Combining a top-down action RPG with the Warhammer 40,000 universe isn’t something that’s been done before, and it’s not hard to see why. The image that springs to mind with Warhammer 40K is one of slow, heavily armoured Space Marines, not the fast-paced acrobatic hacking and slashing that you’d get from something like Diablo.
So it’s no surprise then, that as an action RPG, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Martyr ignores the iconic helmeted hulks and instead has you taking on the role of the more nimble Inquisitors.
“With the Inquisitors, we have a lot of freedom to experiment. Unlike Space Marines, Inquisitors can be more customisable” reveals Viktor Juhász, the game’s Narrative Designer.
Playing as Inquisitors
For anyone who knows their 40K, playing as the titular race in an action RPG makes a lot of sense. An Inquisitors arrival is not just unexpected – it’s feared. Patrolling the universe dishing out the Emperor’s justice, these terrifying executioners are basically a team of Judge Dredds soaring through space. They’re judge, jury and executioner, using everything at their disposal to identify corruption and wipe out threats to the Imperium – even if that means sacrificing entire planets in the process.
Cool lore aside, the race’s flexibility allows for more varied gameplay possibilities, too. As Inquisitors aren’t as strictly regimented as Space Marines, they’re able to arm themselves as they see fit. The team has used this to provide players with three distinct character types.
The Crusader is the most like Space Marines, decked out in a thick suit of armour, the Assassin is much faster and more nimble, leaning towards melee combat or sniping, while the Psyker calls down the devastating powers of the Warp, but has to be wary of tearing a gateway as a horde of pesky demons might spill through.
While they all feel pretty enjoyable from the get-go, what we just described are only each class’s starting points. Every weapon you equip has different attacks that are available as soon as you pick them up and there’s a huge, almost bafflingly wide Skills system where you can spend points to boost your characters stats bit by bit — meaning you can really tweak each class and customise the way they play.
Wading Into the Action
Speaking of play, gameplay wise Inquisitor Martyr is a really interesting mixture of melee and ranged combat, with a dose of cover shooting thrown in for good measure. Most guns you wield can only be fired when stood still, meaning that running and gunning has a more stop-start feeling to it, and that ties in nicely with attaching to and popping in and out of cover.
Finding yourself staring down the barrel of a heavy weapons emplacement, you’re going to want to hide behind some pillars for a moment and look for a way to flank around behind. In truth though, you can largely just wade into the action if you don’t pick overly difficult missions for your power level, but attaching to cover does boost your health regeneration.
Whatever type of character you create, you’re drawn to the Caligari Sector to combat the seeds of Chaos that Nurgle has sown across the systems. However, there’s more to this game than just battling your way through the main campaign, with the sub-sector filled with many planets and stations waiting for you to deliver the Imperium’s justice to.
Though the campaign features hand-crafted levels, taking you from planet surfaces to seemingly abandoned space stations and Fortress spaceships, you can keep playing beyond that thanks to a series of randomly generated scenarios called Priority Assignments.
These dynamically build levels from the various tile sets and rooms in the game before then covering them with destructible objects and enemies, and setting you in one of several different mission objectives that go a bit beyond just purging everything in sight.
AI Levels
There’s always a danger with AI generated levels that they can dilute the experience, and the game’s PR manager David Martha agreed. “I think yes, obviously [that can happen],” he said, “even though we’re aiming to include many different terrain types, the design guys are still making different props – we have over 1000 different props that we can put on each of these settings – and decals, and weather effects, and spawn points and enemy types and enemy skill pools.
“At the same time, it’s [Warhammer] 40K, so everything will look a little bit similar. [your enjoyment will] boil down to if you love this universe and the art style. If you enjoy this atmosphere, then you will love it and see the difference between each of the maps, or you won’t care about it because all you want to do is purge the heretics!”
Viktor added: “Two of my colleagues put huge emphasis on creating a framework for the Priority Assignments, which are the random missions. You don’t really have to read through the briefings and the debriefings, but if you do that, you will realise that even the core situations for the same mission types can be very different. I think that they did a tremendous job of filling these regular assignments with life.”
Keeping the Game Interesting
This randomisation is how developer Neocore is looking to ensure that the game stays interesting, even when players are deep into the endgame. Certainly, there’s the push to improve your character, and one nice tweak is that your skill points are earned on an account level as opposed to per character, cutting out some of that all too familiar Destiny-style grind.
Still, for fans of the genre, there’s still the random number generation of opening up your rewards at the end of a mission, hoping that you get a new and rarer weapon or other piece of gear to equip.
You can also take up Grand Investigations that string together some of these missions with an overarching objective, while working to climb the online leaderboards in a system can see you become its protector and earn better loot from that.
Beyond that, Neocore is planning to add free seasons of content to get the community engaged as they introduce a new race from the Warhammer 40K universe for you to fight against, adding a ton more variety and shaking up the story in a significant way.
Shaking Up the Status Quo
“The campaign itself will focus on the Chaos god Nurgle, some rebellious elements like Imperial Guards who turned to the dark side, mutants and heretics. This is a very colourful enemy pool, but as we go on with the plot of the Caligari sector, certain events will shake up the status quo and new enemies will appear,” reveals Viktor. “ Every time that happens, we’re going to launch a new season that’s basically a content patch focussing on one particular enemy type.
“So if we introduce the Dark Eldar, for example, they will come with their own plot lines, their own missions and with a huge conflict that heralds their appearance and really explains what these creatures are. We’re going to help players to understand what the new content is all about, not just have new enemies appearing on the maps.”
Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Martyr might have a convoluted title, but it’s more than just Neocore taking the look and feel of Warhammer 40K and mixing it with an action RPG. There’re some really modern ideas at work with the randomised levels and thanks to the seasons of additional content and community-led decisions coming down the line, this could very well be a game that has Warhammer fans battling xenos in the name of the Emperor for hundreds of hours.
