For those that have already played Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, you already know how the game differentiates itself from most modern action games. Not only is there not a lot of stuff to collect, but the game is very linear as well, which is surprising given today’s open-world craze when it comes to game design.

This was something that we asked Saber Interactive when MP1st had the chance to talk to the studio. Answering our questions were Game Director Dmitry Grigorenko, Creative Director Oliver Hollis-Leick and Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits. One of the things we asked is how refreshing it is that Space Marine 2 doesn’t get bogged down by endless side quests, open world grinding and more. Saber states that while they could have built an open-world game for Space Marine 2, they don’t think it’s something the fans would want, and they just wanted to make the perfect sequel.

MP1st: What’s refreshing for me personally is that Space Marine 2 doesn’t get bogged down by endless side quests, open world this, level up grind and all the modern gaming trappings that most studios use to tick a checkbox off. In SM2, you just grab a weapon, and lay waste to enemies. It harkens back to the kind of gaming experience we had in past years before everything was forced to have microtransactions, grinding, etc. Was that intentional for Saber? What was the inspiration and belief that something like this would work — especially in today’s gaming climate? 

Oliver: Saber has a great track record of making games that have moment to moment experience at their core. From Halo remastered to World War Z, one of our core tenets has been to make the games fun to play, without constantly forcing players to perform innumerable tasks that have little to no impact on the experience. We make the kind of games we want to play. A lot of us grew up with those awesome co-op games from the 2000’s, rocking split screen action with our friends every weekend. The success of Space Marine 2 shows how much that experience has been missed by players.

Dmitry: Yes, that was intentional. The idea behind this project was to make a perfect sequel. The original game was very simple in terms of what it wanted to be (not in terms of how difficult it was to make of course). We could have made a sequel with an open world where you can hide in tall grass, but I doubt that our fans would like that. And like I’ve said before, we just wanted to make a perfect sequel for the fans of the original game and the universe

That “tall grass” reference pertains to how most open world games use that as a way for players to hide from enemy sight lines. The most recent game to use this technique is Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, where players can hide in the grass in order to hide from enemies or even take them out silently.

Stay tuned to our full interview with Saber Interactive hitting the site soon.