When I first started playing, there were pretty clearly a few major characters taking the role of Mission Control that I was under the impression we were going to see more development for throughout the course of the game’s own development, yet it seems with each major update another supporting character gets added who seems just as hungry to take up valuable lore-time.
Having Kayex as a one-off character in Carnival 2 would have worked splendidly IMO, because the running joke of him somehow being even drier than Hadron was immensely funny and never got boring to listen to. Same deal with Dukane being in for Rolling Steel - this is an active threat to the platoon under her command, she would take an interest in it. Why in blazes should she care about us after that, and for that matter, why should we care about her?
I feel like there are rapidly becoming too many characters to keep track of and to be invested in. Vermintide knew to stick with its healthily-sized cast: our five playable characters and two supporting friends, with other supporting characters/antagonists as relevant. Why doesn’t Darktide know? Why do we keep getting more bland losers to yap at us until we get sick of them?
Maybe you’ve got a whole master plan to tie everything and everybody together, but that just isn’t what it looks like to me. It looks like you don’t know how to progress the overall plot, and rather than doing so, you tack on another side character to distract us.
I think its them weaving story criticism into the missions retroactively which is way less satisfying than seeing it actually progress. Like oh boy its Moebian steel we’re trying to make in Foundryplex now because we know how to do it from Gloriana. They had to take a sledgehammer to the beautiful metalworks to make it look like heretics been there. Sweet guy, whatever happened to Brunt in the other hive? The heretic sabotages that can only be explained by more subterfuge? Rinda coming back blessed? Oh wait that one is redacted or something since they took down the video.
As for getting yapped that really only bothers me when Hallowette is involved…like that Ascension Riser set up with Zola/Melk/Hallowette makes me toggle off mission COs with a mod. Its a horrible sitcom. Normally I don’t mind and most of the character adds have been fine…even Swagger, they just really need to find a better use for him that standing around cross-armed. Even just being on a platform and pretending to do things would be better than his current utilization in that mission.
almost none of the story progress happens in the mission voiceovers. you’re better served loitering in the morningstar for that. and even then, it’s not as useful as being able to context the stuff you find tucked away in the missions.
Again, all of the characters are boring one notes anyways so anytime they try to add “lore” to them I simply roll my eyes.
On top of the story progression being horribly told.
As a fan of 40k lore it is an impressive feat to have me completely impassive to literally everyone and everything going on, besidies maybe how the 6th turned traitor.
And this is such an objectively horrible way to convey story telling. Sure for people who want to dig in and learn details or easter eggs fine, but as a way to actually move the plot forward it is beyond horrible and has created the apathy most people have to the story of the game.
Yeah, the lore isn’t moving the plot forward. that’s moving at whatever speed it goes regardless of what we want or know. This is probably the most 40k-feeling game out there because we have just as much control or understanding of what we’re dealing with as most people who fight for the imperium, which is nothin’.