Video Game / Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

My craft is death.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a Third-Person Shooter / Hack and Slash published by THQ (with the publishing rights later changing hands to Sega after THQ went out of business in 2013) and developed by the creators of the Dawn of War, Company of Heroes and Homeworld series, Relic Entertainment. While the aforementioned games are Real-Time Strategy games, the company has created a Third-Person Shooter before, The Outfit, set in World War II, which received mixed reviews.

Being Exactly What It Says on the Tin, the game is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe where you play as one of the Adeptus Astartes, the Angels of Death — or more colloquially, the Space Marines. Space Marines are seven-feet tall genetically-engineered, power armoured Super Soldiers where one in one-hundred neophytes who are trained as Space Marines survive (to say nothing of the pre-adolescent aspirants who were considered for induction and who they fought beforehand...), split into unique "Chapters", and are devoted to the defense of humanity, the brutal, totalitarian and completely necessary Imperium of Man uniting them, and its now-on-life-support founder, who also developed the engineering process behind their creation, the God-Emperor of Mankind. Further elaboration on the 40K Space Marines in general can be found in the 'Warhammer 40K'' character page under Current Imperial Factions.

The protagonist is Captain Titus of the generalist Ultramarines chapter. An Ork horde, a species of green, inhumanly strong Blood Knights, led by Warboss Grimskull, is launching a massive attack on an Imperial Forge World named Graia in an attempt to steal Warlord-class Battle Titans. Titus and a small contingent of Ultramarines have been sent to slow them down while allied forces ready themselves for a counterattack. Later on in the game, a Chaos Warband called the Chosen of Nemeroth, including the traitorous and corrupted Chaos Space Marines, attack Graia as well. More general information on the enemy forces is available within the Warhammer 40K character page, under the "Warhammer 40,000 Orks" and "Forces of Chaos" subpages respectively.

Unlike other Third Person Shooters where a Take Cover! system is the norm, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine intentionally does not use one to encourage aggressive tactics — while the player is capable of Walking It Off for their shields in single-player (both health and shields in co-operative play and multiplayer), getting to an enemy and performing a melee 'execution' is the only way to restore health, quickly and entertainingly. The player may quickly switch between melee weapons and ranged weapons to bring death upon the enemies of the Imperium in various forms. The game uses a 'Fury' system, where after dealing enough damage, Captain Titus can go into Fury Mode. While in this state, he gains Bullet Time with ranged weapons to Boom, Headshot! some suckers, regenerates health automatically, deals more close-combat damage, and regenerates health with each melee attack while active.

The game has a single-player campaign focused on the efforts of Captain Titus to protect Forge World Graia, a competitive multi-player between the Cosmetically Different Sides of the Emperor's Space Marines and the Chaos Space Marines, and a 4-player co-operative mode called "Exterminatus", a free bit of Downloadable Content that involves a team of Space Marines slaughtering wave after wave of Ork troops.

Being a Warhammer 40,000 game, many of the universe's tropes apply to the game.

The game was released September 6 2011 in North America, and three days later in Europe. There is a demo available on Steam, X-Box Live and PSN.

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, the game was repackaged as Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine: Anniversary Edition on Steam, coming bundled with all DLC for free, as well as some extra bonuses like the official soundtrack and artbook.

The 2023 Retraux throwback shooter Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a sequel, depicting a cleanup squad of Ultramarines deployed onto Graia several years after the game ended to finish what Titus started.

Another sequel, titled Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II, was announced during the 2021 Game Awards Show.

For the Emperor, brothers!

---

This game provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Subverted by the Stormbolter. It's the last ranged weapon you're given, but it's really just a standard bolter with twice the fire rate and magazine size, counterbalanced by atrocious accuracy. Seeing how it replaces much more powerful weapons like the plasma gun or Stalker bolter instead of your standard bolter, it's pretty much useless for the few battles you could wield it in.
• Action Girl: Second Lieutenant Mira, leader of the remaining members of the 203rd Cadian regiment, at your service.
• Aggressive Play Incentive: Brother-Captain Titus heals from killing enemies in melee combat, which encourages the player to aggressively attack foes with his chainsword rather than play more cautiously and use bolters to keep the distance open.
• Alternate Universe: At the time of release, Relic Entertainment stated that the game took place in one of these, explaining how Titus was the Captain of the Ultramarines Second Company instead of Cato Sicarius at that time. No longer the case, as future canon^note Specifically, White Dwarf #498 would establish that Titus was the direct predecessor of Sicarius.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • You always revive with full health, even if you were beaten to a pulp before or during the autosave.
  • In the multiplayer, when you are killed by someone, you have the option to respawn using their gear and perks instead of your own. This gives low-level players a fighting chance against their higher-leveled killer(s).
  • If you empty a bolt weapon's magazine, you will reload automatically, but more slowly than if you reloaded manually before you ran out. When the magazine's about to run out, it makes a metallic, clinking sound, which lets you know so you can perform a quick reload without having to look at your ammo counter. This is EXTREMELY useful, since the game's chaotic pace makes a distraction as tiny as looking at your ammo count potentially fatal.
• Apocalyptic Log:
  • Appropriately for the universe the game is set in, many of the audio logs do not end well.
  • One of the logs that averts this turns out to be heartwarming. An Imperial Guardsmen heard a noise in a pipe and was about to throw a grenade in it - until he found that it was a group of surviving civilians. He then describes it as one of the happiest moments he's ever had.
• Asking For It: Orks have a bad habit of shouting "It takes more than that to kill an Ork!" and "Go ahead! Shoot me again!" while you shoot them.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: With the exception of the few Orks that have long-ranged weapons or actually stay in one spot to shoot, this is essentially the only "tactic" the Orks use.
• Attack Drone: The rarely-encountered Blight Drone, an unholy combination of UAV, larva, and carrion daemon.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Executions against larger enemies like Chaos Space Marines. While satisfying and useful for the health regeneration, these take longer than normal executions and leave Titus vulnerable to other attacks, possibly cancelling out the health regained. Basically, just killing large enemies is a lot less hassle unless there's few enemies left or you're desperate for the health.
• Axe-Crazy: The Orks, of course: to the last, they are psychotic, bloodthirsty marauders bred for war and loving every second of it.
• Badass Army:
  • The Ultramarines, of course.
  • The Imperial Guardsmen get major brownie points for sheer dedication to the cause.
  • The Chaos Space Marines count too, and WILL tear you limb from limb if you're not careful. One of the Aspiring Champions can handily stand up to Titus blow for blow, too.
  • They only show up briefly, but the Blood Ravens, our old friends from Dawn of War, are no slouch, charging at the Chaos lines fearlessly. All the more so since they weren't ordered into the fight, they just happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to come help.
  • The Black Templars are also mentioned as arriving at the same time as the Blood Ravens. While the latter meet up with Captain Titus and the remnants of the Imperial Guard to better coordinate their advance, the Templars take a more direct approach by landing on the other side of the planet and begin butchering everything in sight all by themselves.
