TLDR: FS has a big “Show don’t tell” problem.
Personally I am thoroughly enjoying the current story of Darktide. BUT
Launch was a huge head scratcher. Calling the player base Rejects from the start was a bad move, it almost insulted the players and didn’t give us any agency to feel for what was happening in the “traitor on the ship storyline” that was launched on release.
The fans love V2 characters, every time I play Darktide I see a character named or referencing the U5. They tried something narratively new and it didn’t work, now they are piecing it together. Most players do not want to puzzle together a horde shooter story, especially if their character is a reject and has no stake. Even the Vox transmissions being out of game on youtube is just objectively bad way to tell a story. We cant even see them in game, a casual player will never even hear or see a vox transmission.
If we look at the history of the most popular horde shooters, L4d kept the story simple. They were just looking for an escape, together and PilllS. Does anyone need PILLLS? PILLS HERE. It made each moment feel like life or death, to me.
L4D2 expanded the story and brought the mystery of the government failings tropes (with a new! cast of characters) and left the door open for the player to figure things out.
Going back and playing Vermintide 1 even that had a very cozy introduction and narrative experience, you had to keep the bar safe and help Loehner.
Vermintide 2 had end times and humor and storys along the way, same cast that grew to what we have now.
All of these games had missions happen in order and grew from the event to event, building up to something.
Darktide took that proven method and threw it out the window, along with the cast of characters format.
The discussion around have 1 of each class or everyone can be a Gaurdsman seemed to be the tipping point with this game. Whats another big headscratcher to me is they Voice Acted multiple different male/female versions of each character. Imagine if all those characters were unique and when we loaded into a game we were given 1 at random. Win/win. We each get to play what we want and unique characters to grow with during the games plot.
Overall giving us no-name rejects was a bad choice IMO. Throw away rejects with throw away missions and everything just felt, from an immersive and narrative experience, lifeless. Players only had the constant of mission directors with their own set of problems none of us are introduced to or care about.
Darktide has a plot its just not shown to the players in an easy to consume way. Most of the lore dumps happen by other content creators breaking down what’s happening. Which is bad.
Yup. My friends who like the 40k universe don’t even care anymore because in order for them to catch up I have tell them instead of the game simply showing them what’s happening.