My name is Juras Rodionovas, and I’m the Lead Character Artist on the Darktide team. Together with many talented colleagues, I’m working to bring the characters and horrors of Atoma Prime to life. I love everything gritty and creepy, and so working at Fatshark on a project like Darktide for the past two and half years has been nothing but a joy.
Today, I’m super excited to provide an insight into the character customization in Darktide and talk about how we’ve worked together to allow players to create their own characters of the 41st millennium in the Warhammer universe.
Entering the World of Fatshark and 41st Millennium
At the beginning of my journey at Fatshark, my only previous experience with the Warhammer universe was Warhammer 40 000 - Dawn of War 2. I have very fond memories of playing it when I was younger. I also started playing Warhammer: Vermintide 2 about a year before joining Fatshark. I vividly remember playing Vermintide 2 and being impressed by how fun and coherent the game felt. Those were the signs that the whole team was very passionate about the project and the quality of their work. And those were the values that led me to join Fatshark eventually.
A year after playing Vermintide 2, I was brought on Darktide by our Game Director, Anders De Geer. I felt immense passion immediately and understood the vision that the team was aiming for when it came to character art for the project. I felt very inspired to help achieve it. Together with my team, our Technical Director, Mikael Hansson, and Art Director, Mattias Rousk, we helped set the technical and artistic requirements with workflows that would allow us to achieve our goals during production.
I quickly realized that Character Art is essential when working with a Warhammer IP since there is so much raw artistic boldness in the miniatures' designs and the visual descriptions within the lore of Warhammer 40,000. The whole character and concept art team wanted to make sure that visually, our work shows the grittiness of this world and that we portray our characters in a way that belongs to that universe and Darktide’s narrative.
SENTENCING YOUR CONVICT
In Darktide, you begin playing by creating your convict - a reject who, by doing missions, will gain trust and climb the tower of respect built within the ranks of Inquisition. Players decide the backstory of their convict and choose a look that matches it. We have decided to peel back on predetermined characters that players could choose in Vermintide 2 and try offering players more freedom and choices in shaping their avatar.
Our goal is to spark a personal attachment to one or several characters that players choose to create and play with. It’s a very daunting task! The Ubersreik 5 in Vermintide 2 had so much personality, both visually and narratively. It’s why fans have grown to love those particular characters. But the way we have tackled this enormous undertaking lies within two significant features in Darktide: The Character Creator and Cosmetic Customization.
This pair of features require a lot of effort to do right. So in the project, we’ve formed a feature team specifically dedicated to ensuring that we deliver the best character customization that we can here at Fatshark. This feature team consists of myself and other incredibly talented craftsmen and craftswomen - concept artists, character artists, weapons artists, and technical animators.
Visual Style and Intent
When creating their first convict, the player can select between predetermined classes, backstory, and personality choices, which affect voice acting, specific customization options, perks, etc.
Our feature team’s job is to make sure that we can support these choices and provide players with visual options that can match the narrative and tone of the game. Since we’ve chosen not to have predetermined characters with personalities this time, the approach was to tackle customization options in a way that can make up for players in other means to allow them to shape characters that still have expressive personalities. For example, we provided a set of premade face options rather than letting players use sliders to shape them. This way, we could pack in a lot more personality and visual appeal in how the faces look.
Our most crucial visual intent with the customization options is to make sure that they feel like they are part of the world of the 41st millennium while also being connected to the narrative of Darktide. We want the player character faces to look rugged and worn from lack of sleep and food. We want scars to be a brutal reminder of their former life. We want tattoos “made with burned boot heel ink and locally collected gutter oil,” as my colleague and one of our talented character artists, Carin Backlund, would describe them.
All this starts with the concept art team, which has done a fantastic job setting the initial tone and visual style. One of our concept artists, Miguel Iglesias, has provided us with amazing mood concepts that could easily be part of a Games Workshop illustration book. This has helped us immensely when coming up with suitable customization options for a Warhammer 40,000 video game.
A Drive for Craftmanship
One of the more significant values that the whole art team here at Fatshark has is belief in craftsmanship when it comes to our work. We apply this core value directly to what we do with character art and take pride in our handcrafted assets, such as faces.
Faces are an excellent example because the subject is very complex, and it takes a lot of skill to create a hyper-realistic face that doesn’t look uncanny. Today, many studios rely on photo scanning their character assets such as faces and clothing. There are areas where working smarter, not harder, is crucial, and the method of producing assets with scanning can be efficient. We believe that it takes out a lot of the artistic value, and often, the art becomes generic, soulless, and lacks personality.
And so, when we create assets like faces, we want to make sure that they resemble the style, tone, and grittiness of our mood concepts. We want players to see the work that an individual artist has put in when hand sculpting every form of each face. The art becomes more personal because a real person has crafted something with their own hands. I believe this unique and artistic touch is tough to achieve by relying on scanning real people with software that does the work for the artist.
