited to hear we’re getting Space Marine 3. But I still feel like there was lots of room to grow with Space Marine 2. In fact, that’s even pointed about in the press release:
Space Marine 2 has proven to be a transformative game for Saber. It is the culmination of everything we have learned about game development in our 25 years in the business. We are now starting to develop Space Marine 3, a game that carries with it tremendous expectations from our rapidly expanding fanbase. While we will continue to support and grow the Space Marine 2 universe over the coming years, we will take all our learnings and apply them to an even bigger and more spectacular game for the third installment. We view this as an opportunity to create a true love letter to the Warhammer 40.000 universe.
So the devs are still planning to support Space Marine 2 over the coming years. And, while I don’t know everything about video game design, I do know that they can take a while to build. Especially games of this caliber. That’s why this announcement feels just a tad premature. Then again, after the success they saw with Space Marine 2 it shouldn’t be a surprise that a Space Marine 3 would be in development. At the same time, Space Marine 2 is barely 6 months old…So this still seems a bit too soon.
Hopeful For Space Marine 3
I’m glad we’re not going to have to wait the same amount of time between another sequel as we did from Space Marine to Space Marine 2. That was a very long gap that I don’t really want to see happen again. And Space Marine 2 was (and still is) a banger of a game. The campaign was great and the story was fun to plow into. The extras in the post-campaign game are also really solid offerings. You can really get sucked into the grind if you want. At the same time, Space Marine 2 isn’t meant to be a “full live service game.” It never was. This wasn’t going to go the way of a Modern Warfare, Fortnite, or Destiny 2. This game is a fun romp and a call back to the older couch/console days of the Xbox 360. It hit that nail right on the head.
You can read the full press release yourself if you want to try and dissect this announcement further. I don’t know what the plan is for Space Marine 3. If we get more of the same, but bigger, that would be fine with me. It’s obviously still very early in the video game development cycle for the game, too. I just hope they learned the right lessons from Space Marine 2 and Space Marine 3 gets the time it needs in the oven, so to speak.
At least don’t have to guess if we’re getting a sequel now…
