Aren't there too many characters?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Currently, there are about 18 notable characters in game, can you name them without looking up?

Characters

Rannick, Grendyl, Morrow, Melk, Zola, Hadron, Ducane, Swagger, Sefony, Kayex, Brunt(sort of), Masozi, Prine, Brahms, Alice, Oska Krall, Wolfer, Mara Vinci, let’s not list every noble that just talks and doesn’t have a face

So, my problem is that Fatshark just keeps on adding new characters to the story with every update and not really expanding on the previous ones.

When the game came out, there were 10 or 9 characters(Wolfer existed but didn’t say much), so I came to the conclusion that we will expand on the story of Zola, Rannick or Morrow, but to my knowledge we did not, besides Zola’s Diary, which I didn’t really read(only one or two entries), and maybe there was something in the Vox thingy.

So why do they add more and more characters just to podcast during one or two missions?
That is pretty cool, but aren’t there too many characters?
For example, I just recently got to know that clothes shop lady is Alice and she is known as very scary.

Conclusion, I just want them to expand a little more on the current cast before going to the new shiny character like Ducane

(With a current trajectory, I think she will just voice one or two missions more before being forgotten because of the new character, I will not mind if it’ll be Brunt tho)

like I still have no idea who the hell the Swagger is and why is he on the ship, the dude talks during that one mission and that’s it, also, he doesn’t do much on the ship, would be cool if we could talk to him a little.

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Alice’s character has always been Brahm’s seneschal so if anything its them attempting to salvage her character through that connection. I have no idea why she has to be so annoying regardless but at least she doesn’t call you out when walking by her store anymore.

And yeah in general there are way too many chiefs and not enough Indians on the ship. They haven’t even opened the areas up that will invariably house more NPCs who will be in charge of function Y or access to area Z. The majority are unfortunately underutilized. I’ve never really agreed with diluting the mission giver pool as much as they did. Placeholder Masozi I can understand wanting to jazz up more by replacing, but Morrow?

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Old characters are interacting with new characters, revealing more of their…er character. Morrow and Dukane, Kayex and Hadron, Oska and Sefoni, etc etc.

The more, the merrier in my opinion. My favs — Kayex, Oska and Brahms — weren’t “first round” mission narrators.

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I was just talking about this with my group the other day. You’re absolutely right, I’d rather 3-4 really great and interesting characters than the massive cast we have right now.

Honestly though, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this game doesn’t really have a story or characters. I just love the gameplay and the itemization is actually fun now, so bonus.

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Because the majority of dialogue compositions are canned responses. Even the mission givers suffer from this, I guess they were worried about them being irritating on repeat plays. Instead they can very often make little conversational sense when they drop their Marvel quip from a list of possible responses at one another.

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I do agree that interactions between characters opens them up in the different way, and that some new characters will be like by some, but the idea of that being the only way of expanding on them just doesn’t feel right.

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Zola has had interactions/progression relative to external forces through the narrative, and I expect others to as well — I imagine we’ll maybe even lose some folks at some point — but the diffuse method of storytelling is kinda the deal in the Tide games. I think it’s a really interesting method of storytelling, personally, and I think it works really well. Better even than in VT/VT2.

Especially after reading the Eisenhorn books and now Ravenor, I feel like a low-level soldier hitching a ride with these epic badasses that make up an inquisitor’s cadre. Rogue traders, soldiers, mercenaries, seedy weirdos, psykers, the whole lot. I feel like I’m part of a lived-in world rather than the main character in some sweeping story.

I think this is pretty unique in gaming, I can’t really think of another medium that could do it justice, and I really wouldn’t want it any other way. I don’t want a beginning, middle and end to the story. I don’t want an epic climax. I want to log in and just be there. And I feel Darktide delivers on that pretty perfectly.

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unlike vermintide, our characters are not the central plot of the story going on in darktide. the large range of characters that interact with us give them several additional persepctives to provide context from which is important as no single character has the whole picture or indeed any reason to properly contextualize it for us. there is a LOT going on in tertiem and we’re not actually privvy to most of it so the chatter between the higher ups helps in figuring out the bigger picture to the people willing to sit out hearing all the details.

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technically wolfer should be the main villain of darktide
and basically the end boss of the story (?) just like it was for rasknitt for vermintide and vermintide 2

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TL;DR : Fatshark could do better with the story, but whatever. 18 chars isnt really alot, and most of them are just side characters that arent even worth counting.

Progressing the plot and/or developing the main character by introducing new characters to the story even for a very brief moment is a very common method of story telling.
If you pay attention you can see it almost everywhere. Its most common in adventure type stories (obviously).
Personally im not bothered or overwhelmed by the number of characters we have now in the slightest. 18 characters are rookie numbers compared to how many an average RPG like rogue trader, witcher 3, pillars of eternity or whatever has.

There is only so much you can do to develop characters when you cannot place them in a new environment. In a locked space like the morningstar you need to bring the plot inside, not seek it out outside since the only ones going outside is us not the actual main characters of the story.

People grow thanks to the things they experience, without a foreign thing to influence someone, there is no change only stagnation.

Obviously new people arent the only thing that can influence our shut-ins in the morningstar. We could discover artifacts, places, written or recorded stuff.
I was pretty disappointed that the new “moebian steel” didnt really have bigger influence on Hadron but apparently this plot isnt finished yet so we may yet see some growth.
Or that nobody has anything to say about the heretical grims we pick up.

Im just rambling on at this point, i dont even know where im going with this…

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characters not that developed much in depth with their own story within the game
but often only developed with blogs etc.
like in VT2 sub characters, lore was often given thanks to the chronicles lore posts etc. so something outside

and in darktide we have some of it with the vox transmissions

i’d prefer lore being expanded within the game, cutscenes, dialogues etc.

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I think you’ll find you’ve missed the most interacted with character of the lot…

Peddler 138

It’s a nuanced performance. Commencing disengagement.

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the Peddler who ran the Commissary that went back into Hadron’s shed so Mara Vinci could serve out her eternal duty was the real hero we lost. brunt who

runner up is that contracts area Peddler Melk yells at whenever you buy stuff from him.

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Kayax is fast becoming my fave!

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