Diverse Possibilities of Imperfection
Diversity in facial structure and ethnic descent has been part of our goals for providing face variations to the player. We want to offer a broad set of options, so players from different parts of the world and age groups can feel represented when creating their characters. Part of that representation is also imperfection, and it is something that we see as an important pillar when it comes to the character art in Darktide. For example, faces in real life are imperfect and more asymmetric than one might think, and we want to capture that in our set of faces. Crooked nose, grinded jaw, moles, veins, and skin conditions: These more minor details are important when making a face look like it has personality and soul. These imperfections ultimately contribute to our view of the ugly and gritty universe of Warhammer 40,000.
With this intent in mind, we want the players to be able to create many different looks with just one face. Do you want to be a prison scum who got a blind eye when the guard hit you with the butt of his lasgun? Or do you want to be a battle-worn Imperial Soldier who was falsely accused by his officer and thrown into the Penal Legion? There should be enough options to allow players to create their own version of a gritty character.
GEARING UP WITH THE INQUISITION
Once the players start working with The Inquisition, they will be able to customize their character with cosmetic gear. Cosmetics in Darktide don’t affect gameplay and are purely for decorative purposes, allowing players to connect more with their characters and show off in the Mourningstar ship in front of the others.
Ramping Up The Gear Factory
At the start of the project, we knew that we needed to build a solid pipeline that would allow us to create significant variations of cosmetics and support the visual level of detail and quality that we were aiming for. Eventually, we ended up with tech and workflows that we were pleased with, allowing us to create a vast amount of cosmetics inspired by various themes within Warhammer 40,000.
The main element that we can set visually is color and patterns. It allows us to create many visual styles based on iconic planets, regiments, and other themes within the world of Warhammer 40,000.
On top of color and patterns, we can also choose between various tileable fabrics or metals, which extend our toolbelt to a greater level. We can, for example, take a pair of pants and make them look either very rugged, clean, or feel completely different by applying a leather material.
As a last touch, we can apply a set of custom decals on the gear, which helps tie everything together and add that final touch of detail that sells the outfit's theme.
Decide Your Outfit
In Vermintide 2, we allowed players to choose between full-body skins and hats. In Darktide, however, we have decided to go for more extensive customization options. Players can pick and mix between the following apparel slots:
Head Gear
Upper Body
Lower Body
Accessory cosmetic items
A big part of the Warhammer 40,000 miniature community has always been creating cool kitbash miniatures, which has inspired us to extend our customization to this level. We believe that our cosmetic options will encourage players to combine different cosmetic items across the slots to create some stylish outfits to share with us and the community!
CONCLUSION
I hope you enjoyed reading this peek into our character customization in Darktide and that you have found it interesting! We’re very excited to see players create their characters and configure different outfit combinations with their friends to establish their own fireteams.
-For the Emperor!
Dev Blog: Hybrid Combat
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to this dev blog, regardless of whether you’re new to our games, a hardened Vermintide veteran, a passionate Warhammer 40,000 fan, or one of those wonderful gamers running around headshotting since before you figured out who you wanted to be. My name is Mats, and I’m the resident combat designer at Fatshark. I’ve been asked to write a few lines about the gameplay of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and how it came to be - horrors and successes alike.
BUILDING ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF VERMINTIDE
When I started working at Fatshark, my colleagues shared an exciting proposition: We wanted to do First Person Melee, but good. Like, really good! And in co-op. Over network. I asked if we had a good example of another game to set the level of expectation for the scope. We quickly concluded that no, there’s probably none. I had previously worked with many combat mechanics but mainly in a single-player capacity. So all the minor tweaks and tricks you employ to make a punch feel impactful usually rely on time manipulation or slowdowns to get it right. You can’t do that in multiplayer. Most of the tells and interfacing we create require a good, clean view of the enemy. We wanted scores of enemies on screen. So looking at that, we gave a silent Swedish nod of “this might get tricky” and then built the Vermintide combat.
When we started working on Darktide, we discussed an even more exciting proposition: taking the core of Vermintide, putting it into the 40K universe, and adding ranged combat to it. Not like separate sections of classic shooting. But integrated. A mix of the two - A hybrid between meaty Melee and Classic FPS. Because 40K has never been about running around with rifles. 40K has never been swordsmen clashing shields. 40K, in its essence, is Bolter in one hand and Chainsword in the other, facing a tsunami of enemies. Do we have any examples of this from other games? No? Another silent Swedish nod and it was “go time.”
We started out with a very colorful prototype, using Vermintide content but with very bright blue and red mockups of guns. The first “limited scope” was a proper but straightforward aim down sight with some basic recoil and spread pattern controls. It was a step up from our previous games. But here’s the thing: if you put an awesome, cool gun in a player's hands, it comes with expectations and reminders of other games that solely focus on the first-person shooter aspect. We knew this was a risk. We wanted to avoid presenting and reinforcing these expectations. In Darktide when hordes of enemies close in on you, you swap your Lasgun for your Thunder Hammer and wreak righteous havoc on their corrupted souls. We’ve opted to call this Hybrid Combat - not FPS with an optional melee weapon. Players will need to learn how to use both and when to switch between them.
