Astartes II trailer (2026)

[Orange Knight]

Very cool, but the lack of Primaris is very disappointing. 

 

Had a real chande to showcase the new units and vehicles in more dynamic ways than what the old stuff offered.

[Kallas]

3 hours ago, Robbienw said:

Lots of Firstborn.

 

No Primaris.

 

PERFECT.

 

Hopefully Syama has as much creative control as is possible when it comes to GW. Guy single handedly made the best 40k animation to date - give him resources and get out of his way.

[DemonGSides]

8 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

Very cool, but the lack of Primaris is very disappointing. 

 

Had a real chande to showcase the new units and vehicles in more dynamic ways than what the old stuff offered.

 

The chorus of resounding "Thank God no Primaris" are just getting themselves ready to be disappointed when the full animation is a "Here's a squad of post Rubicon Deathwatch Vets".

 

Either way is fine by me; old-school marine helmets were way cooler than the Primaris version so it matters not to me. 

[NovemberIX]

I love that the first shot is a Storm Eagle, and the shot of the running Preds, the Iron Clad dreadnought in the background, and of course the jump packs. This is the 40K I wanna see.

[phandaal]

11 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

The chorus of resounding "Thank God no Primaris" are just getting themselves ready to be disappointed when the full animation is a "Here's a squad of post Rubicon Deathwatch Vets".

 

Either way is fine by me; old-school marine helmets were way cooler than the Primaris version so it matters not to me. 

 

That would be quite the bait-and-switch. Then again, we are talking about the same company that was very proud to tell us Power Level was going away. 

 

In all seriousness, I hope they let Astartes stay in the Mk 7 era. That Primaris Titus animation was awesome, but 40k is a lot more than just whatever is happening in the "here and now."

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

6 hours ago, Borbarad said:

Love that speeding and shooting predator! 
 

Also creativity around perspective and camera angles continue! 

This is proper Medusan Blitzkrieg for ya!

 

Great that the Sons of Ferrus Manus get to shine once in while. 

Edited Wednesday at 07:55 PM by Deus_Ex_Machina

[Marshal Loss]

Just so incredibly cool, I can't stop rewatching different moments over and over. This is pure unfiltered 40k in all its glory.

 

Hope they release a refreshed Mark VII kit to tie-in with this when it releases. So iconic

Edited Wednesday at 08:23 PM by Marshal Loss
in my excitement I forgot how to write legibly

[Scribe]

The Heavy Bolter remains one of the coolest weapons of all time.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

7 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

to be fair, even when original finished and they did the first teaser, that never looked to be the case (it was always a montage of different chapters)

 

perhaps the retributor marine will be the guy from astartes and we'll learn what happened to him

Then they shouldn’t call it astartes II.

 

this is as much astartes II as the secret level episode was.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

5 hours ago, dalmer said:

... and I believe the creator said it took him just over four years to make Astartes, so a lot of time invested into a "short" series

He was also doing that alone and in his spare time.

now he’s doing it professionally, and with a team.

 

and off the top of my head it feels like the creator was brought onboard by GW roughly 4 years ago already.

Edited Wednesday at 10:11 PM by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Orange Knight]

Lol so many disagree with my post.

 

My opinion was reached because:

 

1: Everything we see is clearly prior to the current era, and that makes it less exciting to me, personally. The current setting has interesting threats and developments that won't be shown in Astartes 2.

 

2: The artistic direction of this project is fantastic, and frankly I want the same quality as shown here to be applied to the Primaris. I want to see Grav Tanks crushing the corpses of the enemies of mankind beneath their gravitic fields, and I want to see Inceptors jetting around, unleashing plasma against the Xenos, done as impressively as what we see here.

 

3: The Primaris are simply stronger, faster and more durable than the old Marines. All the legendary characters have, or are about to, cross the Rubicon. I want to see the best of the best.

 

 

[ZeroWolf]

17 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

He was also doing that alone and in his spare time.

now he’s doing it professionally, and with a team.

 

and off the top of my head it feels like the creator was brought onboard by GW roughly 4 years ago already.

By the sounds of it though he's already been working on other projects though. We know he participated in making the Secret Level short for instance and he's also got stuff of his own that sounds quite interesting (sadly off topic here). The good animations take time, and I'd rather he gets all the time he needs.

