Space Marine 2’s Operations Fix the Main Campaign’s Big Problem

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When facing down a Tyranid swarm in Space Marine 2, watching hundreds of Genestealers claw their way toward me, mouths open, teeth bared, and mandibles… mandibling, I wasn’t thinking about the game’s scale problem. If anything, developer Saber Interactive has done an incredible job of capturing the sheer vastness of Warhammer 40,000’s eternal war.

But, between the battles, when I had a little time to breathe, Space Marine 2’s main campaign felt off. Protagonist Captain Demetrius Titus didn’t feel like the right kind of hero for this game; Warhammer 40,000 doesn’t have one-man armies.

Key Takeaways

  • Space Marine 2’s Operations missions are replayable co-op encounters.
  • There are a total of six Operations available in Space Marine 2 right now.
  • Mechanicus Divinitus is a particular highlight with its two concurrent operations.
  • You unlock Operations after finishing the tutorial mission at the beginning of the game.
  • Completing the missions gives you XP and customization options.

Too Big for His Space Boots

Space Marine 2’s Operations mode brings a new dimension to the game’s core experience.
Space Marine 2’s Operations mode brings a new dimension to the game’s core experience. Source: Julian Benson via Techopedia

The Warhammer 40,000 universe is huge: trillions of lives are caught in constant interlocking wars against deadly rivals. Mankind’s Armies of the Imperium and the Emperor’s Chosen, the Space Marines, face multiple enemies, such as the acid-bleeding Tyranids, the followers of the gods of Chaos, and hordes of rampaging green-skinned space Orks. Then there are factions, such as the Tau, Eldar, and Necrons, who each fight their own wars, carving through battlegrounds and advancing their own agenda. Put another way: Warhammer 40,000 doesn’t deal in the small.

The art of Space Marine 2 captures that sense of scale, making you feel like a pebble in front of a flood. It’s not only the waves of enemies you face nor the size of the bosses, such as the multi-story-tall Hive Tyrant, that make you feel small; on the second planet you visit, Avarax, you battle through a besieged Imperium city, fighting through towering buildings, watching these skyscrapers collapse under the onslaught of the Tyranid attack. You are meant to feel like an ant before the might of the Emperor’s works.

However, while the art firmly puts you in your insignificant boots, the main campaign’s narrative tells a different story. Titus seemingly faces down both the armies of the Tyranids and Chaos Space Marines single-handedly. It is as though you are an army of one (well, three, as two co-op comrades join you) against armies of thousands. While you see assembled masses of space marines preparing for battle when you return to base between missions, you rarely see them in battle. Instead, except for one late mission, you only fight alongside small groups of Imperial Guard soldiers, many of whom are quickly cut down by the swarm. Through most of the missions, the only other space marines you see on the battlefield are the corpses of your chapter brothers who came before you.

In the tabletop game, while the Emperor’s super-solders attend battle in fewer numbers, the ratio with their enemies is nothing like as great as you see in Space Marine 2. Faced against these amassed enemies, you would be doing battle alongside Terminator squads, lumbering Dreadnoughts, and Thunderhawk gunships. As tough as an Ultramarine may be, the enemies they face aren’t trivial.

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Naturally, for a single-player game, you need to have an outsized impact on the world, but having a single squad of three marines save the day cheapens the forces they face.

Titus and his squadmates are not outwardly special; there is no reason why they would succeed where other space marine captains and brothers had fallen, making it stranger still that their commander repeatedly sends only three soldiers against ever-growing threats.

Except, I was wrong to only look at the main campaign.

Battle Brothers

Operations mode is more than just a set of co-op missions; it expands the main story.
Operations mode is more than just a set of co-op missions; it expands the main story. Source: Julian Benson via Techopedia

As you complete missions in Space Marine 2’s main campaign, you unlock new levels in its Operations mode, a set of repeatable co-op missions where you play a cast of other soldiers. If you’ve not yet played Operations, you absolutely should boot it up at the first chance you get.

Operations aren’t just extra missions; they’re story missions set alongside the events of the main campaign.

For instance, in the second mission, Severance, Titus, and his team carve their way through the jungles of Kadaku to a facility where they must rescue the Archmagos and extract the tech-priest from the planet. As with other missions in the campaign, it’s a lonely fight where you face down the swarm solo. However, when you play the Inferno operation, you get a fuller picture of what was happening elsewhere in Kadaku at that moment.

In the Inferno operation, you lead a separate squad of marines as they infiltrate a neighboring facility. As Titus searches for the Archmagos, these marines are sabotaging the facility’s fuel supply to detonate beneath the Tyranid forces, which are bearing down on Titus’ position. You hear of this mission in the main campaign, but seeing it in action is different. It recontextualizes the solo nature of Space Marine 2’s campaign. Titus isn’t a one-man army; he is a strike team, one of many, conducting interlocking missions across the Redcidious system’s embattled planets.

Even more ambitious is the campaign’s third mission, Mechanicus Divinitus, which has two concurrent operations, Decapitation, and Vox Liberatis.

Titus is trying to reach an intergalactic relay to send out a message calling for reinforcements; meanwhile, a squad is hunting down a Tyranid Hive Tyrant, trying to leave the alien swarm leaderless and confused, while the other must clear a signal jamming beacon to allow Titus to send out his message. While each squad is still outperforming the abilities of a space marine in the tabletop game, they now all feel part of a larger campaign, each piercing different parts of their Tyranid foe.

This isn’t the first time a developer has filled out a game’s story with new perspectives. Following the release of the original Half-Life, Valve asked Gearbox to develop two expansions that told the downfall of Black Mesa from different angles. In Opposing Forces, you play one of the marines sent to secure the science facility. In Blue Shift, you see the same events from the perspective of one of the base’s security guards. In both expansions, you get a much greater sense of the calamitous events in the original game.

The Bottom Line

While not every game would benefit from multiple perspectives, in Space Marine 2, the Operations mode deeply enriches the main campaign. If you’ve been putting off playing the extra missions, seeing them as just some separate mode, do yourself a favor and dive in. They round out the game’s story and turn it into something special.

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Julian Benson
Gaming Journalist
Julian Benson
Gaming Journalist

Julian's been writing about video games for more than a decade. In that time, he's always been drawn to the strange intersections between gaming and the real world, like when he interviewed a NASA scientist who had become a Space Pope in EVE Online, or when he travelled to Ukraine to interview game developers involved in the 2014 revolution, or that time he tore his trousers while playing Just Dance with a developer. In addition to freelancing for publications such as Techopedia, The Guardian, EDGE, and GQ, he's worked as TechRadar Gaming's Editor-in-Chief, Kotaku UK's News Editor, and PCGamesN's Deputy…