• Badass Boast:
  • Pretty much any time Titus says he'll do something, given how, at best, he only has Sidonus and Leandros backing him up.
    Titus: Leave the gun to us, Lieutenant. You will have your reinforcements.
    Mira: ...I'll hold you to that, Captain.
  • Near the end of the game, Titus has this interaction with a Chaos Space Marine:
    Chaos Space Marine: There! Kill the Loyalist!
    Titus: Your brothers thought the same, traitor. Their corpses lie behind me.
• Badass Bookworm: Inquisitor Drogan, who is a scientist, psyker, and trained combatant.
  Drogan: I am soldier and scientist both, Captain.
• Badass Normal: Second Lieutenant Mira of the 203rd Cadian regiment of the Imperial Guard. The best example of her badassery is not that she managed to hold off an Ork Army long after the Ultramarines thought the Guard would be wiped out, but that she engages in light snarkery with a Space Marine Captain and gets away with it. Keep in mind that your average Astartes is 8 to 10 feet tall and strong enough to crush a normal human's skull like it was an egg, not to mention the fact no one in their right mind would speak up if said Astartes decided to crush said head like said egg.
• Battle Cry:
  • Orks will yell "WAAAAAAAAAGH!"
  • Chaos Marines are fond of bellowing "FOR THE FINAL GLORY OF CHAOS!"
• BFS: Bloodletters wield mighty hellblades that can cause massive amounts of damage.
• BFG:
  • The Heavy Bolter, Lascannon and Plasma Cannon, to name a few. This is also the purview of the Devastator Marine/Havoc multi-player class, wielding them to mow down opponents from a distance. The most powerful man-portable weapon in the game counts too: an Autocannon that you can only find twice.
  • Even the regular Bolter counts as one, especially since he's using a .998 caliber version, which is the same size as in Dawn of War but bigger than the .75 caliber version used in tabletop and fluff.
  • The giant gun fortress preventing Imperial ships from landing (the shells are about the size of a bus), and the crane-suspended Volcano cannon (meant to be mounted on a Titan) that the Orks tried to rig to break down a massive gate.
• Beam Spam: The main fighting tactic of Chaos Infinitary.
• Big Bad: Lord Nemeroth emerges as the more dominant of the two main villains. Even when you're primarily dealing with the Orks for the first half of the game, Nemeroth is manipulating events from behind the scenes, until he takes direct action in the last half of the game.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Warboss Grimskull and Lord Nemeroth are the main threats of the game. Grimskull seeks the loot the Imperium Titans while Nemeroth wants said Titans' power source. Thankfully, this means Mêlée à Trois is in full effect.
• Big "NO!": Titus gets one when Sidonus is killed by Nemeroth.
• Bigger Is Better: One of your many enemies are the Nobz (Orks bigger than even the Space Marines). Justified by Ork physiology and culture.
• Big Damn Heroes: You and your squad. By the time Titus and the other Ultramarines land on Graia, the Forge World's Skitarii are all dead and the Imperial Guardsmen are on the verge of being overrun. Cue Guilliman's boys in blue, charging out of nowhere to help them fend off huge Ork and Chaos assaults.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Over the course of the game, Titus brings an Ork Waaagh! grinding to a halt, stops a Chaos invasion in its tracks and beats a Daemon Prince to death with his bare hands while in free fall from a Space Elevator... only to be taken away by the Inquisition while being flanked by Black Templars because Leandros, his own battle brother, accused him of heresy due to suspicions that arose over the events of the game.
  • The thing that keeps this from being closer to a Downer Ending is Inquisitor Thrax. He clearly doesn't take Leandros seriously, and is simply going through the motions that he's officially required to. If he actually thought Captain Titus was a heretic, he would have had Mira and Leandros detained as well, wouldn't have let Titus deliver his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Leandros, and certainly would have had him disarmed before letting him on board the transport considering the sheer amount of destruction he was just responsible for.
• Blood Knight: The Orks in general are very eager to get into a fight.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: If you go melee on a horde of Orks, Titus will be absolutely covered in blood by the time you're done.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • Enemy heads can explode.
  • Also how Titus kills Grimskull, with a Plasma Pistol shot.
• Boring, but Practical: In the campaign, the standard Bolter is reliable, holds a lot of ammo, and deals a fair amount of damage. Once it's upgraded to a Kraken Bolter, even moreso. The Bolter combined with the Kraken Bolts perk is frequently seen online, for more or less the same reasons as in the campaign.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing:
  • Armored Nobz and Chaos Space Marine Champions (the ones with blood mauls and shield auras) are pretty much the toughest enemies in the game other than Warboss Grimskull himself; both have much more health and armor than even the other Elite Mooks, and can easily demolish you if you let them get close or back you into a corner.
• Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed with pistols in single player, which have unlimited ammunition, but still have to be reloaded (in the case of the bolt pistol) or given time to cool off (in the case of the plasma pistol). Otherwise averted.
• Butt-Monkey: Gretchin and Chaos militia. The best these two can hope for is literally being slapped to death by the Emperor's Angels of Death.
  • Chaos Renegades are actually deceptively dangerous. You know how they say even a Chaos Space Marine can be brought down by enough Guardsmen shooting their lasguns at them? Well, that works against loyalists too. Plus, the Renegades can become Bloodletters when killed. Gretchin on the other hand are basically just walking medkits.
• By-the-Book Cop: Leandros is a military example, see Bittersweet Ending above and Foreshadowing below. Note that his decision was right from the legal standpoint. Possibility of a Chaos taint in high-ranking Adeptus Astartes officer is a grave danger indeed. Though his reasons are indeed justified by the codex, his actions aren't entirely in line with protocol. Normally he would have raised his suspicions to a Ultramarine Chaplain, not an inquisitor.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: As you move through the Adeptus Mechanicus' installations on Graia, you'll be hearing various evacuation orders blaring from loudspeakers, mixed with a number of motivational messages... or at least what a whacky Cargo Cult that has dehumanization as one of its core tenets might consider motivational.
• Canon Foreigner: A non-character example in the form of the Vengeance Launcher: An experimental remote-detonation Grenade Launcher developed by Graia's Techpriests for use by the Space Marines, and not yet cleared for use off-world. Sidonus and Leandros poke fun at its name.
  Leandros: A vengeance launcher?
  Sidonus: Sounds promising.
• Canon Immigrant: Downplayed. Titus and Sidonus lookalikes appeared in the tabletop game as unnamed miniatures a couple of years after the game was released, specifically the only two helmetless members of an Ultramarines Sternguard Veteran box set. Titus being a Sternguard Veteran before being promoted to Brother-Captain actually makes a great deal of sense, considering they specialize in using a variety of exotic guns.
• Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: Titus and Sidonus.
