Making a forum post because I believe this is what helps Strawhat see and catalogue feedback the best, and it’s what @Lt.DavinFelth suggested. With the event of Dukane being introduced via a forum post, it highlighted to me that one of my remaining gripes is that we’re getting very little lore or story development in the game itself.
We get posts about new characters, new lore about new missions, youtube videos that tease stuff, splash screens in the launcher about the infected Moebian 21st and how this is a new threat, etc etc
But almost nothing in the game itself. We hear some voice lines, but I’d like something more substantial. If I’m playing auric damnation, there’s very little time for chatter compared to the lower difficulties, and if there is chances are I’m distracted by trying to survive. On the ship I rarely actually register what characters are saying since I’m usually talking to friends or doing something else.
Having these major developments require me to go to a forum or somewhere external to get any form of context or learn about it makes me not care very much and isn’t doing a good job of keeping me engaged in the lore of Darktide.
I liked how some of the major udpates included a new cutscene to introduce it, the penances, brunt, etc. But I’d love more. I’d have loved a cutscene introducing Dukane and the 53rd. I’d have loved to see an intro about how the newly infected Moebian 21st is going to be a genuine threat. You can have established characters giving these intros, giving us lore and additional character development. Hell, even one of those super lazy cutscenes that have a camera pan on a couple images with a voice line would keep me way more interested and engaged in the developing story elements of the game.
Anyway, if you agree, let Strawhat know in here I suppose.
I’m one of the people from the thread you mentioned, who put forward the idea of unveiling more story in game (which would actually get me logging in more than once a quarter).
However, to be brutally honest, the cutscenes aren’t that good. The ingame voice direction in missions comes off as clunky and cartoonish, and pathetically arbitrary to what the players are doing. Same for the voice messages on the Mourningstar hub.
I believe that the most reliable way to provide meaningful supporting information to updates to characters, missions and weapons, is to provide some form of ingame Codex. Personally, I’d like it to have art (perhaps some of that fantastic concept art could be used), and some nice, in-setting data provided by our superiors ingame.
As others have said on the thread we refer to, information that wouldn’t make logical sense to have ingame (like behind-the-scenes stuff), can then be provided on here, and on Youtube.
Oh I guess if the current voice director was to actually improve the level of writing, I’d be fine with ingame audio being a major medium for mission and character updates. But that seems unlikely considering the company structure.
I’ve been asking for this since the beginning and I blame the like of Destiny 2 for making it ok to put all your lore into blog posts or random text screens hidden away in a dozen sub-menues.
It’s lazy, bad practice and simply neither fun nor engaging.
Even VT2 despite doing the same thing with Lohner’s blog posts had more ingame chatter about the lore. But then again VT2 had great characters, not the flat cutouts we have now.
There is a little unused booth in the hub if you turn left at Hestia after loading in. It would fit a terminal perfectly. Great little spot to have an ‘propaganda and intelligence’ terminal or something like that.
Basically just a blog feed of the stuff that’s put on the site and forums, but readable in-game.
Something that doesn’t require much beyond copypasta once it’s built.
Yep, and just a reminder, they do show their concept art on here. I imagine they could slip this in game too right? In some kind of Terminal, or Codex?
I was a bit grumpy back there, but here’s the gist:
Voice lines from known NPCs or (Big E deliver) short animations (skippable cutscenes) within the game as lore introduction / bug wrangling / addressing community nagging points.
Besides, we’ve had that with Dark Carnival introduction.
That’s first.
Second idea:
Mess hall / bar - your local Grendyls Warband Grapevine.
Gambling, booze and of course - Gossip!
Or you know… if you want to be boring - Strategium Meetings with Morrow.
The lore drops in Darktide, whether on the ship or in mission, remind me so much of Borderlands. In a bad way.
It assumes your audience is just blasting goons and grabbing loot, with very little attention on the current narrative. You get some quippy remark, something vaguely relating to what the mission is about, and someone in a ‘funny’ way, telling you to hurry up about it.
I don’t think that method works particularly well in the story and situation we have in Darktide. Nor does the setting work for it, in general. 40k is too grand, takes it self quite seriously in setting. Its one of the reasons Masozi causes dissonance for many players, she’s too detatched from the tone, too flippant and jovial.
Anyway, for those reasons, I think the ingame and on ship voice lines poorly deliver updates about missions and characters.
It’s not really about her being too cheery.
She keeps using lines that sounds like bunch of jinxes to me - She may be Navis Imperialis (with typical “friendly” jabs at “cargo”) but she’s not properly superstitious like good Soldier should be. I swear, she’s just one line away from saying “at least it’s not raining acid” or “Don’t take gogs - It’s short op, I will pick you up before nightfall”.
I think I’ve started to get unreasonably angry at her because of her introduction…
You’re being summoned to hangars. OBEY “I didn’t call anyone (…)” You demented @#$$%@#$#%@!
