A Small Tweak To Warhammer 40,000K: Space Marine 2’s Ending Could Have Big Lore Implications

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2’s latest update added new features, balance changes, and some welcome quality-of-life adjustments to developer Saber Interactive’s grimdark shooter, but it’s one small change to the game’s ending that has fans buzzing.

Spoilers for Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2’s ending ahead.

During the final moments of Space Marine 2’s campaign, Lieutenant Titus and his squad find themselves battling against the force of Chaos in the Immaterium. It’s in the game’s final cutscene that we see Titus reach out to destroy a Chaos artifact, nearly overwhelmed by the forces of the Warp. As he struggles, a voice (one that prior to Space Marine 2’s patch 3.0 was attributed to Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar) tells Titus “Rise, son of Gulliman.” Titus then overcomes the Chaos energy and destroys the artifact.

Now, however, that voice is no longer attributed to Calgar. As the patch notes read, the update “fixed an unidentified voice at the end of the story that was assigned to the wrong character.” With no new name assigned to the voice, fans are now speculating that the one telling Titus to “rise” may be none other than the Emperor of Mankind himself, using his psychic powers to speak to Titus directly from across the universe.

That would be a pretty huge revelation, largely because the Emperor, who has been on the verge of death and strapped to his Golden Throne (aka life support system) for 10,000 years, doesn’t play much of a direct role in the Warhammer 40K universe. Fans now think Big E (as fans call him) may be in some way responsible for Titus’s resistance to the Warp not only in Space Marine 2 but in the original Space Marine game as well.

The owner of the franchise, Games Workshop, isn’t likely to confirm one way or the other. Space Marine 2 creative director Oliver Hollis-Leick in a reply on X did say the line “could be from the Emperor, but it’s meant to be open to interpretation.

“It could be in Titus’s mind, could be Calgar, or it could be the Emperor (though GW might disagree on that),” Hollis-Leick said. “I know who I meant it to be when I wrote it but I’ll keep that to myself ;).”

Saber is currently “catching its breath” after the release of Space Marine 2, which has sold more than 2 million copies, but is already formulating plans for potential story DLC or a Space Marine 3.

In GameSpot’s Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 review, we called Saber’s sequel a “worthy successor to the original” that brings Games Workshop’s universe to life “in all its grimdark splendor.”