• Chainsaw Good: Your first proper melee weapon is the Chainsword. You won't be using it for long, though, as it becomes obsolete once you find the power axe only a few chapters later.
• Character Customization: The player may customize their Marine's armour with different pieces and colours, and choose specific options within the Tactical Marine/Chaos Marine, Devastator Marine/Havoc and Assault Marine/Raptor classes in lieu of weaponry, perks and equipment. The customization system is said to have over 1.8 billion combinations. Apparently, it's over 39 septendecillion possible combinations.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • You see the Titan Invictus parked in the Manufactorum very early in the game. At the very end of the game, you find yourself in need of a Titan-sized gun.
  • A less literal example is Drogan's wound. That isn't bleeding.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Two veteran Ultramarines and a New Meat. Hundreds and hundreds of Ork Boyz'. You know how this ends.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Imperial relief force which is deployed behind the Ultramarines includes Black Templars and Blood Ravens among its number.
    Titus: Unleash the fury that you showed during the Aurelian Crusade, and we shall be glad to have even a few Blood Ravens with us.
    Blood Raven Sergeant: None shall find us wanting, Ultramarine.
  • A minor one, Imperial Guardsmen can grudgingly repair their own vehicles. This ability was introduced in Dawn of War II: Retribution.
    Guardsman: The Omnissiah won't like this.
• Contrived Coincidence: Of all the ships Titus could've landed on his way to Graia's surface, he just happens to pick the enemy leader's personal flagship, with said leader being in attendance. It doesn't have much of an effect on the narrative other than introducing Grimskull to the player, though.
• Critical Existence Failure: Low health causes the screen to redden and pulse, but you seem no less capable at fighting. Justified since the Space Marines tend to be badass enough to resist pain and fight on until incapacitation due to extreme genetic modification and engineering, as well as years of training and conditioning.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sergeant Sidonus; his "been there, done that, no problem" attitude and dry sense of humor makes him one of these.
• Dead All Along: Inquisitor Drogan, before the Space Marines even arrived on the scene. One of the audio logs you can find is his death and possession by one of Nemeroth's agents.
• Death from Above:
  • The Jump Pack, which allows you to effortlessly kill or stun large groups of enemies by what is essentially a rocket assisted air jump... aimed at the ground.
  • In the multiplayer and Exterminatus modes, killing an opponent in this manner is referenced by the trope name and rewarded with an XP bonus.
  • One of the perks of the Assault/Raptor class uses the trope name and increases the effectiveness of such an attack.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: While the lasguns wielded by Chaos soldiers aren't very powerful, given their rate of fire if you face half a dozen or so at once they can grind your HP down pretty quickly if they aren't dealt with before fighting the more individually threatening Chaos Space Marines.
• Death Ray:
  • Melta Guns, heat-based weapons utilizing sub-atomic agitation of the air, typically used for taking out tanks at close range, appears as a shotgun substitute (likely because the normal 40K Combat Shotguns would be insufficient against the enemies in the game and only the Scouts are allowed to use them in a Space Marine chapter).
  • The Lascannon is an extremely powerful version of the lasgun. It doesn't have quite the punch of the melta, but has a much longer range for sniping.
• Deconstruction: Several audio logs take apart the Orks, who have long been the setting's comic relief, by throwing into stark relief just how horrifying a Blood Knight race whose only concern is fighting and killing really is. Suddenly, they're not the football hooligan aliens with a funny Funetik Aksent whose tech runs on Clap Your Hands If You Believe, they're brutal monsters who dismember everyone in their path and laugh while they do it.
• Defiant to the End: One of the audio logs contains the real Inquisitor Drogan's attempt at this. As his killer was a demon, it didn't really work.
  Demon: Where is the Warp Device?
  Drogan: Safe from you, demon!
  Demon: You will tell me. After you are dead.
• Demonic Possession:
  • Inquisitor Drogan's corpse is possessed by a servant of Nemeroth. Interestingly, it appears to be a corpse-habitation, instead of the daemon simply ripping Drogan's soul out. The daemon was probably counting on being found before it could finish its own plan, and a disembodied voice talking to a dead body would have been slightly more suspicious than a talking but wounded Inquisitor.
  • Chaos militia can be possessed and become Bloodletters.
• Determinator:
  • The Space Marines, obviously, but that goes without saying in this franchise.
  • 2nd Lt. Mira is perhaps a more unusual example. Her forces are outnumbered, cut off from support, dwindling quickly, facing down foes several times stronger than her and her soldiers, all while she bears a command burden well above her modest rank. Yet, she is never shown faltering, doubting, or even considering giving up the fight. She instantly mobilizes assets to assist the Ultramarines with whatever they need, is shown actively encouraging her soldiers not to despair, and they claim that she is responsible for why they have been able to hold out as long as they have.
• Dirt Forcefield: While Titus will end up covered in blood after executing an ork or three dozen, it'll have faded off before the next battle.
• Discontinuity Nod: Much of the conflict in the story is driven by a Plot Device which functions as a power source by drawing energy directly from the Warp. Similar devices were described in early editions of the setting, but the knowledge of their construction was the exclusive domain of the Squats.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Played with. Shooting on the move doesn't impair your aim too much, making tactics like hammering an opponent with your pistol before closing in for the melee killing blow viable. There is one exception: the Heavy Bolter is normally slow-firing and inaccurate at longer ranges, but if the Devastator/Havoc player pushes the reload button, he'll steady himself, preventing movement but drastically increasing the accuracy and fire rate of his weapon.
• Downloadable Content: A considerable amount. It mostly consists of new multiplayer Space Marine veteran or Chaos champion skins, from various Chapters or Legions, but there's also the "Chaos Invasion" addon which allows Chaos Marines for coop play, and "The Dreadnought", which introduces a new gametype with three maps where the top player on a team gets to control a mighty Dreadnought.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • Averted, particularly with the Imperial Guardsmen. They were hard pressed against the Ork Waaagh! and almost certainly doomed before your arrival; and after you (quite literally if you so choose) hack your way through a huge mob of Orks closing in to push through their lines, most of the Guardsmen are very much in awe of Titus and his comrades. Some of the casualties in the bunker thank the God-Emperor that they were able to see a Space Marine before the end, and utter a prayer on your behalf. They also tend to kneel before you and address you as "My lord".
  • It's also averted from the Space Marines towards the Imperial guard. Titus shows nothing but respect and admiration for troops so willing to lay their life on the line to protect their planet, rather than the usual treatment of "Oh look, more Cannon Fodder." This attitude instantly wins Lieutenant Mira over.
• Dynamic Entry: An insanely AWESOME example: in the final stage, Titus must cross a bridge being held by Chaos Marines on his way to face Nemeroth. The bridge is INFESTED with them, and you'll come to a part where there is basically no way to cross without getting killed... until a Space Marine Drop Pod lands with an explosion amongst the Chaos Marines and Space Marines from the Ultramarines, Blood Ravens and Black Templars storm out and start slaughtering them. FOR THE EMPEROR!!
