In Patch 12 we were informed we became the previously elusive Auric Operatives upon reaching level 30, and with the most recent hot patch, they removed references to them doing all the actual important stuff in the actual important places while we clean up the side jobs.
It’s almost too bad. As I say in the title it feels like a missed opportunity. They should have kept the whole “slightly-elevated penal trooper” thing going. The flavor text on our advancement portraits makes it clear we are still quite expendable and always will be in Grendel’s and Rannick’s sight (CERTAINLY always in Morrow’s). Maybe classed us as Argentum Operatives instead and kept this unobtainable level of OP dudes pulling off cool stuff out of sight in the background in true 40K over-the-top style. They could have been DT’s Cousin Okri equivalent. “You think you’re hot s**t, huh? You’ll still never be as good as the Auric Operatives.” kinda stuff.
I mean it was a weird but clearly deliberate decision on their part. The lines existing in the game suggested we were never meant to be “Auric Level”, they just co-opted the existing term as the new name for the higher difficulty board. And then had to rewrite the game’s dialogue because of it. It would have made more sense to create an intermediary level and leave the lines as they were. Especially weird because they have Argentum or Argentic (“silver” as opposed to Auric’s “golden”) or whatever just sitting there as an obvious choice.
Yeah, but that would require work! And a base system prepped to switch certain dialogue at various points! Waddya think we’re working with here, ravioli?!?! We have this!
Well, we basically nicked like fifteen shells including those we got from the train. So I guess they’ve all been fired 5 seconds after the mission ends. And unless we get a Leman Russ in a mission, we’d probably never get to use any of them anyway.
NGL now I want an escort mission, similar to the Abrams one in CODMW, where you help recover and then escort a Leman Russ and work with militia bots to protect it against waves of enemies on the way to get it and yourself flown out. . . And yes, its weapons do fire and help you deal with enemies, also a commissar onboard badmouths you and your team the entire time. . .