[Kallas]

6 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

[more Primaris]

Primaris are getting 99.99999% of all GW media attention. It's nice that Firstborn get something, considering most of the early 40k media (eg, the Ultramarines movie) was pretty atrocious, and that Primaris are getting almost literally everything else going forward.

[Indy Techwisp]

1 minute ago, Kallas said:

Primaris are getting 99.99999% of all GW media attention. It's nice that Firstborn get something, considering most of the early 40k media (eg, the Ultramarines movie) was pretty atrocious, and that Primaris are getting almost literally everything else going forward.

 

Of course Primaris are getting 99.99% recurring of the media attention.
That's what GW are actually focused on selling you.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

10 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Primaris are getting 99.99999% of all GW media attention. It's nice that Firstborn get something, considering most of the early 40k media (eg, the Ultramarines movie) was pretty atrocious, and that Primaris are getting almost literally everything else going forward.

I enjoy nostalgia as well, but c’mon time to just accept the future.

[DemonGSides]

Just as a thought exercise, figure we could look at what's available for 40k specific animation available on WH+;

 

Hammer and Bolter - Anthology, not really about Space Marines really, though quite a few firstborn in the form of CSM

Angels of Death - Set during the Great Rift ripping open, so inherently about Firstborn

The Exodite - About Tau (I'm doing all I can to not throw up (jk jk))

Iron Within - Technically Firstborn again!  Then again, CSM can come from anywhere so maybe another technical win for firstborn but not an obvious win

Interrogator - Inquisition, not really about Space Marines

Broken Lance - About Knights, so not space marines

Pariah Nexus - First Primaris centric piece

The Tithes - Maybe the back-to-back nature of these two Primaris things make people feel like they're overblown on WH+ videos?  Even then, more of a generalist "Current 40k" which is obviously going to lean more towards Primaris as FB are becoming rarer and rarer.

Astartes - I'm not sure if there's a definitive one way or the other on Primaris here, considering it was originally made outside of GW's purview.  I'm leaning towards Firstborn just based on the things that have been said about it.

Enemy Without - Definitely Primaris, I think?  That shield screams primaris to me.


So definitely more Primaris NOW, but considering WH+'s lead time, I don't think it's really all "primaris primaris primaris".

 

Edited Wednesday at 10:50 PM by DemonGSides

[Scribe]

45 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

Lol so many disagree with my post.

 

My opinion was reached because:

 

1: Everything we see is clearly prior to the current era, and that makes it less exciting to me, personally. The current setting has interesting threats and developments that won't be shown in Astartes 2.

 

2: The artistic direction of this project is fantastic, and frankly I want the same quality as shown here to be applied to the Primaris. I want to see Grav Tanks crushing the corpses of the enemies of mankind beneath their gravitic fields, and I want to see Inceptors jetting around, unleashing plasma against the Xenos, done as impressively as what we see here.

 

3: The Primaris are simply stronger, faster and more durable than the old Marines. All the legendary characters have, or are about to, cross the Rubicon. I want to see the best of the best.

 

 

 

1. The metaplot sucks.

2. The Primaris vehicles are hideous.

3. Meaningless, there are the Marines of the game, and Marines of the Lore. This looks like its more Marines of the Lore. Its the Hollywood style Marines from many many many years ago.

 

Primaris are objectively more boring than the various styles of the pre-Primaris Marines.

 

Ultimately, GW has a back catalog of content, of eras, of styles, which dwarfs the lame 'current' by 10000's to 1. To leverage that makes the most sense.

[RedFox]

45 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

 

2: The artistic direction of this project is fantastic, and frankly I want the same quality as shown here to be applied to the Primaris. I want to see Grav Tanks crushing the corpses of the enemies of mankind beneath their gravitic fields, and I want to see Inceptors jetting around, unleashing plasma against the Xenos, done as impressively as what we see here.

 

 

Grav tanks can't crush the corpses of the enemies because they don't have treads and that's why they suck. Retro military aesthetic is one of the reason that made Imperial Guards and Space Marines vehicles freaking awesome.

[NKirkham24]

I just watched the trailer and thought it was great, I wasn’t worried about trumpeting firstborn or no primaris.