• Easy Level Trick: The game has a bunch of achievements awarded for playing through an entire chapter with nothing but specific combinations of two weapons, most of which are severely hampered by low ammo capacity. However, crafty players found out that you don't actually need to play through an entire chapter to unlock them; just starting from specific checkpoints and reaching the next one counts as well, saving completionists a whole lot of time and frustration.
• Elite Mooks: A few varieties that are large and tough enough to go toe-to-toe with a Space Marine one-on-one. They typically are resistant to gunfire, have powerful melee attacks, need to be staggered with combos, and you have to button mash during their executions or else they'll counter.
  • Nobz, Armored Nobz, and Big Shoota Nobz.
  • Chaos Space Marines become this once Nemeroth appears, as due to them being Space Marines as well they are not only tough to kill, but also pack powerful weapons.
  • 'Ard Boyz aren't as tough as Nobz or Chaos Space Marines and fight mostly like regular Boyz, but wear heavy red armor that gives them decent resistance against attacks. They also berserk when low on health and sometimes carry bulletproof shields, and like regular Boyz they fight in groups.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Par for the course. The Imperial Guard are brave and dedicated, to be sure, but the Space Marines are badassery personified.
• Energy Weapon: Power Axes and Power Swords, the latter of which is multiplayer-exclusive. Both work by sheathing the blade in an energy field, allowing it to cut through armor with ease. The Power Sword, which is simply a reskinned Chainsword so that it doesn't provide an unfair advantage, is unlocked by playing the twin stick shooter Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team on consoles or if you had pre-ordered the Special Edition. Not exactly an unfair advantage, but since the power sword doesn't make the same trademark growl as the chainsword, it's a bit stealthier (if less satisfying) in multiplayer, since you can hear a chainsword from across the map.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Did anyone not see Leandros betraying you to the Inquisition from a mile away?
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's Warhammer 40,000 and it features a Space Marine.
• Expy: The Power Source the game revolves around might as well be called a Zero Point Module. It even looks similar.
• A Father to His Men: Captain Titus is nothing but respectful and protective of his subordinates. He does not condescend on the Imperial Guardsmen (which would be understandable enough for a Space Marine Captain, who is MUCH higher on the Imperial totem pole), instead commending them for their bravery and thanking them for their support as the mission goes along. Since this is 40K, they in turn practically worship the ground he walks on. As the Ultramarines are one of the more benevolent Space Marine chapters toward common humans, this is nothing out of the ordinary.
• Finishing Move: Stunned enemies may be executed. Aside from obviously looking frakkin' awesome, it is the only way to restore health in the single-player outside of activating Fury (which requires causing a lot of damage to charge it up).
• Finishing Stomp: A Finishing Move Captain Titus may use. When the Orks try it on him, however, he'll just roll away.
• Flash Step: Bloodletters are capable of short-range teleportation, allowing them to dodge gunfire, close quickly with Titus, and attack from unexpected angles.
• Flunky Boss: Nemeroth is this. His "boss fight" is you fighting off waves of Bloodletters and Chaos Space Marines before you tackle him off the tower you're on, initiating the Free-Fall Fight that finally kills him.
• Free-Fall Fight: The final battle with Nemeroth.
• Friendly Fireproof: Swing away with that chainsword all you want, you'll only be hurting the enemy. It can be averted in private multiplayer, however, as the host can enable friendly fire.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Leandros' establishing moments at the beginning of the game are questioning Captain Titus' combat strategies, as they are contradictory to those established in the Codex Astartes. Later, he blows the knees out from under an ork, watches it crawl around for a moment, then unloads his bolter into it and keeps going even when the ork is clearly dead, only stopping when Titus barks at him: sadism like that is quite unbecoming of a discipline-obsessed Ultramarine and speaks to some instability. He also shows absolutely no tolerance for anything involving the Warp. This is what eventually leads to Leandros reporting Titus to the Inquisition for supposed Warp taint.
  • There are several clues preceding the intervention of Chaos in the story; the noise at the end of Drogan's video message doesn't sound like an Ork's cry, nor does his wound look like one an Ork would cause. Additionally, when he warns that if the device is captured "He'll be unstoppable" it is unlikely he is referring to Grimskull, as Orks are asexual and an Ordo Xenos inquisitor would have known this, so he was almost certainly referring to someone else (likely Nemeroth or the Daemon).
  • Inquisitor Drogan's own turrets shoot at him, and voice recognition software doesn't respond to his orders. Why? Because they both recognise that it isn't him.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Due to clipping issues, Orks in Exterminatus mode sometimes fall out of the level, making it impossible for the Marines to kill them. Since every Ork in an attack wave has to die before the level progresses, this effectively renders the level Unwinnable.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Almost everyone. Even some Guardsmen are invincible as long as they have at least one line of scripted dialogue.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • Grimskull. While he possesses many of the typical Ork traits, he's quite strategically intelligent, as recognized by the protagonists. His Ork horde is quite organized and he even ordered his Orks to take control of the planetary defense weapons to hold off incoming Imperial reinforcements ^note Typical Ork behaviour would simply be to dismantle and loot the defenses, as pointed out by your squadmates..
  • His forces can also be found systematically and rather ingeniously searching for various methods of defeating especially well-entrenched Imperial defenses, such as stealing a Volcano Cannon stored outside a Titan factory and rigging it to a gigantic robotic crane in order to blow the really huge doors off the factory. They also steal a train associated with a rail network that services the factory, load it up with several megatons worth of explosives, and turn it into a Battering Ram to smash into the very same doors. In the end, they enter the factory by crawling through kilometres-long steam-filled pipes.
• Genre Shift: Halfway through the game, the entire tone and gameplay style suddenly changes from a superheroic boyhood-fulfilment-fantasy to a War Is Hell horror game. See Shoo Out the Clowns below for more details.
• Godzilla Threshold: Averted. A Titan-producing Forge World falling into the hands of da Orkz sounds like a good reason to call down an Exterminatus, but the Imperium needs the facility just as much as the Xenos do. So Plan A is to send the Ultramarines to recapture it (mostly) intact. Justified as a Forge World capable of producing Titans is exceedingly rare, and calling down an Exterminatus on one would definitely piss off the Adeptus Mechanicus.^note That and despite Memetic Mutation, Exterminatus are a last resort only done when it is 100% there is no other possible solution
• Gorn: In the grim darkness of Warhammer 40000: Space Marine's combat, there is only blood.◊
• Gory Discretion Shot: One execution animation is to start to rip off a Nob's jaw. His entire head explodes, rather than actually ripping the jaw off. (Yes, this is the sort of game where showing someone's head exploding counts as a Gory Discretion Shot!) Otherwise averted.
• Grandfather Clause: By now, Real Is Brown, A Space Marine Is You, and so many of the other tropes in this game are openly derided Undead Horse Tropes. Given that the setting has been playing these tropes straight since before the NES and helped codify some of them, it gets a pass.