Add a “story mode” option to the game interface where each mission is placed in a chronological order. The interface would provide some “intel” like images of the mission and intro text, and a better sense locationally for where and how the mission fits into the bigger picture. Terminal can also contain lore, information on enemies, etc.
Add a short cut-scene for the start and end of each mission. Let players uses this terminal to view all the mission (and other) cut scenes. These cut scenes could provide the actual “story” for the player.
Gameplay, maybe new players need to actually work through and beat each mission sequentially to unlock the next in a mission selector or whatever. This way, players would actually get to proceed through a coherent storyline from mission to mission, at least once.
Finally add a “story challenge” game mode (with associated penances) where you have to progress through the missions in story sequence WITHOUT FAILING a run. Get to see how far you can go at a given difficulty with a specific character before failing out. Could have this be a repeatable contract/quest for bonus resources or something.
More cutscenes: Yes I’d like that - I personally like the cutscenes and would love more of them. But additional to lore posts. I also like to read
Codex: great idea! Making all lore posts and vox transmissions accessible in game, provide additional background info and letting you rewatch all cutscenes!
Story mode: cool idea, yet propably difficult to implement without locally hosted sessions (which I really really want yet don’t expect to get :()
Given that I’d be content if a codex solution would add context to the missions and put them in a sensible order!
@FatsharkStrawHat could you forward the codex idea to the devs? So all the work they spent into lore snippets can be enjoyed by your fans more then once and without searching all possible sources? ^^
The cutscenes for each shop were great when added in. I want the central hallway bit (the grimoires and scriptures storage) to be repurposed for bestiaries and storing information and cutscenes, and I want all the forum stuff to be accessible through there.
I’ll just throw in here real quick, though I think I’ve already said my piece.
Absolutely. I don’t want to ruin anyone elses experience of the game, and I don’t want my weird obsession with Voice Direction quality to in some way remove others enjoyment. My request in this regard has been simply for a “npc voice volume slider”.
And I still think the forums are a great place to stay up to date, so an ingame Codex wouldn’t need to replace, just be an in world way of keeping up to date. I definitely don’t want to remove anything we already have. (even if I really dislike a lot of the voice direction, and writing)
I think the story mode is an awesome idea. And I think I heard some hints about that actually coming eventually, maybe?
I’ll just add one last thing! Ralendil made me worried that maybe I’m in a very small minority in a very small overall playerbase. So I checked the Steam Discussions.
Story is a discussion on the front page. I’ll not say its entirely on the same context as us here, and is considerably more hostile thread in general. But, seems like we’re not the only ones discussing this type of thing.
Tbh, I am not against that… I don’t want to be seen as the guy that complain about this.
It was here just to say that not everybody is waiting such improvements.
However, I don’t see how this could be implemented in the game and brings something to it.
I’m perfectly fine if there’s extra lore info and extra details posted around in other areas, I think that’s fine. But let’s not forget that Darktide was advertised as a live service game with a continually evolving story and setting that Dan Abnett set up.
As that person in the steam forum posted above, if you don’t go out of your way to learn more about the game outside of it, you basically have 0 idea what’s going on. I’d love to have some more inclusion of new story elements, new characters, things happening having some kind of actual representation in the game. Even a 15 quick intro of Morrow introducing Dukane would have been nice. My first intro to her was the train mission where she started talking, and I was just like “who the hell is this”
The trailer team behind darktide is fantastic, the cutscenes they introduced in the class patch to introduce the core facilities were great, it really feels like that should be used more. I loved the new map trailers since it gave the lore of what was going on with this map and what was the story elements behind it, but my friends who didn’t watch it have no idea. Why isn’t that stuff in the game?
i like this. it seems an easier way to implement a single player mode, which is still lacking and would give speedrunners a way to show their skill without terribly inconveniencing their team.
I don’t like story drops outside of the game. Seeing a lore dump in a forum post turns my brain off because I engage with it entirely differently to say a in-game dataslate. To use a term incorrectly yet still illustrate my point: it’s non-diegetic.
I want story in the game, anything related to that should be accessible in-game. The vox broadcasts, the background fluff they’ve thought up… on that subject I really wish that they’d do this for the mechanical terms/keywords in the game as well. Rending, brittleness, strength power, etc. None of this means anything to me, the person who won’t look it up online because I don’t like being forced to do that.
This is the one point I will concede to anyone demanding full mission selection: it would make it possible for a narrative to actually exist and be told via the missions much like Vermintide. The game is structured in such a way that delivering narrative is haphazard at best. They’ve really not set themselves up to deliver a coherent and interesting story with the way the game is structured presently.
Having lore outside of the game is part of the GaaS strategy. It’s meant to try and keep the game occupying your mind as often and for as long as possible.
F that. If it’s not in the game, it doesn’t exist.