 

just enjoy the space marines in action guys!

 

Really enjoying the deathwatch love too

[Indy Techwisp]

I know this is going to get some flak, but can we please not have every single Marine related thread devolve into the Firstborn vs Primaris argument?

 

This thread is about the Teaser for Astartes II, right?

To take this from the article:

Quote

This teaser trailer is not actually clips from the new animation, instead showing a compilation of shots that represent the former lives of the characters that will appear in the show. There’s a pretty unsubtle hint at the end as to the nature of the final story...  We’ll leave you to speculate and start putting the pieces together yourselves.

So surely the discussion should be about this hint, right?

It's Deathwatch btw, in case you missed it.

This is yet another example of the community striving with all it's might to keep Deathwatch alive, kicking and in the public eye as a faction worth existing and instead of recognising that we have once again turned to this 8 year old topic that serves no purpose other than to anger everyone in the thread and invoke the wrath of the Mods.

 

To say something actually on topic for the thread, I hope that this animation being Deathwatch centric helps sway GW's hand to properly revive Deathwatch with a codex come 11th edition, since this is almost certainly going to convince players to buy into the faction (Like how the Deathwatch intro for Space Marine II did the same).

[Blindhamster]

1 hour ago, RedFox said:

 

Grav tanks can't crush the corpses of the enemies because they don't have treads and that's why they suck. Retro military aesthetic is one of the reason that made Imperial Guards and Space Marines vehicles freaking awesome.

actually the astartes grav stuff is apparently brute forced and does infact flatten chaos marines caught under it

[Indy Techwisp]

1 minute ago, Blindhamster said:

actually the astartes grav stuff is apparently brute forced and does infact flatten chaos marines caught under it

 

Primaris Grav does crush stuff.
It's mentioned in the books a couple times iirc.

[Blindhamster]

as someone that loves deathwatch since they were introduced in the inquisitor game, and even more with the deathwatch veterans index astartes that got released back in 3rd... i'd actually prefer deathwatch went back to being a unique unit.. but I'd like them to be something like:

- take a librarian, captain or ordo xenos inquisitor that isn't a cheap character

- get a unit with stats like company heroes (so 4 wounds a pop), but very customisable wargear and some really interesting special rules.

I'd love for them to seem like a marked step above most marines again like they once did. This is also coming from someone that did long ago have a deathwatch army too. (on these very boards... like 19 years ago lol).

 

The animation looks great much like the original, I'm quite sad its not due till 2026 considering how long ago the original was at this point, but still excited to see how it pans out.

 

I'm also entirely sick of the same people bringing up the primaris vs firstborn thing, every comment celebrating it or bemoaning it were entirely unnecessary. It's just a cool marine animation.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

Primaris Grav does crush stuff.
It's mentioned in the books a couple times iirc.

yep, thats what I was saying.

[WrathOfTheLion]

5 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

Very cool, but the lack of Primaris is very disappointing. 

 

Had a real chande to showcase the new units and vehicles in more dynamic ways than what the old stuff offered.

I disagree, as I think there's a lot of animation about now with Primaris, and it's good to see some MK VII. I don't disrespect the opinion, only disagree and I'm glad they stuck with it. I think I'd be perfectly fine if they covered the transition, but I think would be jarring to have it immediately move over. That said, I'm perfectly fine and happy to see some nice MK VII.

 

That said, on animation costs, it can take like 30m-1 hour to render one frame of a complex 3d animation, although maybe a bit less now, depends on the effects used. There's 24 frames in a second, so when I was in school for it, it could take 12 hours for one machine to render 1 second of our animation.

 

I think we rendered in 1080, but images go by square, so if it's mastered in 4k, that would take 4x as long, and if in 8k, would take 16x as long. GPU rendering has probably brought that down, but for something like this, could take quite a while.

Edited Thursday at 12:36 AM by WrathOfTheLion

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, RedFox said:

 

Grav tanks can't crush the corpses of the enemies because they don't have treads and that's why they suck. Retro military aesthetic is one of the reason that made Imperial Guards and Space Marines vehicles freaking awesome.

…what do you think happens exactly when a giant tank has antigrav tech pushing downwards on top of a body?