Warhammer 40K shooter Necromunda: Car rental trailer unveiled

News from Necromunda: Rented rifle, a first-person shooter located in one of Warhammer’s 40,000’s most beloved subfranchises, leaked into the Microsoft store window on Wednesday. Now we have our first real trailer, which we embedded above. Fans can expect Necromunda: Rented rifle to arrive on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X on June 1, developer Streum On Studio and publisher Focus Home Interactive announced Thursday.

For the uninitiated, everything is just a big shooting and blood pressure. But for fans of this grim city in the dark darkness of the distant future, there is plenty to unpack here. Let’s dive in.

Necromunda is a forging world, meaning that in the 41st millennium this is where the Empire of Mankind makes the tanks, guns, giant mechs and other implements of war that keep its alien enemies at bay. Several hive towns dot the surface and rise high in the air above the pollution that shit the ground. A strict totalitarian regime divides the inhabitants of Necromunda into a kind of caste system, with the rich literally on top and the poor sequestered below.

Image: Streum On Studio / Focus Home Interactive

Only the lowest of the layers live beneath the surface of Necromunda, beneath the watery pockets and among the ancient man-made structures that date back tens of thousands of years. This is where the reload of the tabletop in 2017, Necromunda: Lower basket, Takes place. And it turns out that it’s a big part of the action Rented gun also takes place.

The flashy lady in the picture above is an Escher, a member of a predominantly female group of passers-by – the snake for militants banned in the 41st millennium. The Escher’s stock and trade are chemical supplements. You can find them with a bottle of harmful strains on their hips, which are used to pump their own systems full of stimulants that increase their performance on the battlefield.

Our bald-haired friend here is also holding a shiny new plasma rifle. For someone living on the fringes of society, this is quite a nasty bit of outfit. It throws overheated material over the battlefield, turns metal into slag and punches like butter through the armor. It also has the habit of causing the user to fall back and kill.

Image: Streum On Studio / Focus Home Interactive

It’s a Goliath, a member of another gang of fighters fighting for control of Necromunda’s guts. Goliath fighters are cultivated in barrels and are usually seen a little densely. They use furnace plates and other pieces of industrial equipment for armor and tend to throw explosives around with surrender. They perform for obvious reasons in a melee, and also tend to use ‘stumps’ – reused rivet guns that fire dense metal shells. On an industrial planet like Necromunda, it’s just a variation of a farmer taking a hay fork into battle.

Image: Streum On Studio / Focus Home Interactive

The individual in the middle of the frame above is a member of the Orlock gang, also known as the House of Iron. This group comes from the miners and smelters who run Necromunda’s many refineries and factories, which are popularly manufactured 40K. The hot metal raining from above is not just intuition. It is likely that their work product will go to waste.

In the lower left corner you will see an Ogryn, a common type of slave found throughout Necromunda. In the world of 40K they are called abhumans, mutated beings who are treated like pack animals. You will find that they are fighting on the front lines of conflicts with the Imperial Guard spreading galaxies, and lifting iron bars on forging worlds. Here it looks like they are throwing massive explosives at the player.

Image: games workshop

Finally we get another shot of a crayon unique to Necromunda. This is called an ambot. These are robots built to mimic the Ambull, a massive human-like alien common to the arid desert lands of the planet. Ambots are commonly used for mining and excavation. These are shown deep underground in a circular tunnel, with stalactites and stalagmites pressing on the frame. This is an environment not yet seen in the modern table game, and I’m curious to find out how it plays out in the overall story of the game.

Let’s finally look at the weapons shown by the trailer. We touched on the plasma gun above, but there are also some other curiosities worth mentioning.

First, the autogun of the main character: it looks a lot like a modern-day assault rifle, and it could very well be something similar. Autoguns shoot down solid ammunition, just like today’s firearms. You can also see a shotgun in another frame. Strikingly absent from the trailer, however, there is a bolt weapon. These weapons, also known as a fatter, do not fire solid projectiles; they launch small missiles that explode after attack. These are the weapons favored by Space Marines. They are common in Necromunda, and I’m curious to know why we’ve not seen them in use yet.

What also appears in this trailer is a hand flame. This is just how it sounds – a flamethrower by hand. There’s also a massive shoulder-mounted weapon that throws a giant green ball across the map. The impact of the projectile is hard to see, but it could be a Grav-Gun. Another weapon favored by Space Marines is a relic that is at least 10,000 years old. No one living in the 41st millennium knows how to make it anymore, let alone how they work.

Expect to find another such relic as you drive through the warnings beneath the hive towns of Necromunda.

While you are here, you should know that mercenary work is also very common in this blacksmith world. If you want to read about one of Necromunda’s most famous bounty hunters, have a look Kal Jerico: The Omnibus. While paperback copies for eBay and Amazon cost hundreds of dollars, this e-book gathers some of its best stories in one place.