Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr Preview

PC Gamer’s Tom Senior has penned a preview for Neocore’s Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr, based on some hands-off experience with the action-RPG. For the most part, it sounds like a classic taken on the genre with a Warhammer 40,000 skin, though the developers are apparently throwing a few curveballs. An excerpt on character progression and the various campaign modes:

Your Inquisitor can be upgraded throughout the story campaign. “Well, we are going to use the traditional level-up system, and we are going to use a crafting system, which will be smoothly tied into the 40K lore, and we are going to have various skills tied to various weapons, and we are going to have some skills which are tied to the different classes,” Juhasz explains. At one point in the video the Inquisitor picks up a plasma cannon and the skills on his taskbar shift to a new set of abilities. It fires powerful blasts of luminous blue flame, but can overheat when used too often.

The story is largely set aboard an ancient drifting spaceship monastery that “belonged to a very obscure sect of he Inquisition a very, very long time ago”. The developers want it to feel like a horror scenario akin to Alien, which is the reason the campaign will only be playable alone. “The sense of exploration, the sense of claustrophobia, is very important, which could be ruined a bit by having, I don’t know, three of your friends swarming all over the place and jumping through the same cutscenes and dialogues.”

You will still get to visit open areas set on moons and planets, and there are contained vehicle sections that let you requisition some of the Empire’s finest war machines. If you’re keen to play with others and explore more open environments Martyr contains an immediately-accessible Inquisitorial Campaign mode. This randomly generates missions spread across an entire sector of space, and is designed to give some context to your crusading. There are various factions to impress, and the sector can suddenly find itself beset by invasion from some of the meaner villains of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.