Warhammer 40K: Darktide seems to be the next game from Fatshark, the developers of the popular fantasy Warhammer series. The team proved that they are capable of producing an atmospheric story worthy of the Warhammer world, comparing it to first-rate first-person slasher gameplay, and creating one of the best Warhammer fantasy video games of all time. The Warhammer community is now waiting to see if the Darktides team can repeat this feat in the flagship sci-fi game workshop, and it looks good. Similar to the popular Mintide series of fantasy Warhammer games, Warhammer 40K: DarkTide is a first-person shooter/melee hybrid where you fight against the odds.
In Warhammer 40K: Darktide, players will be able to take the control of a group of imperial guards, under the control of the Inquisitor. The game is not one where you arm yourself in ceramics and are an unstoppable force of nature, lacking in personality while plowing things through in the irrepressible way that spaceships do. Instead, in the Dark tides story, you play a human figure, a vulnerable, mortal figure.
The announcement trailer (which you could say is only a fraction of the game) was released for the upcoming Warhammer 40K tie-in by Swedish studio Fatshark, and it’s more than enough to get me excited and speculate knowledgeably about what’s ahead. Darktide will be released later this year by director Anders Geer and writer Dan Abnett, with the latter revealing that the game will break new ground in 40K and how it differs from Vermintide.
Darktide is an upcoming first-person action game set in Warhammer universe and adopts a similar style to the independent Swedish studio Fatshark in the Warhammer Review 2. For the gameplay aspects, players who have played Fatssharks Warhammer and Vermintide will feel at home as they are tasked with cutting, shooting, and defeating waves of creepy enemies in order to survive. The studio has confirmed that Darkest Hour will build on the franchise.
Fatshark is the creators of the Vermintide series and Darktide is based in the Warhammer 40K universe and lets you fend off the forces of chaos. Acclaimed Warhammer author Dan Abnett is best known for his best-selling novels about Warhammer – Universe. As an independent Swedish studio, we are confident in working together to deliver the best possible Warhammer experience. The inclusion of Dan in the game was a great choice for us as he knows the Warhammer world well.
The main difference between this game and the previous Vermintides video games that were first-person co-op action games similar to Left 4 Dead is that, unlike Vermintides, Darktide has a ton of firearms unlike the previous games focusing on melee. While the previous series had many wide-open areas, the game was refined in closed, dark environments, forcing the player to take on enemies in a confined space.
The developers have noted that Darktide should be more focused on melee than Vermintide 2, which is closer to a 50 / 50 split between melee and ranged combat. We have a decent, variably playable squad in the game, including Ogryn, and gore-soaked footage of first-person melee fights in which players use chain swords, jackhammers, battle knives, and sideburns to look for chaotic cultists, traitors, and guardians. The game will focus more on distance weapons than on minefields, but it looks like we will have to modify our load-outs to have enough of them.
The whole Warhammer franchise has gotten a popular medium, ranging from books, and comics to video games. The game is based on the Xbox Series X / S Development Kit, which offers unprecedented loading times, visual responsiveness, and a frame rate of up to 120fps.
The shooter was originally slated to be released later this year on Xbox Series X and PC, but it seems that Fatshark needed more time to work on the upcoming Warhammer linkage and today announced that it has delayed the release of the games. Stockholm-based FatShark says in a familiar refrain that the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered its original plans to ship the game this year. In particular, the studio says that more time will be used to polish the launch system of the games, which will allow it to provide post-launch support for the coming years. The game is now postponed to the early half of next year.
