New Mission Lore Discussion - Swagger's Identity

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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– SPOILER WARNING –

Finished playing the new map with Hadron as the Director.

Hadron is very suspicious of Swaggers sudden arrival, but her yearning for machine knowledge cannot be resisted and she allows us to perform the necessary machine rituals to awaken the forge.

Personally, I left the mission feeling that “Swagger” is a code name. I am also starting to think he is using a chummy brit accent as disguise as well.

What is Swagger up to?

Who could he be?

The intro video showed Rannick and Hadron receive the transmission, how does he have a direct link to Rannick or Mourningstar for that matter? There is also a servo skull following Swagger in the video, but I failed to see it during the mission.

For context, we have a mission where heretical mumbo jumbo is being spewed over vox channels, warping the minds of those who listen, how is Swaggers message going straight to Rannick and Hadron before being scrubbed for heresy!?

My guess is it’s our Inquisitor himself in disguise. Thoughts?

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I really don’t know who they are and I haven’t really heard any hints. My guess is just some intelligent, opportunistic criminal or some other unique individual from the under hive.

If it’s Greyndel that would make them probably one of the lamest Inquisitors of all time.

Edit: Rannick still receives orders from Grendyl allegedly. There would be no reason to show up as a mysterious individual to somehow pass this information along to the operation. Additionally if Grendyl does want their identity hidden but inspect things in person, showing up as a random person with too much information and too much interest, begging to be tracked down and investigated, is quite literally the worst thing you could do.

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he’s probably another of grendyls acolytes or interrogators, he’s definitly on the same standing as rannick.

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Haha yea that is true. It would also be a huge risk for Greyndel to be all alone seemingly.

Maybe Rannick wasn’t listening to the Vox but instead following the Servo Skull.

I want to look at Swaggers eye colors and compare with other introduced characters… I will try to dig that up and post later.

Most likely, why the disguise then?

I get he is a double agent of sorts, setting up a deal to betray them for knowledge. Could it be Zola?

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because bad writing. none of the characters matter, and i’m sure swagger will be insignificant background chatter like the rest past this mission.

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I wouldn’t say that. Obviously he has some skill in combat, and Inquisitors have a way of watching out for themselves. You don’t get to run an operation of this size if you can’t.

(On this front Rannick is sort of an anomaly, as he seems to be an almost incompetent ((from when he and Morrow narrate Warren 6-19 together)) pencil pushing busy body)

I doubt he’ll ever betray us because that would mean redoing all the dialogue for the mission, and modeling in a different character for the mission.

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I was referring to the intro video of Swagger killing the random “purple garbed” chubs and trying to identify him from that scene. Thats something Zola would have connections to pull off.

and about Rannick, I have posted before about his Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg behavior. I’m just waiting for him to lose it and start bleeding from his nose.

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I don’t know this reference. I’m sure it’s really good.

If the writing is good (doubtful) there is a possibility that Grendyl knows this, and has purposefully put Rannick in charge as it wouldn’t be too hard to knock him down a peg if he starts getting too big of a head.

Again I doubt we’ll get something as nuanced as that but there’s a chance.

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My concern is that Fatshark may have written themselves into a corner with lore-development, due to the way they’ve designed the missions.

You can, in theory, play these missions in any order (Special Assignments notwithstanding). So, if they ever reveal Swagger’s identity, then this mission very mission we’re playing - where Rannick & Hadron are acting super suspicious and going, “Who IS this guy?” - won’t make sense any more.

I can see only a handful of ways out of this conundrum.

The easiest (and most cynical) is simply “don’t care.” Comms-Plex 154/2f makes references to a “traitor on board the Mourning Star,” regardless of whether you’ve hit level 30, after all.

The next option is to have a second recording of the dialogue for this mission ready, to put into circulation after Swagger’s identity is revealed. This would arguably be the best option, and the most expensive, but isn’t without precedent either. After all, after Wolfer’s introduction, an entirely new set of dialogue was added onto old maps - and the same thing has been happening with Hestia.

However, the even more cynical option is just … to never reveal his identity. Leave it to the fandom as a mystery to speculate over.

I really hope this isn’t the option they choose, because I want actual movement of the storyline soon. I’ve really liked the developments we’ve had thus far, but they’ve all been, essentially, sideways movements. Wolfer was introduced as the Big Bad of the Scab Faction - but we haven’t gotten to fight him. We’ve gotten hints that the Big Bad of the Dregs faction is an even Bigger Bad, but we don’t even know who they are yet. Killing the Karnak Twins arguably made Tertium a safer place, but it hasn’t brought us any closer to taking out either of the main factions. The overarching story of the overall war doesn’t feel like it’s anywhere closer to a conclusion. Events have happened, but progress has been limited.