After creating the first prototypes, we sat down and took a long hard look at the game. At the end of that conversation, the Combat team put it bluntly: Shouldn’t we just build a proper FPS experience for our ranged combat? With all the bells and whistles, blend states and dynamic weapons and advanced recoil mechanics and suppression loops and interfacing that come with it? So we did. We even infused all those details into the progression system, allowing players to tailor the weapon handling through a mixer-board-like stat system that makes your gun unique. You are still highly encouraged to bring out your melee weapon because trying to kite a horde or some of our angrier elite enemies will end up with you dead. But up until that point, you’re free to shoot 'em up as much as you like.
STAYING TRUE TO WARHAMMER 40,000 & CO-OP PLAY
Our core pillars have always revolved around staying true to the lore and supporting co-op play throughout. Most of us in the combat team spent a ridiculous amount of time discussing minute details that we needed to resolve to create a proper 40K rendition. How does one aim a lasgun? Is there an iron sight on it? Do the models just lack that detail because they are tiny plastic representations? What are the effective ranges of lasfire? And how well do they deal with armor? Do they have holo sights in the grim dark future? If they do, would it have a slightly gothic arc shape? Of course it would. How does the recoil of a lasgun work, and is it heresy to suggest it has it? If you slap a tactical flashlight onto a lasgun does it, in fact, become twinlinked? At the end of the day, the balance has always been between lore and fun. The “rule of cool” happens to embody the design principles of both Warhammer and Fatshark.
We’ve always wanted to build a game that allows each player their time in the spotlight. We’re aiming to create enough challenges and player moves that there is both variety and roles to fill. We want Darktide to be a game where it’s not just four players pulling their weight in stacking enemy corpses per second but rather an intuitive shift in your behavior and who takes point. Making enemy hordes be easily dealt with by your fully automatic, flechette shooting Rippergun, while making it weak against heavily armored enemies allows other players to step up and protect you from the elites in the secure knowledge that you’ll purge the poxwalkers.
MIXING IT UP WITH RANGED COMBAT
With the inclusion of a proper ranged gameplay loop, we added a couple of new concepts into the mix, such as Combat Ranges. We expanded on the melee range seen in Vermintide with both a “Far” range and a “Close” range. Core to the experience is the notion that enemies and players behave and perform differently based on their combat range.
Far Combat is the cover-based peeking and accurate shots of combat rifles.
Close Combat is the chaotic and fast dance of short-range damage dealing while dodging and weaving between enemies to survive. Shotguns. Submachine Guns.
Locking fighters in Melee Combat forces both sides into the hand-to-hand combat of Vermintide, which can be helpful as it removes the concern of the ranged threats and replaces them with much more immediate problems, often involving chain axes.
Controlling the range you fight at is central. We wanted movement and positioning to be an essential part of the gameplay loop, whether that means assaulting into melee to quiet the enemy hellguns barraging you with lasfire, or keeping the enemy horde at bay to allow the team to mow them down with gunlines of flamers and autoguns alike. We introduced elements like sprinting, vaulting, suppression, enemy positioning anchors, and combat vectors to create a direction for the combat and allow the players to control the flow of action and manage the ranged threats introduced. A colleague also added sliding as part of an internal hack week project. We quickly integrated it, bridging that last distance as your effective sprint runs out, and you need to slide-dodge a blast from a shotgun to bury your power sword in the gut of a Chaos Ogryn.
Attacks are not all about damage. This has been a critical pillar we built the Vermintide games around, and it holds true for Darktide as well. At its core, we think about attacks as two separate things: Control and Damage. It’s all fine and good to do solid damage, but if you’re not interrupting the enemy while you're at it, you’ll be eating a rusted axe to the face. This goes both ways, where getting stunned or hurt are two different consequences of getting hit. We try to build this deterministic loop where you are in control and should be able to avoid taking hits. There’s no random chance, no false attacks, no “Whoever clicks fastest wins”. We want you to master the gameplay and it’s why we introduced the “Damage taken stat” to the end-of-round screen of Vermintide. It’s the most important one.
This became a problem for us with the introduction of ranged enemies. Specifically, lots of ranged enemies. Dodging and sprinting to avoid shots only take you so far. So we introduced Toughness. It’s a simple shield mechanic allowing players to soak a couple of ranged hits before getting hit-stunned and killed by incoming fire. It’s “the Emperor protects,” but within reasonable limits. It’s the number of shots the Ogryn can take before he realizes he’s been shot. It makes the game work and makes the combat more fun while keeping the player in control and responsible for any damage. Just remember to stay together, as regeneration is tied to sticking with your team.
So, that sounds kind of involved and complicated, right? It is. It’s been one of our primary concerns. Vermintide wasn’t really well known for explaining things. But Vermintide was known for playing quite well. To me, there are certain features you build and a couple of details you add just to make it play right. It’s those little touches that make the game feel good. They don’t necessarily need to be understood or explained or exploitable by the players, but they make or break the gameplay. And as long as the enemy behavior is intuitive, and lines up with the lore and the player fantasy, it just works.
