While I couldn't get my hands on the game - it's still early, early days - I did get to check out an extended showreel of in-game action, some of it featured in the game's first trailer, most of it not.

The game is an action RPG for the 360 & PS3. And it looks like the emphasis is on action. There were several scenes featuring dozens of enemies on-screen at once, with small squads of Space Marines (you of course being one of them) fighting them off with a combination of ranged and melee attacks.

I saw Marine layouts being customised (you can add stuff like jetpacks), finishing moves performed as part of combos, and special attacks that could wipe out 10-15 Orks at a time.

While the footage only showed Space Marines and Orks going at it, and were the only races in the game confirmed to us by Relic, a larger battle montage towards the end of the clip showed glimpses of Tyranids, so don't be surprised to see them in the final game too.

Oh, and as well as Tyranids, there was also a Titan lumbering around blowing stuff up. Which should excite the 40K fanboys in the house.

Two things really stood out to me by the time we were done: one being the amount of action on display, and the other the amount of pomp and ceremony the license was being treated to. While the Dawn of War games could only briefly go for cinematic thrills in their intro sequences, this game looks packed with moments of real gravitas, epic scores and brooding cinematics punctuating the action and helping bring a little of the universe's storied colour and character to the game.

While there's still lingering doubts as to how the combat will actually feel - after all, it's not like Relic are that experiences in the Action/RPG field - from what I saw today, the game definitely looks on track to deliver a Warhammer 40K title that shows humanity's endless war from a more intimate perspective than strategy games can manage.

A few things to note: while the original material suggested that "THQ Australia" were working on the game, the official announcement says that Dawn of War and Company of Heroes developers Relic are behind it. Strange. Also, while the original title was clearly an action game, this one has really upped the number of on-screen enemies (as you can see in the clip below), in line with its apparent shift in genre from brawler to action-RPG.

If you'd like to know anything else about the game, tough: as with IGN's other pre-E3 "exclusives", the announcement consists of an announcement then a whole bunch of "this developer isn't disclosing this information at this time", so we'll have to wait until next week to learn more/anything.

UPDATE 1- A post on Relic's boards says that this title is not the same game that was leaked in that video from last year. That clip was "for an action title Studio Aus was working on. This is a totally different project, though it does share the same name as the leaked video used."

Sounds like the action game in development at THQ Australia may have been binned, then shifted to Relic and cannibalised for parts. We'll look into it, see if the action game is still being worked on or not.

UPDATE 2 - Yup. Sources have told us that the original action title was cancelled, but that THQ thought some parts were worth salvaging, and handed the leftovers over to Relic to turn into this action RPG.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine First Look [IGN]