So Many Characters

I don’t mean playable ones - I mean story ones. We have so goddamn many.

I would be happy if we never saw/heard from half of them again - like Swagger, Howlette, Brahms . . . it’s more than just “I don’t care”, there’s just too many for this story. The only time I have felt even mildly interested in the story was in the latest scene where we saw Grendyl’s hologram.

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I would be happy if we could just turn their voices off (without mods) and filter out Howlette and Brahms maps. Those 2 just make my skin crawl, even Rannick warns you about doing Howlette missions.

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I think Brahms is fine; she get some new interesting Story with the last Update about the Mysterious Voice being her Grandpa and something with her Mother / Daughter (no idea which one is which) and them knowing about the Cult and Genestealers which Rannick apparently was also aware of and some Magos Khabib experimented on on the Mourningstar

Swagger idk i only dislike his Name rly and not much Story to him

Howlette can go away or just stick with being the FOMO Shop NPC

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Brahms is fine on her own, she at least doesn’t make me wish I was deaf like some of them. But there’s already so many plotlines going on that we just don’t need more. I don’t care about her past because there’s already so many characters involved in this. Every single one has all these unnecessary mysteries around them.

Oh, I forgot to mention Melk and Masozi, another two that are just kind of annoying. Gee, can’t wait until we get dialogues about their DaRk and MysTeRiOuS origins!

At some point in Vermintide 2, the writers lost the thread; the characters IN Vermintide knew their world, so their commentary to each other informed us, the player, of what was going on, what we needed to do. They were competent.

Then in some of the VT2 DLCs, they started having characters use magic to talk to us, and would tell us everything. Along with lots of insults, of course, because for some reason that’s the only kind of dialogue from superiors we can get.

It fits more in the GRIM DARKNESS of 40k, because at least in the story we’re expendables as opposed to being independent heroes in our own right like in VT, but it’s not a fun experience.

I digress, though.

EDIT: Oh, and it was one of the most disappointing story beats to find out that the Wyrmwood broadcasts from the early marketing was just Zola freaking out cuz she got herself in trouble with the cartel.

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Tons of characters, most of which we know and care very little about…

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NPCs I don’t care about, I just want the faces/hair styles they literally stole from the character creator (you can see all of these hair styles and faces with mods).

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Also, when Brahms comments about if her mother was around to see the state of the ship, it’s like we are the ones who made it like that. For peats sake Brahms, your ship (so you keep reminding us of) your issue you dumb cow.

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Yeah, i don’t know which ones they removed but so many faces and hairstyle just look more like the stuff you pick to make an intentionally ugly meme char, some look like fish faces and the hairstyles…theres one where you have hair at the front half and the back is shaved or the gen z noodle hair

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FS, bring back the Mullet.

Found this - https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zPkwa4

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The first human face there - I think that’s the face they have on Masozi.

Keep:
Hadron
Kayex-8
Rannick
Brahms
Morro
Brunt

Servitorise:
Everyone else

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Agreed

Shoot this cow out an airlock

Agreed

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Brunt:

DRG does so much with nothing more than Mission Control, and keeps its narrative beautifully simple.

Helldivers has the Democracy Officer, Ship Master, and the in-universe News and manages to portray a compelling narrative of an ongoing galactic conflict where the player’s participation (or lack thereof) feels like it has meaningful input.

Darktide has a magnificently crafted visual feast of a setting, dozens of characters, multiple beautiful story trailers, nearly thrice as many credited voice actors as Helldivers does, and both Dan Abnett and Our Spiritual Liege (longtime setting professionals both) as writers…and yet basically none of the playerbase has more than a vague concept of the basics of what’s going on. The story is just something you experience when you level a character up (but without most of the background or details to the narrative ever really being discussed), and then whenever a new update happens to have an explanatory cutscene, but aside from that the story is almost invisible and player actions don’t appear to have any direction on the plot.

Within the game itself, and what the story presents us as we play, we basically know squat all about the Moebian 6th, or who the heck are the Cult of Admonition are, or most anything else.

I don’t mind the number of characters so much in and of itself, what I mind is the fact that the story is so fragmented and disorganized and incoherently relayed. We keep adding characters that bloat the story and setting more and more. I’m not sure what Dukane or the Arbites characters really add to the story other than grand politics confusion.

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Yeah, this is what I mean. There’s definitely the ability to tell a story here, but they keep adding new characters and new plot threads, when they haven’t even developed the old ones.

Add to this the dogged obsession that 40k has with everything being grimdark and awful, and our characters just being meaningless stooges who get to know nothing - it just makes it so the story might as well not exist.

I think we could have a story in here that lets us be the expendables, but we’ve learned a little too much, and while this should mean we’re going to get killed, what if we also learned sensitive stuff that makes them worried about killing us?

A natural direction I could see this taking would be having new Reject enemies who defect to Chaos, because hey - maybe they’ll let them live!

But I don’t know if we’ll get that. Would be kind of funny to get an enemy who can slide and dodge around our attacks, though given the AI in these games I feel like they’d not be that threatening.

hadron did enough she dies

Honestly I feel that the writers could have done better on background and additional content as many others in this thread have done.

But, key thing to remember is that old cow Brahms owed a massive favour to Inquisitor Grendel from her dealings in the past, hence why Brahms and it’s childish lackey Hallowette are in orbit above the planet with the Morningstar. Brahms and Hallowette despise being where they are, while also despising Rannic, Morrow, and the rejects. The only person Brahms likes from Rannics band is Zola. Kayex has also part of Brahms crew for a very long time.

Rannic is the person in charge of overseeing what goes on planet side, along with Zola his second in charge. Rannic, Zola, and Morrow all have the same agenda from Grendel which they keep from Brahms and it’s lackey. But in the mix of all this we now have the upstart self appointed so called person in charge Commissar Dukane who was sent to the Morningstar by Grendel as one of his lackey’s also.

Now Dukane thinks she is in charge of troop movements planet side over Morrow because Rannic, Zola, and Morrow gave her enough breathing space to think this, while all along keeping their over all plan from her. The twist is now is that the Arbitrators are also involved.

So you can now see why the story is all over the place and very hard to follow.

I do understand all that. But it’s the writers who created this mess, and continue to develop it - and other ideas. Brahms is fine to exist, but we do not need to know about her or get more development of her character beyond her existence. Same with many others.

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I agree, I would even go further to say we need less of Brahms and it’s childish lackey Hallowette in both vox and maps.

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