Warhammer 40,000: House 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, House 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 singular House Marine Head beauty for every of the next House Marine Chapters: Blood Angels, House 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). But it surely’s the way in which these new voice strains are integrated into the sport that has brought on a “largely adverse” Steam consumer evaluation ranking for the DLC.
It seems that equipping a DLC voiceline will revert to the category’ default voice when interacting with targets, like when looking out a Cadian’s physique for codes in Inferno. This was sudden and, in gameplay, a jarring change. It means the Ultramarine normal voice strains nonetheless play for all of the dialogue associated to interactive parts inside missions, so your House 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 consider this quantity contains re-recorded voicelines throughout all languages, not only one.
“I do not know the place they received the 450 voicelines from, it mixes with the usual voice strains when doing operations and it sounds lifeless silent through the mission as a result of there is no such thing as a banter,” reads one adverse evaluation. “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 received 450 quantity from.”
“I’m insanely DISAPPOINTED!” reads one other. “I’ve examined the Blood angels voice and I used to be disillusioned 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, possibly the writers aren’t there anymore. However WHY IN THE EMPEROR’S NAME are the Ops voices not modified???? Verify 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 aren’t any voices for the helmet variations but! I am sporting a helmet and my Blood Angel voice seems like he would not received one! MAN I am disillusioned!”
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 a substitute the one you spent $5 on. Including to the laziness, some voice strains are the identical as their vanilla counterparts (ex. the House Wolf sharing nearly all of his reload alerts with Decimus) to the purpose the place you are even questioning should you modified voices altogether. One thing that Saber would not point out can also be how after deciding on 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 criticism is how each single one of many faces introduced on this DLC is probably the most unfazed depiction of stoicism within the galaxy, no expressions or lip sync in anyway, simply pure unadulterated void in every of their eyes. On a optimistic notice nonetheless, every voice has completely different strains for each particular potential, showcasing but once more how class locking is a moronic concept in PvE video games.”
It’s an identical scenario on the House 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 information on a Guardsmen? They gave us the choice to equip the voice pack and hold 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 strains are reused ones from Assault.
“I do know they’d have so as to add voice strains to each new and present 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 received me hooked. I 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 number of the group 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 folks: 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 folks 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 House Marine 2, with all of the cool new additions that got here with patch 12.0, is as a substitute maybe the primary significant group uproar the sport has confronted since its record-breaking launch in 2024. House 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 recent followers to the pastime. 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. House Marine 3 was introduced as in improvement quickly after House Marine 2 got here out.
So this DLC backlash is a uncommon misstep for Saber and Focus on the subject of House Marine 2, however it is going to little doubt gasoline concern some have already got that the precedence for each now could be the event of House 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 [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].