• Groin Attack: One of the execution moves with the chainsword starts with a strike between the legs that lasts for a couple of seconds.
• Healing Potion: Averted... almost. There are only two methods of regenerating health in single player, and the easier method is executing something that can kill you right back (the other method is Fury... which also involves killing someone. Lots of someones). Even the regular Orks have to be stunned before they can be executed, not to mention that you can't move or dodge while Titus does all his fancy Chainsword-waving. But 'tis a Grimdark universe when a mob of Gretchin (knee-high green scavenger psychopaths) or Renegade Militia (trained soldiers turned to worshiping the Chaos Gods) can be considered as walking Healing Potions due to the ease and speed they can be executed.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: None of the main characters wear their helmets. Leandros starts with one, but he ditches it after it gets smashed from a hard landing jumping from a stratosphere height after Titus had the bright idea to try Steel Rain without a drop pod.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: In keeping with the franchise, Captain Titus and the other Ultramarines wear brightly colored blue and gold suits of power armor that make them stand out against the battlefield as opposed to the Imperial Guard's olive-drab flak armor. This is deliberately invoked in-universe as the Imperial Guard are only human and must hide from their enemies to survive while the Adeptus Astartes know what their reputation does to enemy morale and therefore make themselves as visible as possible.
• Homage: The battle between Titus and the partially Daemonized Nemeroth during free-fall seems to pay homage from the scene in the Ultramarines movie where a Daemon Prince plunges both itself and Captain Severus off a cliff. Unlike the movie, we get to see what happened, and unlike Severus, who lost and gets his body possessed by the Daemon Prince, Titus actually succeeds.
• Hope Bringers: The Space Marines to the Imperial Guard. The first thing Lieutenant Mira does when she sees Titus's squad is to relax and thank the Emperor, and every time a battle between the Guard and Orkz is joined by the Space Marines, the Guard subsequently gets inspired and manages to win.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Thunder hammers are available for use. The weapon, whose head is almost as big as Brother-Captain Titus's torso in his Powered Armor, is slow to swing but will stagger opponents on a normal hit, and a couple of direct hits will usually kill just about anything. It's generally considered one of the best melee weapons to use with a jump-pack in multiplayer.
• Humongous Mecha: The Orks seek to loot Warlord-class Battle Titans being housed on the Forge World. One named "Invictus" is seen early on, and it's later used to great effect to sever the Orbital Spire, Nemeroth's stronghold. Evidence of other Titans can be found, such as the volcano cannon suspended on a crane that gets dropped onto a mass of Orks.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: You can carry up to five weapons (counting the one currently in your hands), and while Astartes are more than strong enough to haul everything, one wonders where they keep it.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • The execution for Ork Weirdboyz involves grabbing their staff, then impaling them through the abdomen with it.
  • Also how Sidonus is killed.
• Industrial World: The game is set on the forge world of Graia, which starts out under attack by orks (which is why the Space Marines are sent in) and is is then invaded by Chaos. Because Titan-producing worlds are so rare, the intro itself explains why Exterminatus isn't an option unless the world is clearly beyond saving. Strangely, there are no tech-priests to be seen anywhere, only unaugmented humans.
  Guardsman repairing a Basilisk: Hand me that field manual. We're stuck on a bloody Forge World, and not a Tech-Priest in sight!
• Injured Vulnerability: Executions, where you kill an enemy in the bloodiest way possible to regain health. The catch is that the enemy must be stunned, and stunning is a slower, no damage move, and tougher enemies require a combo chain ending in a stun. Fortunately averted with gretchin and rebel militia, which you basically Offhand Backhand to death.
• It's Raining Men: Right from the game's start - Ork guns are shooting down Imperial ships and there's no way Titus' Thunderhawk could survive trying to land him... So Titus has his squad equip Jump Packs and flies down to the closest troublesome Ork ship and destroys it.
• Jawbreaker: This is one possible execution animation for Ork Nobz; pin their foot with your Power Axe and then break their jaw for the Emperor!
• Knight Templar:
  • Surprisingly subverted, given the setting. Inquisitor Thrax is actually a fairly nice guy, and appears reluctant to charge Titus with heresy. He also agrees to only "investigate" Titus and let his unit go, which is pretty much the opposite of what a typical Inquisitor would do.
  • Granted, he noticed that Titus's wounds were inflicted by Chaos and asked Leandros if he was sure about the charge. It could just be that he didn't think that Titus was a heretic and Leandros was just over-reacting, so there was no need to get aggressive with a charge that he was positive wouldn't end badly.
  • Although he still threatens Titus with expanding taint accusation to his subordinates and friends unless he surrenders himself quietly.
• Lampshade Hanging: One Guardsman, whilst trying to fix a Basilisk, complains that they're on a Forge World, but there are no Tech-Priests to be found. This is true, because there's not even one encounter with a Tech-Priest or any member of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the game (despite the Mechanicus having a large presence on Forge Worlds).
  Guardsman: Pass me the field manual! We're stuck on a bloody Forge World, and not a Tech-Priest in sight!
• Left Hanging:How is Titus going to fare at the hands of the Inquisition, and for that matter just why is he so resistant to being tainted?
• Leitmotif: The game has several excellent ones, including some rousing battle drums to indicate encroaching battle. Probably the most memorable though is that of the Orkz, which is clearly (and hilariously) the tolling of a thousand vuvuzelas.
• Lightning Bruiser: Assault Marines/Raptors use Jump Packs to quickly close in with a Ground Pound, stun enemies near the impact zone and then tear them apart with their close-quarter weapons.
• Limit Break: The 'Fury' system in the single-player has a bar that fills up as you fight, allowing you to unleash a devastating Herd-Hitting Attack on surrounding enemies in a melee, temporarily go into Bullet Time with ranged weaponry, regenerates your health, and allows you to perform executions at any time.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Your default guns fire bullets that penetrate their target, then explode inside a second later. And that's just your default weapons. The Chunky Salsa Rule is in effect.
• Market-Based Title: In Taiwan, Space Marine is titled "Dynasty Warriors Warhammer" to capitalize on the already popular Dynasty Warriors franchise. It really helps that gameplay wise, Space Marine closely resembles DW in that you are a One-Man Army who can power up through combat to use Musou style ultimate moves.
• Megaton Punch: The execution animation for Gretchin and Renegade Militia. Titus punches them so hard that they explode.
• Mêlée à Trois: Towards the end of the game, the battle for Graia becomes Space Marines/Imperial Guard versus Orks versus The Forces of Chaos.
• Mercy Kill: One of the audio logs features a medic doing this to her patients when it's clear that the Orks are going to break through.
  Assistant: Stop! That's a fatal dose!
  Medic: Yes. I have enough for all of them.
  Assistant: You're murdering them?!
  Medic: I'm showing them mercy. In ten minutes, the Orks will break through those doors and kill them all in their beds. Better to die peacefully before that.
