Here’s my story feedback:
I think the writers clearly plan on adding in more of the story about the battle for Atoma later - and that is a mistake. A “wait and see” approach only works if your players think it is worth waiting, which requires you earn their trust that you can deliver a compelling story right away.
One of the things I liked about Vermintide and Vermintide 2 was that, while there were very few cutscenes, it did tell a story through its gameplay. By working your way through the missions, you fought your way through the process of weakening the vermin (and Chaos) hordes, finally culminating in the blow that would break the back of the invasion of Ubershriek / Helmgart.
Well, clearly they don’t intend to do that in Darktide. The missions are constantly rotating, so they don’t tell a linear story through gameplay. All the story-telling work is instead done through cutscenes.
In theory, that’s fine! But, what is the story?
The real story here is the battle for Atoma. We ultimately want our characters to be principle actors in breaking the back of the Chaos threat, just like the Ubershriek 5 did for the Vermintide games.
However, it feels like someone decided it was “too soon” for that. So, there are all these threads that are left dangling. Where’s the climactic confrontation with the guy from the cell across from you - the one so important that the traitors staged a raid across the prison ship seemingly just to free him? Who was he? Why does he matter? What is the pay-off for all your efforts - does the tide ultimately start to turn in favor of the Imperials (even if mop-up operations can realistically be expected to take years)? Who IS Grendel? Are they male, female, other - and why do even their trusted operatives not seem to know? Why are they being so secretive about their identity, to a degree even beyond the point of other Inquisitors?
These are all questions that REQUIRE answers. So, they make excellent DLC fodder. But the “main game” still requires a story, hence the story about earning a trusted place in the Inquisition.
I think this is a dangerous mistake, particularly if story updates come as PAID DLC. It makes the game feel unfinished - and making people pay full price for a game, then delivering something that doesn’t feel “done” is going to make people angry.
If the story updates come as free DLC: fine. I’m not happy about it, but pacing story updates can work as long as long as the writers don’t string things out for too long without real answers or real forward progress.
If the story updates end up being paid DLC, people are going to be (rightly) furious. Not only is it going to absolutely destroy good-will among the community (because it won’t feel like adding updates to the story; it’ll feel like pay-walling the ending), the story thus far hasn’t been compelling enough to make people trust that paid updates will be worth their money - and won’t just be a naked cash-grab that strings them along before going, “Whoops! Sorry; turns out your ending was in another castle. Better luck next DLC!”
TL:DR - I think Fatshark is trying to preserve some key story-telling beats for future content. However, this is a very dangerous tactic, because the first installment was anemic enough to make people suspicious of the team’s writing skill. To remedy this, what comes next NEEDS to be good and NEEDS to not be locked behind a paywall.