ENEMY TYPES
One of the main tools we have, which has also turned into one of the most important rules for us to follow, is the Enemy Types we use. Since everything is complicated and dynamic, we had to build a little ruleset to develop and design around. If we keep to the rules, things combine and work together fine. That’s the main idea until we find something super fun to implement right away. Then we break all the rules, but for all the right reasons.
ROAMERS & HORDES
Horde enemies and Roamers are the baseline threat you face. They are easy fun. Players should kill them at their leisure with any weapon or tool at their disposal. Gratuitous gibbing fodder… Until they appear in masses and the players get distracted and overrun, that is.
ELITES
Enter the Elites. Built to challenge and promote specific behaviors and load-outs, Elites break your flow, demand your immediate attention, and will end you unless dealt with properly. They also provide an excellent chance for the Plasmagun-toting, “I crave big explosions and instant gratification”-type players to blast them out of existence to the applause of the rest of the team. That thing about your moment in the spotlight.
SPECIALS & MONSTERS
We throw Specials at you to enforce and challenge teamplay; once you’re grabbed, downed, gnawed on, or hanging from a ledge, you rely on your teammates to purge whatever heresy put you in this position and get you back on your feet. Monsters challenge the entire team and demand everyone's attention while providing an excellent distraction to allow the horde to kill you. We build our enemies with a purpose. We stick to the rules, build that rock-paper-scissors dynamic with our armor types, player weapon profiles, and enemy behaviors. The ask is for the team to identify the threats and adapt their behavior accordingly.
Playing a game of Darktide allows four players to join together and try to survive a mission. There are parts of the mission that you traverse, facing varied and generated compositions of enemies. Since we never build bespoke scenarios, it’s very much a once-removed design process of setting up rules and flows and fail-safes to keep the ebb and flow of threat suitable but deadly. We use a lot of chef allegories since we never know in detail what will happen where or when, but I think we’ve mastered most of the recipes by now. Building up that gut feeling of what consequences an increased Special coordinated attack timer has or tuning up the number of bodies in a horde requires a lot of playtesting. Running the same combat reference level over and over again. The same goes for the mission events, where we challenge the players to solve a task while surviving an ongoing battle within a fixed arena. Tuning which enemies best sabotage the players' efforts of a specific event or knowing when to throw everything at them to create a hectic chaos dance of desperation is always a balance between sadism and benevolent game master.
In the end, the formula and core are the same. We wanted to keep what was great with Vermintide, expand on it with solid ranged gameplay and provide true hybrid combat. It has been difficult. It has been challenging. It has been massive amounts of lore, clicking, and passion. At the end of the day, we’re proud. The experience found in Darktide is fun and panicky and overwhelming and impactful, while our veterans and people who stick around to master it find and explore that depth that makes you stick around. At least, that is what we think we built. We hope you feel the same way.
MORE GAMEPLAY FOR THE PEOPLE
Attention Rejects,
We’ve got another trailer for you – aren’t we nice?
Last week we deployed the Rejects Will Rise trailer, focusing more on the mood and tone of Darktide’s area of operations - Tertium Hive.
Today we’re excited to share something you’ve been asking for for a while: gameplay! We wanted to give you a better idea of how the game loop plays out, what kind of mission objectives you’ll be faced with, and some eyes on the different classes in action.
We’ve been a bit withdrawn in sharing gameplay since our TGA trailer back in 2020, so sharing new gameplay at the Summer Game Fest broadcast today is a special occasion for us.
We hope you dig it as much as we do.
Emperor Protects,
The Darktide Team
Dev Blog: Player Characters & VO
Rejects,
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a passion project made by a diverse group of skilled and dedicated people with a drive to bring our dream game to life.
This is the first of a series of dev blogs we’ll share over the next few months. We aim to offer you a more extensive look into the process, thoughts, and feelings behind Darktide’s game features.
We hope you enjoy the peek behind the scenes!
Do you mind introducing yourselves?
MS: My name is Mårten Stormdal, I’m the Narrative Director here at Fatshark. My days mainly consist of working on both a low and a high level to try to steer all the different narrative features, systems and content to tell a coherent story. I have previously worked as a Designer, Producer and Game Director.
MW: I’m Matthew Ward, Creative Consultant on Darktide, which shakes out to be a mix of writing, lorekeeping, voice directing/casting and troubleshooting. I was previously a senior creative in the Games Workshop design studio. These days, when I’m not on Atoma, I’m an author and freelance consultant.
How are we approaching player personalities in Darktide? How do they differ from Vermintide 2?
MS: In Darktide, players get to customize their own characters. They can step right into the Warhammer 40,000 universe and join the fight against Chaos. Even so, we know our players love the interactions between the Ubersreik Five (we love them too!) so we’ve poured time and effort into creating a range of voice profiles for each character class so you can pick the personality that fits you best. We have hard bitten professional soldiers, devout crusaders, snarky outsiders and more. There’s something for everyone.