• Mini-Mecha: The eponymous Dreadnoughts in the Dreadnought Assault DLC. As with anything in the 40K universe, the term "Mini" is stretched quite far; the Dreads stand about 20 feet tall with equally wide shoulders and two BFGs for arms. Heck, they're bigger than many pieces of level architecture!
• Mook Chivalry: Averted. Enemies in single-player and multiplayer alike won't hesitate to gang up on you.
• Multi-Melee Master: There's a lot of melee weapons to choose from in the game. The Assault Marine/Raptor class uses them to great effect.
• Multi-Ranged Master: There's lots of guns to choose from too. Used by Devastator Marines/Havocs and Tactical Marines/Chaos Marines in the multiplayer with a multitude of different guns to use - Tactical Marines/Chaos Marines even have a perk that allows them to carry another!
• Mundane Solution: Sidonus briefly ponders if they can get rid of the Warp Device... by simply shooting the thing and being done with it. Titus rejects the idea as it may make the situation worse. In the end, it looks like Sidonus was right. After killing Nemeroth, Titus just grabs a hold of the unconstrained Warp Device... and breaks the damned thing in two. Ending the Chaos invasion in an instant.
• The Musketeer: The game is intended to allow quick swapping and viability of both close-combat and ranged weapons alike. The intended use of the Tactical Marines/Chaos Marines within multi-player, skilled with both a ranged weapon and a Combat Knife.
• Mythology Gag: The maximum character level in multiplayer is 41, and in Annihilation mode, the first team to score 41 kills wins. Initially, it seems like a odd number to pick, but it makes a lot of funny sense when you realize that the 41st millennium is the setting of 40K.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Warboss Grimskull.
• Never Trust a Trailer: This trailer was pretty early in development, but neither that Orbital Bombardment nor that Ultramarines team ever appear in the game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Captain Titus winds up being manipulated into causing a Chaos invasion by Inquisitor Drogan, whose body was possessed by a servant of Nemeroth's.
• No Body Left Behind: Bloodletters and Chaos Space Marines dissolve in a flash of warpfire when killed, leaving only a discolored scorch mark behind, if anything.
• No Cutscene Inventory Inertia:
  • Played straight with most weapons, but averted with the Plasma Pistol and Kraken Bolter, which permanently replace your Bolt Pistol and Boltgun in cutscenes if picked up.
  • Also extends to the Quick Time Event-laden final boss, whom you will always fight with a chainsword in your hand no matter what melee weapon you were holding beforehand.
• No Indoor Voice:
  • Grimskull yells everything at the top of his lungs. Par for the course, though, being an Ork and all.
  • Averted for the Warboss when he leaps back up out of a Bottomless Pit, having been sent tumbling down with a bunch of demons. Grimskull glares at Nemeroth and delivers possibly the only subdued line an Ork has ever had in Warhammer history...
    Grimskull: I ain't so easy to kill.
• No Scope: While not recommended for group combat, the sniper weapons do work well on single targets up close.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Orks. The fandom mostly treats them as comic relief due to how over the top they are, but this game takes pains to showcase just how dangerous and terrifying a billions-strong race of super soldiers that literally exist solely to kill can be. After the daemon invasion begins, the Orks still control most of the Ajakis city and consistently remain the bigger threat right up until Grimskull dies.
• Obvious Villain, Secret Villain: The main threat is invading orks, but as the game progresses the forces of Chaos take precedence, ending in a fight with a Daemon Prince.
• One-Man Army: Do you think that the protagonists of earlier shooters were One Man Armies? You won't after playing this game.
  • Captain Titus blows an Ork ship up by landing on it with Jump Packs and turning one of its own guns at its bridge... and that's all before the title splash. By the way, he did all that with only a Bolt Pistol and a Combat Knife (granted, the Bolt Pistol is .75 caliber and the "knife" is more like a short sword).
  • He then tops that by single-handedly assaulting Nemeroth's stronghold, fighting his way through all of Nemeroth's servants, and then proceeding to punch Nemeroth to death, who is in the middle of turning into a Daemon Prince, while in freefall. He finishes Nemeroth off by crushing his head, then destroys the Power Source, causing a huge explosion. And Titus survives it without a scratch...which makes the Inquisition curious.
• The Only One: Titus, Sidonus, and Leandros are sent into battle alone in that area of Graia^note They're not the only Ultramarines squad in the theatre, but the others are operating elsewhere on the planet before they discover a surviving garrison of the Cadian 203rd, open up the path for the Guardsmen to receive reinforcements, and are themselves reinforced when the Liberation Fleet arrives, at which point they are no longer the only Space Marines in the area.
• Overheating
  • Heavy Bolters and Autocannons have tons of ammo, but they also overheat after about ten seconds of continuous fire.
  • All plasma weapons can also suffer from overheating, though thankfully they don't explode and damage you like in the tabletop game.
  • In multiplayer the plasma cannon can explode and kill you if you charge it too long.
• Overly Long Fighting Animation: The main problem with executions, which is also the reason why regular Regenerating Health is used for multi-player and the co-op "Exterminatus" mode. Enemies will still attack you while you're doing them, negating at least some of the health you gain from it. It takes even longer against elite enemies like the Nobs and the Chaos Space Marines, requiring some button-mashing (unless you're using a Thunder Hammer or are in Fury mode) to actually kill them, though you do get more health from it and will stun all the nearby Mooks.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: The Plasma Cannon suffers from this. Its charged shot in particular travels at only a few meters per second and in a pronounced ballistic arc, making it extremely difficult to use against fast-moving targets despite the splash damage. On the upshot, Chaos Space Marine Havocs won't be able to hit you either if you stay on the move constantly.
• Powered Armor: As any 40K fan would expect for the Space Marines. It provides a regenerating armor layer, which can be boosted with the Iron Halo (a plot-mandated upgrade in single-player, and a perk in multi-player).
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
  Grimskull: I ain't finished with you yet, Space Marine!
  Titus: But I am finished with you, Ork.
• Press X to Not Die:
  • Stun an Ork Nob or a Chaos Marine. See that big tempting "Execute" icon floating over him? If you try to execute them without having 'Fury' mode on or without a Thunder Hammer, you'll have to rapidly mash the shoot button to overpower them. Otherwise they'll pick you up, slam you to the ground, and attempt a Finishing Stomp (Chaos Marines just knock you to the ground), which drains up to half your health.
  • The final boss is basically the Icarus fight from God of War II with guns, Powered Armor, and ten gallons of extra awesome.
• Pretty Little Head Shots: Averted. Shooting an ork in the head with what is essentially a large caliber high-speed grenade? The end result is not pretty.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: The Pistols have infinite ammunition in single-player, and are always available in multi-player.
• Rated M for Manly:
  • Just look at the page image. You play as an seven and a half foot tall Super-Soldier encased in Powered Armor that only enhances their size and wield exotic weaponry to match their defenses. Take Cover! is intentionally averted to encourage getting into your opponents' face, which you will soon find to be full of blood. You will likely kill scores of Orks throughout the game, with whatever methods you choose.
