Warhammer 40,000: Area Marine 2’s long-awaited patch 12.0 launched this week, and with it got here the brand new playable class, the Techmarine (take a look at 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, Area Marine 2’s first ever voice pack has sparked a backlash.
The $4.99 Chapter Voice Pack 1 contains 450 re-recorded voicelines and a novel Area Marine Head beauty for every of the next Area Marine Chapters: Blood Angels, Area Wolves and Black Templars. It’s solely out there as a standalone buy, and isn’t included in both the Season Go 1 or Season Go 2 (a lot to the annoyance of some followers). Nevertheless it’s the way in which these new voice strains are included into the sport that has induced a “largely destructive” Steam consumer assessment ranking for the DLC.
It seems that equipping a DLC voiceline will revert to the category’ default voice when interacting with aims, like when looking out a Cadian’s physique for codes in Inferno. This was sudden and, in gameplay, a jarring swap. It means the Ultramarine commonplace voice strains nonetheless play for all of the dialogue associated to interactive parts inside missions, so your Area 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 contains re-recorded voicelines throughout all languages, not only one.
“I don’t know the place they acquired the 450 voicelines from, it mixes with the usual voice strains when doing operations and it sounds useless silent through the mission as a result of there isn’t any banter,” reads one destructive assessment. “To this point the one the distinction that’s noticeable is that emotes are completely different. The outline appears very misleading, I’m very curious to seek out out the place they acquired 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 strains 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 just a few strains. FINE, perhaps 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 useless 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 aren’t any voices for the helmet variations but! I am carrying a helmet and my Blood Angel voice feels like he would not acquired one! MAN I am dissatisfied!”
One other disgruntled fan mentioned: “Such a low-effort underwhelming DLC. Every of those voices lock you out of character banters, goal dialogues are spoken by the unique character’s voice actor by the vox as an alternative the one you spent $5 on. Including to the laziness, some voice strains are the identical as their vanilla counterparts (ex. the Area Wolf sharing nearly all of his reload alerts with Decimus) to the purpose the place you are even questioning if you happen to modified voices altogether. One thing that Saber would not point out can also be how after choosing a voice for a personality, you may’t revert that call until you spend 400 accolades to purchase it again. One other criticism is how each single one of many faces offered on this DLC is probably the most unfazed depiction of stoicism within the galaxy, no expressions or lip sync by any means, simply pure unadulterated void in every of their eyes. On a optimistic observe nonetheless, every voice has completely different strains for each particular potential, showcasing but once more how class locking is a moronic thought in PvE video games.”
It’s the same state of affairs on the Area Marine subreddit, which is at the moment affected by complaints. One redditor posted a screenshot of a profitable refund on the DLC, saying: “The voice pack is simply not a well worth 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 knowledge on a Guardsmen? They gave us the choice to equip the voice pack and hold our helmets on, however there isn’t any helmet filter for the voices both. I’m a Black Templar fan and to my dismay, it looks like a variety of the voice strains are reused ones from Assault.
“I do know they’d have so as to add voice strains to each new and current mission, however that’s what you need to be paying them to do. Why would they not go all the way in which and simply launch the pack at a better worth ? I’m not attempting to be hateful, this sport launched me to the 40k universe and acquired me hooked. I really like this sport, I’ve sunk so many hours into it. That being mentioned I’m simply unhappy this didn’t meet the expectations that a variety of the neighborhood had.”
“Ready to see if Steam will refund mine proper now,” mentioned one other buyer. “I did earlier. I hope Saber is getting slammed with refund charges for this nonsense,” one other mentioned. “From day one I have been telling individuals: it’s 700 strains in seven languages for 3 characters. So round 30 strains per character,” one other mentioned. “Saber did an abysmal job managing expectations. Telling individuals the quantity of strains 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 optimistic time for Area Marine 2, with all of the cool new additions that got here with patch 12.0, is as an alternative maybe the primary significant neighborhood uproar the sport has confronted since its record-breaking launch in 2024. Area 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 passion. It is so profitable that Video games Workshop has made Titus, the sport’s protagonist, the poster boy of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop sport. Area Marine 3 was introduced as in growth quickly after Area Marine 2 got here out.
So this DLC backlash is a uncommon misstep for Saber and Focus with regards to Area Marine 2, however it should little doubt gas concern some have already got that the precedence for each now’s the event of Area Marine 3. IGN has requested writer Focus Leisure for remark.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].