Greg Jones & Greg Jones
Sophie Wilkinson
Tom Dussek (with the voices of Sophie Wilkinson, Emma Ballantine & Clare Corbett)
Clare Corbett (with the voice of Zehra Jane)
Why did we decide on this approach to Darktide’s player characters as opposed to the predefined ones of Vermintide 2?
MS: It’s about helping players become part of the world – that sense of immersion that elevates any game. Personally, I can spend hours in character customization, and that sense of not just playing any character but your character is really powerful. It also helps lend that sense of scale that works so well in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Every single player is fighting for Atoma’s survival - an army of thousands upon thousands taking the war to Chaos!
Emma Ballantine (with the voice of Toby Longworth)
Aaron Neil
Zigi Ellison
James Alexander (with the voices of Neil McCaul & Aaron Neil)
How do we go about maintaining the much-loved personalities and character banter that we had in Vermintide 2?
MS: It’s all here! It’s something we’ve had in mind from the start, through writing, casting and direction. In fact, given the sheer range of voice profiles in the game – we probably can’t tell you the precise number that will be live at launch, but it’s plenty – and the quantity of voice lines (it’s a lot – we hate hearing the same lines again and again when we’re gaming) players will find plenty to fall in love with.
What have we done to bring forth the quirkiness of these player personalities in our voice-over work?
MW: For each of our player classes (which I’m probably not allowed to talk about so shhhh) we took a long look at the core archetypes and not only what made them gel with Warhammer 40,000’s rich setting but what would make for fun team interactions – who likes who, who tolerates who, who hates who and so on. Some of that changes once you get the actors in the booth and they start breathing life into the scripts, but it only gets better from there.
Tashinga Bepete (with the voices of Alex Jordan & Emma Ballantine)
Toby Longworth
Neil McCaul
Helen Keeley
Will Darktide have any party banter? What can we expect?
MW: Oh yes! I mean, we love writing and recording it, players love hearing it (to say nothing of how it really brings the setting to life) – it was always at the top of the list for me. As to what players can expect? Everything they’ve come to love about Vermintide, but even more. There are thousands upon thousands of banter lines in Darktide.
Relationships between player characters - do they exist?
MW: While the characters are player-created, they all belong to particular archetypes – not only in terms of how they fight, but how they perceive the world. It’s like in Vermintide … Victor’s a quirky example of a Witch Hunter, but he’s still a Witch Hunter. The same is true here. Some of our archetypes work as a well-oiled team while others … well, not so much.
Devon Anderson (with the voices of Emma Ballantine & Alex Jordan)
Adam Howden
Rebecca Perfect
Dan Starkey
Any challenges you’ve faced with this project?
MW: The main challenge throughout has been keeping our character voices as distinct as possible. We get to cheat a lot because our wonderful actors do a lot of the heavy lifting, but I always want to give them plenty to work with. We’ve a couple tricks we deploy along the way, honed on years of Vermintide, and the end result speaks for itself.
Any closing words for the players?
MW: It’s been really hard not talking about this - both for us, and for our cast. We can’t wait for our ragged band of Rejects to get unleashed on the world. We’ll see you on Atoma Prime!
Rejects Will Rise
Today is a big day in the world of Darktide - we’ve got several exciting things happening, and this is just the beginning. Let’s get into the meat of it, shall we?
DARKTIDE @ SKULLS 2022
Another year, another Skulls! We’re thrilled to share that we are once again attending this virtual festival packed full of grim and dark goodness. This year, Darktide is participating with a world premiere of our ‘Rejects Will Rise’ trailer.
Get a taste of the dangers that await you in Tertium Hive below:
PRE-ORDERS ARE LIVE
As of today, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is available for pre-order on Steam, Windows Store and Xbox Store (Xbox Series X/S). The game is available for pre-order in two editions: Standard Edition ($39,99) and Imperial Edition ($59,99).
Early birds will receive the following bonus items with their pre-orders of the Standard Edition & Imperial Edition, at no extra cost:
The Atoman Star Weapon Trinket: A cosmetic weapon trinket awarded to those who answered in the hour of Atoma’s need.
Vanguard of the Imperium Portrait Frame: A cosmetic portrait frame reserved for those first to enter the fray, and last to leave it.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - Standard Edition ($39,99):
Loyalist Pack: Purge heresy in style with these 4 unique class outfits, 8 weapon skin patterns, one headgear as well as an Ogryn body tattoo.
Mortis Veteran Portrait Frame: A cosmetic portrait frame used to pay tribute to the fallen defenders of Tertium Hive.
Caducades Backpack: A cosmetic backpack for human characters. Scavenged from the fallen troops of Cadia, this backpack has been repurposed to serve those still alive and fighting.
