He doesn’t even help. He just shows up and pretends to press buttons while you do all the work and tries to sound all mysterious and stuff. Also, his name is dumb.
When the devblog said he was going to show up mid-level and assist you, I thought at the very least he’d be on catwalks up out-of-bounds with a laspistol shooting the occasional trash mob or so. But no, for all intents and purposes he’s just a talking prop.
I assume he’s going to show up in more levels down the line, but for now I don’t particularly care who he is, how he knows this stuff, or why he’s so useless.
I was hoping for a bit more with the swag man, but it’s at least a small step towards more immersive missions to have an NPC marginally more involved on the ground.
At least with VT2 I can understand that we’re pretty much the only surviving people out here and so there’s not going to be a lot of assistance ratclicking. Olesya’s an old woman and too busy doing magic to help us out.
I feel so alone in Darktide despite having a literal army by my side, just because I barely interact with anybody other than my teammates. Having NPCs appear in some missions to assist with combat, even if they’re relatively weak compared to player characters, would feel awesome - whether it’s a squad of PDF who got cornered and decided to stick with you after watching you tear it up, or a mysterious stranger who blows a Crusher’s head off and then leaves without saying a word.
It would add a lot of flavor to the world and make me feel less alone in this, and also less like a game. In Carnival 1, in the courtyard before the first checkpoint door, you can see lasfire being traded on a bridge in the distance, but I want that to be closer - really make it seem like we’re doing a surgical operation in the frontlines.
Simply seeing roaming packs slaughter random reject NPCs when you reach an event zone would do wonders for the mood.
Or a chaos spawn entering with an npc zealot corpse in his hand, that he yeets in your direction. Hell make it a knife zealot as a nod to community memes.
It’s the little things that make the game seem alive.
I feel if fatshark had managed to sort their things earlier they could be spending time on little things like that, that elevate the atmosphere of a game from 8/10 to 10/10 but as it stands they’re too busy putting out all the fires, they arguably lit themselves.
The first time I played that map, the moment my party found Swagger they instantly began to attack and teabag him while waiting for the dialogue to play out. Some things never change.
Could easily be done. You can literally use Bot Spawner to vaguely simulate this. With a bit less clingy AI and some cover hold mechanics this could be cool AF.
Oddly enough I feel like Falken Aces (yeah the game with 1920s and 30s mobster stereotypes played for laughs and the joke of Gianni voicing a character who is fighting for his life on the toilet) handled this a lot better.
Early on you have a character help you out and surprise surprise they are actually helpful as far as saving your character and providing support in the level. Despite also being a very clear rip of a certain character from Watchmen they have a bit of depth in both the writing and the performance which brings it up a notch beyond just a stereotype.
They also have some great interactions between the player character and don’t feel like they tip too far into being a walking meme.
I feel Darktide in particular has a weird problem with confusing a good story with just piling on intrigue and this is the point where it gets kind of stupid due to them just introducing another mystery character while you already have a decently sized cast with their own unsolved stuff.
Still not as disappointed here as I was in Fort Brachsenbrucke. Thought we were gonna see a whole bunch of npcs fighting skaven or at the very least, bodies and weapons from both sides littering the ramparts. Nope.
It would really cool if he showed up and shot PEOPLE with his GUN to assist us, just for funs
Sadly he is just a collection of animations and voice lines, not a thought in his head
he is just a collection of animations and voice lines, not a thought 
in his head