Space Marine dev helping with 40k MMO

Dawn of War developer Relic will help Vigil with the creation of massively multiplayer online game Warhammer 40k: Dark Millennium Online once it wraps up work on the soon-to-be-released Space Marine.

The collaboration began earlier, though. Vigil took a close look at the combat system used in the brutal third-person action game with a view to perhaps incorporating it into the mysterious MMO.

"There's no crossover narrative," Relic marketing manager James McDermott told Eurogamer.

"They will have forge worlds in their game. They're definitely interacting with us a lot because we have a pedigree and an understanding of the IP, which they're trying to develop.

"In terms of the some of the core mechanics, they were looking at our combat system quite carefully at one point to see if they could try and make it – not the same – but just have some level of consistency. That's definitely been a consideration."

Last month Eurogamer revealed Dark Millennium Online will be playable at next year's E3 trade show, with a launch at some point during THQ's next financial year – between April 2012 and March 2013.

Space Marine, however, is out in early September this year, and Relic is putting the finishing touches to the promising action game.

And once it's done, the team may lend Vigil a hand.

"We just on the whole try to work as collaboratively as possible, and with Space Marine wrapping up, we may become more involved in just helping them on a day to day basis with some things as we move forward," McDermott explained.

"We kind of do that on all of the products. When something's getting close to launch or if it's at a critical point, some of the other talent from other studios start to help out to get them as good as possible.

"We're going to see some of that on that title as well."