  • Late in the game, Captain Titus' Valkyrie is taken down by a Stormboy's body clogging up an engine. Titus' response is to effortlessly jump from the crashing transport and roll as he lands.
  • Just to reiterate, the only way to heal yourself is either brutally execute a stunned foe or to kill enough enemies to fly into a berserk rage. Either way, you're going to be covered in blood from head to toe.
  • Many games these days feature a Horde Mode, where a small team of players takes on increasing waves of foes, usually only a few at a time but with increasing numbers and a cleared stage will have in the ballpark of a hundred or so kills. Space Marine has Exterminatus Mode, where the first wave has nearly a hundred Orks in it, half of them swarm into the zone on word go, and clearing a stage means multiple members of your fire team will have thousands of dead Orks to their name.
• Real Is Brown:
  • Played with. The developers made it clear they wanted the game to be bright and colorful, and they pretty much pulled it off as far as combat and character designs are concerned (the Ultramarines wear bright blue and gold armor, for example). The environments, however, tend to be brown or grey (you're on a Forge World, after all), and the regular Imperials tend to wear rather drab uniforms.
  • Justified: Guardsmen dress for camouflage, while Space Marines dress to impress. You are not supposed to see Guardsmen coming; Space Marines want you to see them coming so you can piss your pants.
    CAMOUFLAGE IS THE COLOR OF COWARDICE.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Titus delivers a short one to Leandros at the end, telling him that his blind adherence to the letter of the Codex Astartes is a failing on his part.
  Titus: "The Codex Astartes is a set of rules. They guide us... shape us as Ultramarines... teach us to hold duty and honour sacred above all. But how we live with those rules is the true test of a Space Marine. And you have failed."
  • In a way, Titus is also 100% correct in this manner. Leandros DID fail. You're supposed to report Battle-Brothers you suspect of heresy to a Space Marine Chaplain, not directly to the Inquisition.
• Reconstruction: Arguably one for the Ultramarines. These are neither the "nearly useless without a Codex Astartes solution" portrayal, nor are they the ludicrously perfect and unstoppable versions from Matt Ward. The game instead strikes somewhat of a balance: the Ultramarines aren't invincible, but they're also willing to throw out the manual if the situation calls for it (Titus specifically points out in an early cutscene that Leandros needs to think for himself instead of blindly obeying the Codex). It also helps that the story called for exactly the scenario the Ultramarines excel at: being generic action heroes. They also continue to be Nice Guys.
• Red Shirt: The Imperial Guard, as usual. You can save quite a few of them if you directly aid them, however.
• Regenerating Health: Zig-Zagged. The developers considered including it, but felt it was out of character for Ultramarines to sit and suck their thumbs behind a wall every five minutes, and so the execution mechanic was born. Shields, on the other hand, do regenerate, meaning said thumb-sucking will likely happen anyway as the player ducks for cover before their shields break and they start losing health.
• Removable Turret Gun: Autocannons, Heavy Bolters, and Plasma Cannons can all be taken from their tripods and carried around; you can't run or do a dodge roll while carrying them, but the amount of firepower you get in exchange is well worth it.
• RPG Elements: Multi-player includes a level and challenge system like Rainbow Six: Vegas and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (and every other main entry in the series thereafter) to unlock more perks, weapons and armour pieces. Classes are customizable, but are limited to three classes of degrees of ranged and close-combat effectiveness - Devastator Marines/Havocs for the former, Assault Marines/Raptors for the latter, and Tactical Marines/Chaos Marines in the middle.
• Rule of Cool: In the finest tradition of Warhammer 40,000, of course! The execution animations unabashedly follow this.
• Scenery Porn: The inside of Manufactorum Ajakis is beautiful, even more so when you catch a glimpse of the Titan Invictus. Also overlaps with:
• Scenery Gorn:
  • Graia is very torn up by the time you get there, though it does make for some pretty awesome vistas, such as when you first touch down and walk through the wreckage, eventually coming to a long avenue with an enormous and miraculously still intact statue depicting a cloaked figure with a spiked ring around their head at the far end. Said statue gets its top half blown off as you close the distance to it.
  • Lampshaded at one point when the squad is approaching an absolutely massive suspension bridge, which looks like a cross between the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges, and they immediately start extolling the virtues of the Adeptus Mechanicus for being able to build such a thing.
• Scope Perspective: The game switches from third-person to first when using the lascannon's scope. The scope even has a skull icon that lits up when a target is in the line of fire.
• Sequel Hook: The game ends with Titus willingly allowing himself to be taken away by the Inquisition, with Titus promising he will get to the bottom of his ability to resist the Warp.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: In multiplayer, Tactical Marines/Chaos Marines can get a perk that upgrades their regular Combat Knives to these. They deal additional damage.
• Shockwave Stomp: A defensive ability available to Devastators/Havocs in Multiplayer, useful for stunning and disorienting enemies. Perks can increase the speed of the animation, and/or the range and damage.
• Shoulders of Doom: Used with other adaptations of 40K's Space Marines, and this one is no different. The shoulders, however, are surprisingly articulate, and Titus and the other Space Marines seem to have a full range of arm movement.
• Shown Their Work: The game is focused on giving you a very authentic WH40k experience in a third-person shooter.
  • Bolts don't explode until a split second after they make impact.
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus iconography is exact.
  • Oaths of moment are visible on the armor of the Space Marines.
  • The Stalker and Kraken Bolters are taken straight from the 5th edition Space Marine Codex.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: When the lovably-goofy and Laughably Evil Orks are the primary antagonists of the game, Space Marine is a rip-roaring swashbuckling boyhood-fantasy fulfilling romp where superheroic One-Man Army Tropes are taken to their ludicrous logical conclusions. When the Orks retreat and let the Chaos Daemons and Marines take central stage, on the other hand, the game becomes a substantially darker and bleaker Saving Private Ryan meets Call of Duty style war-game.
• Slashed Throat: The execution for Bloodletters, if you have a Chainsword, involves grabbing the Bloodletter from behind, and slitting its throat with the Chainsword. Sidonus demonstrates in a cutscene, and is killed by Nemeroth right afterwards.
• Sniper Rifle:
  • The closest weapon you'd expect for this is the Stalker-pattern Bolter, which thanks to its scope acts quite like the Marksman Gun on the list of Standard FPS Guns.
  • The Lascannon, normally an anti-tank or anti-giant-alien weapon, is the gun that's really treated this way in gameplay (it's a stripped down version).
• Space Elevator: The orbital spire.
• Space Marine: ...well, obviously.
• A Space Marine Is You: Do we even have to say it? But this is surprisingly downplayed, at least with Titus' character. He does not resemble the codifiers (Gears of War, Halo, Doom, etc.) at all, being a well-spoken, experienced commander who leads the assault instead of bringing up the rear. The rest of The Squad vary in how well they fit the trope. However, every plot element of A Space Marine Is You is in full force and then some.
