Warhammer 40,000: Darktide News

It’s fun to create bad guys, and the Moebian Sixth are bad to the bone.

To me, in games just like novels, the bad guys have got to be interesting, not just cannon fodder, and that’s hard to pull off in a game because there are going to be a lot of them coming at you as you dig in and play, and some of them will be cut down quickly (if you’re doing your job right!).

It’s pretty much impossible to build them as characters, or establish any depth of personality, because there isn’t the space or the time, and you’re not going to have the sort of interaction with them you’d get in a novel or a piece of prose. You might get to learn about a bad guy’s motivation or impulses in a book, but in a game like this, they’re just going to loom at you out of the dark and try to kill you.

So what we’ve attempted to do instead is build, if not characters, then at least character types. The ‘character’ is the Moebian Sixth itself, the regiment, and the soldiers who make it up come in distinctly different ‘flavours’, with different looks and different behaviours. So you might not get to know them on a personal basis, but you’ll get to know their types, and from that, a picture of the Moebian Sixth will quickly build up.



The question, then, is who are they? Well, they’re Imperial Guard, which is to say soldiers of the Astra Militarum. They are - or were - humans, just like you and me. They are the sort of conscript troops who, in other circumstances, would be the heroes of a story, fighting to protect the citizens and unity of the Imperium. They may all be ‘uniform’ because of their, you know, uniforms, but they are individuals, with different skills and strengths, and different flaws and weaknesses.

There’s something chilling and sad about seeing a proud regiment of the Militarum filling the role of the enemy. These men were veterans: brave, well-trained, determined, and tough. Raised, for the most part, on Atoma Prime itself, they were sent away to war, and served long tours in the so-called Fringe War, a pacification campaign that has rumbled on for years in the feral worlds at the edge of the Moebian Domain. There are several Moebian regiments, in fact, but the Sixth is the most famous, the most decorated, and the most celebrated. Back home on Atoma, to the citizens of Tertium Hive, they are heroes. You don’t get lasmen any tougher than the Moebian Sixth.



They have spent their lives (and, in many cases, given their lives) to fight that campaign and keep the people of Atoma, and all the other populated worlds of the Moebian Domain, safe and free from invasion. Though it’s only a small chunk of the unbelievably vast Imperium of Man, the Domain is a significant tract of space. It’s a fiefdom of several important worlds, loyal to the Throne of Terra, ruled over by the Lord Margrave of Atoma. Think of it like a province or a self-governing state. It pays its tithes and taxes to Terra, it obeys the laws of Terra, and it manufactures vast quantities of goods for the Imperium. It’s important. It must not be lost, or invaded, or ever fall to the darkness that lies in the disputed territories it borders. Those territories, which are ‘parts unknown’, wild worlds outside the Imperium’s remit, are a hotbed of alien (“xenos”) and daemonic threat. To the average citizen of Atoma and its sister worlds, the nature of that threat is a mystery. It’s just called ‘the Darktide’, a boogeyman threat that must be kept at bay. That’s why they have the regiments of the Astra Militarum.

The Moebian Domain, like all worlds and world-groups of the Imperium, is responsible for raising, supporting and equipping its own armies, which fall under the auspices of the Astra Militarum. The young people recruited to regiments like the Sixth have no idea where they’re being sent, or what they will face. They are as ignorant of the ‘Darktide’ as any other regular citizen, for they were all citizens themselves.



They quickly learn. The galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 is not a friendly or safe place. There are brutal horrors out there - alien creatures, predators, xenos species, monsters, and worse - who want nothing more than to extinguish the fluttering flame of human civilisation. Out on the death worlds of the Fringe, the lasmen are thrown into the meatgrinder and come face to face with unimaginable danger. Their world-view changes. They learn the nature of the Darktide and fight it tooth and nail.

Sometimes, they learn too much.

Long tours result in trauma, both physical and psychological. Some are broken by the experience. Some are made bitter and resentful that the gruelling combat they experience is generally unrecognised back home, because the Imperial Administratum tends to keep all details of the ongoing conflict quiet so as not to generate public alarm. There might be a few news broadcasts about ‘great victories’, but the rest of the turmoil is screened by propaganda.

Some troopers, of course, serve brilliantly and bravely, and remain loyal. Despite everything they experience. But others fall prey to the insidious touch of the Darktide. They encounter the malevolent effect of the Warp, and it changes them. They become - literally, in some cases - the very thing they are fighting against

And they fight well. The ‘character’ of the regiment comes from the different units and specialisations. They have fierce melee troops who excel at close range and hand-to-hand. They have storm troops, snipers, flame-troopers, demolition units, heavy-weapon squads. They have everything you’d need in an armed unit if you wanted to take down a world.

So the Moebian Sixth is a regiment that’s turned traitor. They have been corrupted, by the trauma of their experiences, and by the polluting effects of the Warp. The guardians of Atoma have turned - in vengeance and hatred and spite - on the people they guard and the hive that raised them.



Ultimately, they are not just monsters looming out of the dark to kill you. They’re highly trained, highly-experienced veteran troopers, with full military gear. They have been seduced by the creed of the Darktide, and they have come home, not simply to kill and exact vengeance, but - more poignantly - to share the ‘truth’ they have uncovered. They truly believe they’ve seen the light, and that the dark ways they have discovered are far better and more liberating than the stagnant rubrics of the Imperium. They want to share that truth with you… with you, and every living soul on Atoma.

So there’s a tragedy there. They absolutely don’t think they are evil. They absolutely think they’re doing the right thing. And they will absolutely kill you if you try to stop them.

You don’t get lasmen any tougher than the Moebian Sixth, after all.

- Dan Abnett

Hello!

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.

[h2]Entering the World of Fatshark and 41st Millennium[/h2]
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.



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.

[h2]Visual Style and Intent[/h2]
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.



[h2]A Drive for Craftmanship[/h2]
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.


[h2]Diverse Possibilities of Imperfection[/h2]
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.




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.

[h2]Ramping Up The Gear Factory[/h2]
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.



[h2]Decide Your Outfit [/h2]
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!




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!

[h2]INTRODUCTION[/h2]
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.



[h2]BUILDING ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF VERMINTIDE[/h2]
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.



[h2]STAYING TRUE TO WARHAMMER 40,000 & CO-OP PLAY[/h2]
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.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
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.



[h2]MIXING IT UP WITH RANGED COMBAT[/h2]
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.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
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.



[h2]ENEMY TYPES[/h2]
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.

[h3]ROAMERS & HORDES[/h3]
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.



[h3]ELITES[/h3]
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.



[h3]SPECIALS & MONSTERS[/h3]
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.