2500 Aquilas (premium currency)
JESPER KYD RETURNS
In addition to today’s news, we’re also excited to announce BAFTA award-winning Jesper Kyd as the composer of Darktide’s official soundtrack. As some of you may know, this is not our first collaboration with Jesper - he’s also responsible for composing the iconic soundtracks of Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
If you’re itching to get a sample of the official soundtrack of Darktide, you’re in luck! It just so happens that the Rejects Will Rise trailer was scored by Jesper Kyd as well. We hope you like it as much as we do and that you stay tuned for the soundtrack reveal in the near future.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
When is Darktide coming out? September 13th, 2022.
What platforms can I play Darktide on? The game will be available on PC (Steam/Microsoft Store) and Xbox Series S|X.
Which digital stores is Darktide available on? Darktide will be available on Steam and Microsoft Windows Store, as well as the Xbox Store.
The Imperial Edition contains ‘Aquilas’, a premium currency. Does this mean there will be microtransactions in Darktide? Aquilas are a premium currency that can be used to purchase premium cosmetic items in the in-game store.
Wait… I have to buy all cosmetics? Nope. The in-game store will not be the only way for players to attain cosmetics. Players will also be able to earn some cosmetics through in-game milestones, such as progressing through certain points of the story.
Will you only sell cosmetics in the in-game store? We will focus on cosmetics at launch - but we also are open to other offerings and will look to players feedback to evolve that over time. For example, Vermintide 2 players were happy with the Forgotten Relics weapon pack introduced alongside an entirely free Game Mode. This is not something we currently plan for in Darktide, but we don’t want to limit ourselves, either.
I don’t know much about WH40K - what should I check out or read up on? There are some great reads to get you familiar with the human perspective in Warhammer 40,000 -- we recommend the books of Dan Abnett (the ‘Gaunt's Ghosts’ series and ‘Eisenhorn’ series in particular).
Warhammer40000.com is another great resource as well as the core tabletop books.
We hope you’re strapped in, Rejects, because you’re in for a ride. Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing much more in-depth information and news about the game. To ensure you stay up to date, don’t forget to follow us on our social media, hop into Discord, and sign up for our newsletter.
Until next time!
The Darktide Team
Release Date Announcement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi87A9EK37o Today we’re happy to announce that Warhammer 40,000: Darktide will be coming to PC and Xbox Series X|S on September 13th, 2022.
The aquila-eyed amongst you will note this is later than planned. To us here at Fatshark, it’s paramount that we deliver the best 4-player co-op experience possible. That’s why we’ve decided to extend production time on Warhammer 40,000: Darktide from its previously slated Spring 2022 release to September 13th, 2022.
We’ll be sharing more exciting news and information about Darktide soon. The best way to stay up to date on all things Darktide is to sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social media. Oh, and don’t forget to add the game to your Steam wishlist!
Today we revealed that Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is being written in cooperation with renowned Black Library author Dan Abnett! Abnett is well known in the Warhammer universe for his bestselling Warhammer 40,000 novels and we couldn’t be more excited about the collaboration and what it means for the game.
Darktide promises to focus on the humanity within the Warhammer 40,000 world and there’s no better author to help us realise that vision, with many of Dan’s works - from his Eisenhorn books and the Gaunt’s Ghost series - being the inspiration behind our approach.
We sat down with Dan to probe a little more into who he is, what he does, and what it means for the set up for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. Our Q&A can be found below, and if you don’t want to miss out on future announcements and postings from the team, be sure to wishlist the game over on the Steam Store!
I’m a writer of comics, novels and games. I started out in comics, working for Marvel, and have since written for all the major companies - Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and the UK’s famous 2000AD. My work for Marvel on the Guardians of the Galaxy was used as the basis for the Marvel movies. I’ve also written over fifty novels, many best-selling... Doctor Who, Primeval, Torchwood, Tomb Raider, and many for the Warhammer universe, and I’ve worked on games such as Alien: Isolation and Shadow of Mordor. I love what I do, and I know I’m lucky to be doing it.
When did you first come in contact with Warhammer, and when did you start working with the brand?
I was well aware of Games Workshop - I’d been a keen pen-and-paper role player back in the day, and when I was invited to work for Warhammer, back at the very start of their fiction publishing line, I had a good take on the ‘atmosphere’ of the universe. I’ve written a lot of novels, comics and short stories for them in the last two decades, as their success as a fiction publisher has grown, and I’ve also been able to help shape the universe a little in my books. My Eisenhorn series (Inquisitor novels) and my Gaunt’s Ghost series (Imperial Guard) have fleshed out aspects of the 40K world, and I wrote some key parts of the Horus Heresy novel series, the background ‘myth’ of the whole universe.
What is your favorite thing with Warhammer 40,000?
It’s such a rich universe. It’s notoriously ‘dark’... it’s certainly not a place you’d want to actually live in, but it’s got a grand, epic, decayed... wonderful feel of its own. It’s quite unlike anything else. The Imperium of Mankind is vast, ancient, stagnating and riddled with superstition and zealous beliefs. It’s also permanently at war, against powerful and predatory alien species, and the infernal power of the Warp. What I love most, I suppose, is that there’s really no limit to what you can do... from small stories, ‘detective’ style fiction, to military science fiction, to all-out epic myth. It’s an amazing space, full of ideas and possibilities, and with an amazing visual style. But its “grim darkness” is it’s most deliciously defining quality, and its most addictive aspect.