• Spikes of Villainy:
  • Most (if not all) Chaos Marines tend to have these, especially Nemeroth.
  • In the multiplayer armor customizer, one set of armor is literally called "spiked".
  • The main way to distinguish Havoc Marines from Tactical Chaos Marines is that Havocs have a great deal more.
• Standard FPS Guns:
  • The only ones not present are the flame thrower (the melta gun is more of a shotgun stand in, though, it perhaps counts as both) and the rocket launcher.
  • While the Rocket launchers aren't available to the player character or in multiplayer; they are available to orks.
• Sword and Gun:
  • Used by Captain Titus in single-player and the Assault Marine/Raptor class in the multiplayer, when holding a Bolt or Plasma Pistol. Wearing a Jump Pack or wielding a Thunder Hammer in single-player and the True Grit perk in multi-player allows them to wield a rifle-size Bolter in place of their Pistol, one-handed!
  • The True Grit perk is a reference to a now-defunct special rule that was once available to some Space Marine armies on the tabletop. True Grit is a standard feature of the Gray Knights Chapter: The Marine must be wearing regular Power Armor (not Terminator) which allows them to use their WRIST MOUNT STORM BOLTER in Close Combat as an extra Close Combat Weapon.
  • Titus may pull out his Chain Sword or Power Axe with any weapon unless he's torn a turret off its stand.
• Super-Soldier: You are a Warhammer 40000 Space Marine, so, natch.
• Take Cover!: Averted, for the extra cool of getting in your enemies' faces and killing the frak out of them instead. You still might do so occasionally, but it's actually healthier to charge.
• Taking You with Me: The Final Vengeance upgrade for Jump Packs in multiplayer. It consists of the Jump Pack itself exploding.
• Take That!: A promotional wallpaper◊. The caption might as well say "Marcus Fenix is a weakling", and the Guardsmen in the picture all take poses to resemble this pre-release screenshot◊ of the first Gears of War or in general clearly ape the animations and poses of characters in Gears of War's gameplay.
• Technicolor Magic: Almost all of the Chaos energy in the game is portrayed as purple.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The lascannon that serves as the game's Sniper Rifle? It's a standard weapon in the Imperium's armies... for taking out vehicles.
  • Considering the orks with redundant organs, or Chaos Space Marines that can tank bolter shells to the face and laugh it off, it's barely sufficient even.
• Thunder Hammer: Thunder Hammers make an appearance in the game for Captain Titus to arm himself with in certain points of the Singleplayer Campaign, they can also be used in the multiplayer part of the game.
• Too Injured to Save: One of the Apocalyptic Logs that can be found is a doctor bragging about how he is a genius and can easily heal the person who arrives at the hospital with an infected wound. The person in charge quickly points out that they are in a triage situation, as the entire hospital is filled with such injuries, and they don't have time to treat anyone that has anything more than a minor wound. The doctor is ordered to give the injured person something for the pain and let them die from septic shock.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • Some trailers have shown us in-game footage that we were probably not supposed to see. Examples include Inquisitor Drogan casually walking past some Bloodletters, Nemeroth turning into a Daemon Prince and Captain Titus killing Warboss Grimskull.
  • Also, the presence of Chaos, which doesn't occur until Mission 11.
  • The cover also spoils. Take a good look at the upper right corner of the game's cover art. What you are looking at isn't an Ork.
• Triage Tyrant: One set of logs is a recording of various conversations between a Medicae with no combat wound experience and a nurse who had plenty. As the logs go on, the amount of treatment given to the wounded is reduced to the bare minimum needed to keep them alive, then locking the doors to the clinic because they no longer have room for any more patients. Ultimately, they have to Mercy Kill all of their patients before the Orks arrive.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Leandros is one. He and many of his battle-brothers would have been killed if not for Titus killing Nemeroth, but he sends Titus to the mercy of the Inquisition anyway.
• Villainous Rescue: When all seems lost, Nemeroth has seemingly killed Warboss Grimskull and has our heroes on the ropes, the Warboss proves he is not quite as dead as the Chaos Sorcerer would like to think. The ensuing fight allows the Marines to escape.
• Walk It Off: Present - Justified by a Space Marine's physiology, with their Larraman's Organ causing non-fatal wounds to clot and scar quickly in addition to their lengthy and intense training allowing them to carry on long after ordinary humans would be incapacitated. The game is intended to largely subvert it in the single-player campaign, since performing a close-range execution will restore health, so if there's enemies, you don't have to wait! Get cleansing. However, the game will play it straight in both multi-player and the co-op "Exterminatus" mode, as according to the developers, executions would simply make players into easy targets.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Volcano Cannon on the Warlord-class Titan Invictus which, with a timely power and range boost from the Power Source, is able to blast the Orbital Spire to floating chunks in the sky.
• Weaponized Exhaust: One of the options that can be unlocked for Assault Marines/Chaos Raptors in multiplayer is causing damage with the jump pack's exhaust on takeoff.
• We Can Rule Together: Nemeroth tries to tempt Titus with this before their final battle. Titus, unsurprisingly, tells him where he can shove it and goes on the attack.
• What the Hell, Hero?: At the end, when Leandros defends his decision to accuse Titus of heresy by insisting that he was acting in accordance to the Codex Astartes, Titus tells him that that is indeed true, and that he is a good example of a "model" Imperial citizen... but then sharply tells him that he allowed the Codex to fully control his actions rather than use it as a rulebook or a set of guidelines, and thus fails as a Space Marine.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: The game does justify why the memetically Exterminatus-happy Imperium doesn't just sterilize the planet from orbit: the Forge World includes a titan manufactorum, with one such titan almost ready for deployment. It's worth purging the planet the hard way.
• With This Herring: Titus starts the game by jumping off a dropship with a Jump Pack (which he disposes of once he lands), a Combat Knife and a Bolt Pistol. Considering the loadout available to an Ultramarine Captain, he might as well have jumped in naked. Titus was part of a relatively small group of Ultramarines that were passing by while a more sizable force was still 3-5 days away. Given the urgency of the threat and the lack of time, it's entirely possible that they scrambled a couple of squads while supporting them with supply drops. Leandros and Sidonus even mention something along these lines when you come across a drop pod containing a Jump Pack.
• Wolverine Claws: Nemeroth has a pair of Lightning Claws, which he uses to kill Sidonus.
• World of Badass: It's Warhammer 40K. If you're not a badass, you're probably already dead.
• Zerg Rush: The Orks largely attack you with superior numbers and little tact. Averted for how the Chaos enemies act, with even their Mooks having more subtlety. The Orks do nothing but offense. Chaos on the other hand, will force you to change up your tactics, as their units are more defensive and tend to stick to one spot. However, this actually works for the Orks, as even as strong as the player character is, they can still be overwhelmed.

---