In short, this is potentially a very good start to forward movement … If they actually give us an answer and use it to develop the story. But I’m concerned about how they can use it to do that, with the mission setup as it is.

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Zorg is the main villain protagonist from The Fifth Element. Classic Movie.

image
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It would be the classic “open door” 40k is known for. But with this game being a self contained story, it would be nice to have a few reveals and plot twists.

I think if done correctly, going back and playing a mission have new knowledge about them, plot twist they were a traitor, might shed light on some of the nuance things they say.

Since the mission are not dynamic or changing with the narrative, they only change with the mission directors dialogue. I see no issue in going back and playing old missions with outdated lore.

This is how Vermintide 2 played out. Skittergate happened and destroyed the city or something …something… and the main villain was defeated, but the U5 can go back and play missions to discover how to get to him, etc etc.

If written well, current mission directors can change and become villains or even die as far as I’m concerned. I think the twins are dead? Which is a shame since I hoped they could be a random boss encounter during any mission.

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Unfortunately I don’t think they’re going to do that. All the dialogue for Warren 6-19 (obscura den) and the new dialogue for Hab Dreyko implies we are actually running the same missions over and over again to keep things contained. And than pair this with the random unamed Captain missions.

I think more importantly, this shows that FS wants to have the missions be continuously relevant, at least ones that aren’t special like Orthus Offensive.

Twins are dead, but there’s no reason they couldn’t just keep those ambushes in game and just give them randomly generated names and different dialogue like the Scab Captains have…

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I think they’re viewing the missions as evergreen canvasses to plaster story-relevant vox chatter on. I think it’s safe to assume that the missions are the most expensive asset in the game. The sheer amount of people involved must be massive. I imagine that is where the bulk of the studio is focused.

Getting a few dozen VO lines, on the other hand, shouldn’t take but a few people, including the actors.

I think we’ll continue to see existing missions evolve both mechanically (to keep things fresh) and over vox (to advance the story). And sometimes, we’ll get both in one, like with the Hab Dreyko overhaul.

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my-favorite-gary-oldman

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Gary oldman is one of my favorites.

A arm’s dealer with a tendency to send spies to do the dirty work. hmmm sounds strangely familiar…

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Let me clarify. You’ve hit upon a good point - but this also leads into one of the big differences between Vermintide 2 and Darktide.

In Vermintide 2, there was a clear story progression. You had to progress through a series of missions, one after the other, before you could fight the end-of-act boss. And you had to fight all three bosses before you could unlock the mission where you destroyed the Skittergate. Then, you could replay missions as much as you wanted just to have fun.

Darktide doesn’t have anything to channel your story progression on the main map. If it’s on the main map, you can play the missions in any order. A person entering into the game as a fresh newbie right now could play Clandestium Gloriana as their first map, or play Carnival Pt 2 before Carnival Pt 1, etc.

Now, this could be a game strength. If all the story progression post level-up cutscenes comes from Special Assignments, which are gated so you have to do one before progressing to the next, then we could theoretically eventually kill the leaders of this invasion, then have all the missions on the map terminal framed as repeating “mop up assignments.”

But that requires all the story progression happen in Special Assignments. Which means, if something happens on a new map set into general rotation, it makes me leery that we’ll ever see it mattering again.

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ah, thats interesting to hear.

as long as we keep getting vox’s to push narrative, it’s just oddly laid out.

Yea the more this is discussed the more I think the villain will be someone we never heard of before and show up with a song and dance during a special assignment to listen to for 1 min and then kill in roughly the same amount of time.

I still think FS has put themselves in a good position, narratively speaking. They could easily spin this story off world for darktide 2 and peel back layers going forward. Although its all up in the air… Just begs to quest why Dan Abnett was involved if things turn out hollow.

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Guys I found him, his full name is Swagger Ui:

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One of their narrative mistakes was giving map names specific identifiers that told you, without a doubt, that you were going back to the same place over and over again. Abandoning crucial strategic points and facilities the moment your mission is done and coming back to do the same thing because surprise, barely anything was done to hold those points.

In Darktide’s case, having a open half-narrative is working against it because narratively, nothing matters. It’s a disjointed mess where nothing you do affects anything you do later, narrative or gameplay-wise. It doesn’t feel like a war, in the shadows or otherwise. There isn’t even an illusion of progress or retreat. It makes the setting feel small (good job achieving that in a hive city of all things) and puts the onus on Fatshark to explicitly expand it gameplay-wise, but unable to really do anything narrative-wise.

By the way, Swagger is obviously 3 ratlings in a harlequin holo-field.

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Yup, spot on take. Even something as simple as changing the numbers from Hab70 to Hab60 for example would go far for the narrative.