Warhammer 40,000: Area Marine 2 is certainly one of Digital Foundry’s most eagerly anticipated video games, successfully hitting the beats that made the primary collection entry so pleasant. The grand scale of the environments, the dense swarms of tyranids, absolutely the carnage of fight – it is all again in Area Marine 2, enhanced by the spectacular technical capabilities of the Swarm engine. Focus Leisure lately shared a preview construct of the PC model of the sport, and we’re desperate to share our impressions with you. We’re liking what we see – however Area Marine 2 pushes {hardware}, which poses attention-grabbing challenges to the present technology of consoles, particularly on the CPU aspect.
Saber Interactive has taken on improvement duties for this recreation, and our first impression is that it is performed a implausible job of capturing the Warhammer 40,000 aesthetic: colossal, heroic figures, massive-scale gothic structure stretching out into the far distance and an enviable wealth of animated element within the quick space. The sense of density is just heightened when you get your first style of fight: dozens of tyranids speeding you, whereas a whole lot (presumably even hundreds extra) can typically be seen massing within the background.
Density intimately at shut vary additionally impresses, although it isn’t fairly to the identical extremes as Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. That mentioned, as third-person recreation up towards a first-person expertise, that is not really a foul factor. It really works exceptionally nicely. The emphasis on element additionally implies that one thing has to present elsewhere: Area Marine 2 does not appear to be utilizing cutting-edge lighting or international illumination expertise, however you do get achieved variations of mature applied sciences like shadow maps, screen-space reflections and screen-space ambient occlusion, whereas the GI resolution (which does appear pre-calculated or ‘baked’) does give a great impression of sunshine bounce. The standard of the physically-based supplies additionally works nicely.
Whether or not you are watching the video above or simply about any of the trailers of the sport seen to this point, the density of element have to be elevating questions. Simply how nicely does Area Marine 2 carry out? It is troublesome to reply conclusively owing to the truth that the code we had was clearly not remaining – however it’s attainable to attract some conclusions. We initially performed the sport maxed out on an RTX 4090 with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D – the premier CPU and GPU elements proper now – discovering that we might maintain a local 4K with Nvidia DLAA (that is DLSS at native decision) delivering pristine picture high quality at 60 frames per second, with overhead to spare.
We additionally determined to run the sport on the Digital Foundry ‘Frankenstein’s Console’ which is a PC constructed on the precise Xbox Collection X CPU working Home windows, paired with a Radeon RX 6700 – the closest GPU in the marketplace to the architectural make-up of the PlayStation 5 GPU. Consider this as a ballpark-equivalent console, and it is right here at excessive settings the place we begin to discover the restrict. In working a lot animated element, we are able to surmise that Area Marine 2 is especially heavy on the CPU, dipping into the mid-40s on the restricted quantity of content material we needed to work with (one marketing campaign mission and a few PvE ranges).
There’s scalability on the GPU aspect, although, the place the RX 6700 might ship a dynamic 4K 30 that locks properly to the goal frame-rate – or a much less secure 1440p expertise concentrating on 60 frames per second. So, it will be attention-grabbing to see the place Saber targets the console variations of the sport. There is a real sense of splendor watching the carnage play out at this stage of scale, however there is no such factor as a free lunch relating to rendering and simulation, so we’re trying ahead to seeing how Saber chooses to optimise.
As we famous in final week’s DF Direct Weekly, the PC construct we have now does have some stutter – seemingly traversal and shader compilation-based. Within the wake of our feedback, Saber acquired again to us and it is nice to see suggestions taken on board as the sport strikes into the ultimate part of improvement:
“Our engine is designed so that each one shaders are precompiled upfront, which means that, technically talking, compilation is not attainable throughout runtime. Nonetheless, on a PC platform, additionally it is essential to ‘precreate’ (or ‘pre-use’) all of them to keep away from smaller however nonetheless noticeable “driver compilation” hitches.
“We carry out this precreation course of on the recreation startup for each shader that might be utilized by the sport. This is the reason you would possibly discover longer loading occasions in the course of the first launch. Nonetheless, within the construct you’ve seen, some non-material shaders (equivalent to these for post-processing or sure results) had been lacking from this precreation stage. This problem is being addressed and shall be mounted for the discharge construct.”
Going again to the CPU-heaviness we famous, it is value taking into consideration that the Xbox Collection X CPU working Home windows delivers efficiency nicely beneath the capabilities of in the present day’s mainstream processors and our observations are solely in step with the printed PC spec necessities. On the graphics aspect, there is definitely scalability – plus help for dynamic decision scaling together with reconstruction based mostly upscalers. The preview construct supported DLSS and FSR 2, however XeSS and body technology had been notable by their absence. That is a disgrace as body technology is beneficial for CPU restricted eventualities in taking you nicely into excessive refresh charge territory, whereas XeSS has confirmed to be a wonderful upscaler, not only for Intel GPU customers however AMD too.
There are some technical points to handle based mostly on this preview code, however it’s heartening to see constructive suggestions from Saber Interactive, whereas a easy take a look at the sport in motion demonstrates that there is some distinctive outcomes coming from the Swarm engine.
And as for the recreation? It is genuinely thrilling stuff with a wonderful steadiness between ranged, projectile gunplay and close-quarters melee fight. There is a sense of hazard from the straightforward act of reloading, the place even a brief pause in gunplay can see the hordes descend. Enhancements to the dodge and parry mechanisms additionally improve the gameplay loop. The relentless nature of the fight could show fatiguing – however it’s value stressing that we got only a few ranges to play with, so we had been largely missing context, a way of development or perhaps a primary tutorial on the sport’s techniques.
Even so, we actually loved what we skilled in the course of the preview part and stay up for seeing the whole recreation – and attending to grips with how Saber Interactive balanced the expertise for the console variations.
