![]() ![]() We like that bit of quirkiness to our games. "It was a nightmare for my team," Magnuson says laughing. I had the most fun with the Ogryn, a giant literally twice the size of the other characters. ![]() I didn't get to spend quality time with those systems, but I did play through a mission with a couple of Darktide's classes. Then there's a whole customization system with crafting materials, so you can take an upgrade-say, +5% crit rate-off one weapon and attach it to another. You'll still get some random gear as in Vermintide 2, but you can also buy weapons from an in-game shop (with earned currency-only cosmetic stuff will be available for real cash), or set a "contract" on a weapon you want and then earn it through a progression system. The loot system in general is substantially different. Too often getting them felt mandatory, so those will now exist as optional objectives on some missions but not others. Fatshark has also changed how it adds secondary objectives, like the Grimoires and Tomes you could grab in Vermintide to earn better loot. I think that's really cool, because it gives you a sense of place: 'Wait, haven't I been here before?'"ĭarktide's mission board immediately reminded me of Deep Rock Galactic, with a range of missions to choose from that throw you into matchmaking with other players, and show you new options each time you return. There will be multiple missions taking place in the same area, so you'll be passing through areas you've gone through in another mission. Here we've separated them, which makes it possible for us to create a zone, and then put missions inside that zone. ![]() In Vermintide the mission and the level are tied together. "Something we changed is how we build the missions. "In general you can expect the same types of missions as in Vermintide," Magnuson says. There's also more granularity to the challenge level, with two separate variables: one that affects how many enemies you face, and another how much damage they do and how aggressive they are. Most exciting to me is Fatshark's approach to making levels more variable and replayable without resorting to procedural generation. Characters are handled dramatically differently: instead of playing a pre-written protagonist you create your own character, and there's a third-person camera in the hub world so you can admire yourself (and your gear). There's the secondary abilities on most weapons, like revving up a chainsword to saw through an enemy instead of merely slicing them open. There's the frankly enormous hordes of enemies that can now be on screen at once, exceeding the writhing rage piles you'd see in Vermintide 2 thanks to a major engine rework. There's the minigame you play to hack skulljack into computer terminals rather than just holding down a button. But especially since we've done Vermintide, they really trust us."ĭarktide has a lavishness to it that Vermintide didn't have the time or budget for. "They check every asset, every voice line, everything. "Everything we do we check with Games Workshop," Magnuson says. Thankfully 40K does have skull decoding-or at least it does now. ![]() "There's no hacking in 40K," says Fatshark head of design Victor Magnuson, who spent about two hours talking to me about Darktide while we played through a couple missions. There will not be a better interaction prompt in videogames this year than "Press E to prepare Skull Decoder." There's one particular skull that I was instantly enamored with: the skull decoder, a grinning cranium with spiderlike legs used to interface with computers in Darktide. All of them have skulls of their own that you can smash, stab, or laser in comically gruesome ways. Some of your enemies wear skulls as jewelry. This is still Warhammer-skulls for the skull throne, and so on. OK, let me clarify before anyone gets worried-there's definitely more than one skull in Darktide. ![]()
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