As soon as you hear 40,000 you think of Space Marines. When you heard that Darktide did not want to focus on Space Marines, but instead a motley crew of human characters, what was your reaction?
Space Marines are iconic, but they are very powerful, post-human elite forces... and also very rare in the vast scale of the universe. Humans are plentiful. While Space Marines are the obvious starting point for any game or novel, you actually get a much better feel for the universe, in all its gothic sweep and cosmic horror, if you see it from the perspective of an ordinary human. In novels, like the Gaunt series, or the Eisenhorn cycle, I’ve chosen the ‘human’ viewpoint because it’s so rewarding. That’s the case with Darktide too. We want to emphasise the human scale, the human ‘heart’ in the midst of the vastness and cosmic wonder... and we also want to emphasise the survival and horror aspect. As a human, you’re vulnerable: it’s all about wit, courage, determination and focus. You’re not immortal, invulnerable or wearing a suit of ceramite power armour. It’s just you and the darkness, and that makes for a really incredible playing experience.
What’s the advantage of having a human point of view for the players?
There’s more character, more detail, and a greater richness. You’ll get to figure things out and deal with them as though you’re really there, and you’ll learn so much more about what life in the Imperium is actually like for the vast majority of people. The risks are greater, but then so are the subtleties and intrigues. It also really amplifies the excitement - as a human, you’re fragile and vulnerable, and probably also scared. And you have no idea what you’re about to find and confront. The player will have much greater identification with their character, and will have to learn to stick with their team, and work with them, in order to survive.
What is the biggest challenge in telling a human perspective in a Warhammer 40,000 world?
Making it comprehensible and ‘real’... building a believable world where humans might live, with a detailed society and culture. And also not making things so deadly they don’t last five minutes! :)
Tell us about life in the Tertium Hive.
In many ways, it’s typical of many or most “hive cities” in the Imperium. It’s old, it’s decaying in some parts and lawless in others, it’s overpopulated and hidebound by the rules and edicts of Imperial control. It’s also - and I can’t emphasise this enough - vast. It’s a city the size of a country, a continent. Billions live here, and in its warren of streets and its deep underlevels you can encounter almost anyone and discover almost anything. From the faded, ornate opulence of the highest spires where the aristocracy lives, to the industrial mid-levels and street markets, to the lowest and most dangerous sub-sub levels, abandoned and forgotten, it is a place of detail, danger and wonder. And secrets. There are secrets hidden away in dark corners everywhere… lost tech, criminal enterprises, dark histories... and maybe other things that are even worse and which threaten the fabric of Imperial society. That’s why the Inquisitor has come, and that’s why he’s ordered you to explore and discover those secrets. That’s the game.
For anyone new to Warhammer 40,000, what books do you recommend to get started with?
The game itself, and the core rulebooks and codexes are a great place, and so is the fiction. There’s a lot you can read, and you can dip in anywhere. Can I recommend my own works? The Eisenhorn trilogy (which leads to further stories) is about an Inquisitor and the ‘ordinary, daily life’ in the Imperium and is often cited as a great starting place. If you want to learn the background mythology, go to the Horus Heresy series. If you want to experience military life from the point of view of an ordinary human soldier, try my Gaunt’s Ghosts books, or for a view of things from the Space Marine perspective, try the awesome Dark Imperium novels out now, which showcase the Adeptus Astartes and reveal the current state of things in this war-torn universe.
About Dan Abnett Dan Abnett is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning comic book writer. He has written over fifty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, the Inquisitor Eisenhorn Cycle, and volumes of the million-selling Horus Heresy series. His many other novels include The Silent Stars Go By (Doctor Who), Rocket Raccoon and Groot: Steal the Galaxy, Triumff, and Embedded. In comics, his 2008 run on The Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel formed the inspiration for the blockbuster movies. He is also noted for significant work on DC’s Legion of Superheroes, Justice League and Aquaman and, for the Vertigo imprint, The New Deadwardians. A regular contributor to the UK’s long-running 2000AD, he is the creator of series including Brink, Grey Area, Feral and Foe, Lawless, Kingdom and the classic Sinister Dexter. He has also written extensively for the games industry, including Shadow of Mordor and Alien:Isolation. Dan lives and works in Maidstone, Kent, in the UK.
Last week we premiered the first gameplay trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide!
If you missed it, we don’t blame you! It was a busy week for sure, and whilst many eyes are on the year 2077 we want to take you further into the future where it’s grimdark and there’s only war.
The Warhammer: 40K franchise is widely loved and adored by many, and we’re stoked to have the opportunity to work with the brand. Games Workshop has trusted us to craft a co-op game that respects the setting, whilst giving players a familiar yet fresh approach to a format we have been polishing throughout development of both Vermintide titles over the last five or more years.
So can we be trusted to deliver on a game-changing 40,000 co-op smash hit? We think so, but we want to take a moment to convince you all that Darktide is in capable hands.
