Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s long-awaited patch 12.0 launched this week, and with it got here the new playable class, the Techmarine (try the patch notes right here if you wish to know what’s included). And whereas followers are having enjoyable attending to grips with this new Astartes, Space Marine 2’s first ever voice pack has sparked a backlash.
The $4.99 Chapter Voice Pack 1 consists of 450 re-recorded voicelines and a singular Space Marine Head beauty for every of the following Space Marine Chapters: Blood Angels, Space Wolves and Black Templars. It’s solely out there as a standalone buy, and isn’t included in both the Season Move 1 or Season Move 2 (a lot to the annoyance of some followers). Nevertheless it’s the approach these new voice traces are integrated into the recreation that has brought on a “principally destructive” Steam consumer overview ranking for the DLC.
It seems that equipping a DLC voiceline will revert to the class’ default voice when interacting with aims, like when looking a Cadian’s physique for codes in Inferno. This was sudden and, in gameplay, a jarring change. It means the Ultramarine normal voice traces nonetheless play for all the dialogue associated to interactive parts inside missions, so your Space Marine’s voice will flip flop backwards and forwards, which feels awkward and janky.
In the meantime, some gamers really feel misled by the 450 re-recorded voicelines quantity on the Steam web page. Most imagine this quantity consists of re-recorded voicelines throughout all languages, not only one.
“I don’t know the place they obtained the 450 voicelines from, it mixes with the normal voice traces when doing operations and it sounds lifeless silent throughout the mission as a result of there is no such thing as a banter,” reads one destructive overview. “Thus far the solely the distinction that’s noticeable is that emotes are completely different. The outline appears very misleading, I’m very curious to search out out the place they obtained 450 quantity from.”
“I’m insanely DISAPPOINTED!” reads one other. “I’ve examined the Blood angels voice and I used to be dissatisfied that his traces have been 80-90% what Vespasius [Vespasius is a Jump Pack Assault Intercessor of the Ultramarines Second Company and leader of Combat Squad Talasa] is simply saying apart from a couple of traces. FINE, possibly the writers aren’t there anymore. However WHY IN THE EMPEROR’S NAME are the Ops voices not modified???? Examine for the Inferno missions, on the half the place your acquiring codes for the lifeless guardsmen, THE BLOOD ANGEL VOICE BECOMES LITERALLY VESPASIUS AGAIN WHEN HE DOESN’T GET THE CODE OR WHEN HE OBTAINS THE CODES!
“To not point out there are not any voices for the helmet variations but! I am carrying a helmet and my Blood Angel voice seems like he does not obtained one! MAN I am dissatisfied!”
One other disgruntled fan stated: “Such a low-effort underwhelming DLC. Every of those voices lock you out of character banters, goal dialogues are spoken by the authentic character’s voice actor by means of the vox as an alternative the one you spent $5 on. Including to the laziness, some voice traces are the identical as their vanilla counterparts (ex. the Space Wolf sharing nearly all of his reload alerts with Decimus) to the level the place you are even questioning for those who modified voices altogether. One thing that Saber does not point out can also be how after choosing a voice for a personality, you’ll be able to’t revert that call until you spend 400 accolades to purchase it again. One other grievance is how each single certainly one of the faces introduced on this DLC is the most unfazed depiction of stoicism in the galaxy, no expressions or lip sync by any means, simply pure unadulterated void in every of their eyes. On a constructive word nonetheless, every voice has completely different traces for each particular skill, showcasing but once more how class locking is a moronic thought in PvE video games.”
It’s an analogous scenario on the Space Marine subreddit, which is at present affected by complaints. One redditor posted a screenshot of a successful refund on the DLC, saying: “The voice pack is simply not a price the cash. Not solely was it underwhelming however I nearly really feel prefer it was simply straight up false promoting. No mission dialogue? No banter between brothers and even not discovering information on a Guardsmen? They gave us the choice to equip the voice pack and preserve our helmets on, however there is no such thing as a helmet filter for the voices both. I’m a Black Templar fan and to my dismay, it looks as if a number of the voice traces are reused ones from Assault.
“I do know they’d have so as to add voice traces to each new and current mission, however that’s what try to be paying them to do. Why would they not go all the approach and simply launch the pack at a better worth ? I’m not making an attempt to be hateful, this recreation launched me to the 40k universe and obtained me hooked. I like this recreation, I’ve sunk so many hours into it. That being stated I’m simply unhappy this didn’t meet the expectations that a number of the neighborhood had.”
“Ready to see if Steam will refund mine proper now,” stated one other buyer. “I did earlier. I hope Saber is getting slammed with refund charges for this nonsense,” one other stated. “From day one I have been telling folks: it’s 700 traces in seven languages for 3 characters. So round 30 traces per character,” one other stated. “Saber did an abysmal job managing expectations. Telling folks the quantity of traces together with all language variations is like measuring your dick and together with the size of your backbone.”
The upshot of all that is that what ought to have been a constructive time for Space Marine 2, with all the cool new additions that got here with patch 12.0, is as an alternative maybe the first significant neighborhood uproar the recreation has confronted since its record-breaking launch in 2024. Space Marine 2 has been an enormous success for Focus, developer Saber, and Warhammer proprietor Video games Workshop, and is credited with main a military of latest followers to the interest. It is so profitable that Video games Workshop has made Titus, the recreation’s protagonist, the poster boy of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop recreation. Space Marine 3 was introduced as in growth quickly after Space Marine 2 got here out.
So this DLC backlash is a uncommon misstep for Saber and Focus with regards to Space Marine 2, however it would little doubt gas concern some have already got that the precedence for each now’s the growth of Space Marine 3. IGN has requested writer Focus Leisure for remark.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.