Who are we?
We’re Fatshark. We’ve been making games together in Sweden since 2008, but many of us have been busy in the industry prior to the inception of the studio.
We love games. We love playing games. We love making games. We play games for the same reasons you do; to escape to another world, challenge ourselves, explore places we can’t explore in person, and experience things we could otherwise not experience. Mostly though, we love games that bring people together! It’s why we made games like Vermintide to be as cooperative as possible. Everything we’ve learned from developing the Vermintide games is being poured into Darktide and setting it up to be the ultimate cooperative experience, not just in the 40K universe but in your entire library.
Why us?
We love Warhammer. A lot. We’ve grown up painting miniatures and poring over rule books. Our home and office libraries are stocked with reading material -- novels and adventure books from all walks of Warhammer.
At the helm of the project our Game Director, Anders, had this to say:
“I discovered 40K in the early 90s, and as an aspiring artist I got very inspired by all the incredible artworks by legends like John Blanche, Jes Goodwin and Adrian Smith to mention a few. Ever since then 40K has been a part of my life, both in book form, RPGs and miniatures. Lately the more digital my work gets, the bigger the urge to bring out my old brushes and paint!
Getting the chance to work with this project is of course a dream come true (but it is also a huge scary responsibility hehe).”
Anders also updates a dedicated instagram account that’s been in the works from the day we first pitched the project to Games Workshop.
https://www.instagram.com/bilewerk/
Executive Producer, Steve, has been busy at the helm of the production team making sure the development pipelines remain as clear and unobstructed as possible given the current global situation, but he’s also been fiercely busy both in the office (and at home) getting himself and fellow devs right into the thick of it.
Narrative Director, Mårten, fancied himself a Fantasy fanatic until the End Times, but all it took were the words of Dan Abnett to convert him to a 40K aficionado:
"I grew up pretty much exclusively immersing myself in Fantasy, and when that moved on I started getting to grips more with 40K. Reading the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series' was when it all fell into place for me - the humanity involved at a deeper level. I think I needed to face people on the streets of the universe to break through the mechanised shell of the 40K Universe."
Lead Level Designer, Joakim, wanted to share his journey with 40K.
“I started more or less from scratch here, with only a vague grip on 40K. Then came 14 months of reading 40K literature, all in the name of background research into Hive cities and the Inquisition:
Eisenhorn trilogy + shorts
Ravenor trilogy + shorts
15 Gaunt's Ghosts
Crusade & other stories
Dark Imperium
DI: Plague War
Kai Jericho omnibus
Various 40K rulebooks
Urban Conquest
Vigilus Ablaze + Defiant
Dark Heresy
The Imperium Infantryman's Handbook
Currently reading Carrion Throne (then I'm going to start The Hollow Mountain). I got the count to 9814 pages in total so far - that's 755 pages of 40K every month. Some were digital editions, and some are loaned out, but most of them are in the picture... not forgetting the Dark Heresy role playing campaign!”
Senior Character Artist, Johan, showcases just one corner of his extensive library of physical books:
Gameplay Programmer and Fatshark Stream celebrity, Tom, has been into 40K for the longest time.
“Like every Warhammer player in their late 20's / early 30's I first played the tabletop game when I was a kid. It wasn't until I started working at Fatshark that I began picking it up again, and eventually 8th edition 40K was the perfect excuse to begin playing properly. The tabletop game is now my primary hobby (even beyond playing video games). I frequently attend tournaments and play with some of the best players Sweden has to offer. The lore and IP are fantastic, but for me it's the hobby and the game that draws me in the most. The opportunity to work with fellow fans on a game that is so very related to my personal interests is a fantastic experience.”
Gameplay Programmer, Ricardas, did a brief stint updating an instagram account with minis as well, but has since been too busy programming to keep it up to date!
https://www.instagram.com/mechasheep/
Our Cinematics Director, Tor, admitted not being all that in to Warhammer when he started with us, but (and we quote):
“Seriously, I wasn't all that into Warhammer when I started at Fatshark. But after reading about 15 or more books… the universe man... I [redacted] LOVE it!!!!!!! The Inquisition and Chaos and warp and the vast scale of things and Eisenhorn and Ravenor and the art style alien races etc. It's a spectacular universe and it gives me chills.”
If you can't tell, it’s hard to keep Tor in one single train of thought at once, but no doubt our cinematics are in safe hands!
Various other members of the team have shared some of their workstations and models, some are works in progress, others at a state of completion, and so many more we just don’t have space to share. The hope is that you can see that we’re not inexperienced in the 40K universe and we will be treating the IP you love with the respect and care it deserves.
Honestly, we have gigabytes of photos of armies and minis. We just can't fit it all into one blog post. Suffice to say, we want you to be confident that our passion for Warhammer starts in the real world, and is being lavishly pumped in to the development of Darktide.
We can't wait to show you more in 2021!
You can wishlist Darktide right now, and we recommend Wishlisting, Following and joining the Steam Group to get notified of the latest updates when we publish them!
