So many people defending this game rely on semantics, weasel-words, and technicalities to ignore the fact that Fatshark directly lied to us in order to trick us into buying this game.
I’ve stated several times on both this forum and on reddit that I bought this game expecting an immersive action game with a compelling story. Every time I say this, somebody acts like I was insane for expecting a story at all, and demand proof that Fatshark directly lied to us.
Well, here you go:
As I’ve said numerous times, Fatshark lied repeatedly to content creators and media outlets, who then unknowingly spread those lies to their communities. I bought this game based on lies. Not clever marketing-speak, not convenient vagueries, not whatever BS corporate bootlicking excuse you want to shove down my throat.
Fatshark is managed by liars who falsely advertised this unfinished, scrapped together, shell of a game. They deliberatly deceived their customers, and now they’re trying to gaslight us into thinking otherwise.
Well, I still wouldn’t call it as strong a word as “lies”.
The story’s non-existant - the dude in the review hit it on the head.
However, among all the problems the game has right now - story is in the far back row.
Totally serious question: “what exactly they promised, when they promised and where they promised it? (source)” I do remember they said Abnett will create story setting, but that doesnt nessesarily have to mean, what you think it means. For me, Abnett created tertium, mourning star, inquisitor grendyl, zola, kruber (dont remember his char’s name), hadron, sir melk etc, which can be considered a story setting. So what was exactly promised? Would like too see FS definition of their “planned” content regarding story and what were we supposed to expect. Thx in advance.
I dont deny Skill up’s points in his review. Esp. The bosses being random dudes, but i personally dont really care about wider story telling’ v2 didnt have that much of story as well. I mean, i’d much rather have other things delivered. Like proper map selection, stability and performance optimization, crafting options, removed rng vendor etc…
Ah yes. FatShark. Known for their engrossing, story-driven games. /s
I’m not buying it. Not sure what SU is referring to, but I don’t recall FS ever being out their touting some amazing story. That’s not what they specialize in and they never have.
Besides, you’re just a reject. A replaceable cog in a wheel. What kind of story should people have expected? That we’d become space marines or inquisitors?
Honestly, after everything I’ve read about the history of FS development, come back in a year. Some good ideas have been suggested in feedback such as terminals with lore and other tidbits of canon. They can do it, there is plenty of source material. Whether FS and GW nerds can come to an agreement to establish a timeline/lore codex is the real question. My concern is if they take the seasonal FOMO route of destiny 2 for storytelling. There is a ton of potential to flesh out having this visual 40k universe. The artists have done an amazing job, the lore/story nerds need to do their jobs so I can be a nerd too.
Complaints about the story are stupid. Remember that this game is intended to last for years and have regular content updates. The story is part of that.
Anyone who is familiar with narrative structure will tell you that what we’ve seen so far is an introduction. It is the part of a story where they set the world stage and introduce us to the main characters. That is as far as the story has gone so far. Complaining that this story is shallow is like reading the first 2 pages of a novel and saying that the story sucks because there isn’t more of it.
There’s a lot of things to attack FS over with this game, but the story really isn’t one of them (yet).
If you accuse somebody of a wrongdoing or present something as fact, you leave the realm of opinion. Unless you can back this up, this could be construed as defamation or slander.
So, as already suggested, kindly present facts/evidence or adjust your wording
Actually, yeah they are, Fatshark specializes in a non-intrusive story telling that is done through level design, banter, lore book, weapon descriptions, and environmental design. In Vermintide 2 they went a step further and added bosses which also have a narrative attached to them via a build up and final confrontation. Then there’s subclasses with flavorful banter that tells a bit about the choices the Ubersreik 5 did. An example would be Slayer who talks about his oath in-between runs. Just because Fatshark delivers its narrative through non-traditional means doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
I wouldn’t say they lied about the story. They have a story with well fleshed out characters and locations, they one thing they didn’t manage to put together in a meaningful way was the ability to tell a narrative through the game they had, and it’s somewhat understandable that that isn’t easy.
They didn’t have the time to build out solo-missions like the prison ship to convey central parts of the story for example. They only had the ability to render out pre-determined cutscenes with our character and fire them off after we finish X amounts of missions.
So, that kind of leaves us with this weird feeling that we’re not really part of the story, because the only way the characters in the cutscene can refer to our actions in the game is to simply keep stating that they want us to do more missions.
It would be nice if in the future we could get a solo-mission like the prison ship with every major story beat, and then maybe add them to the Psykanium as replayable missions so that the effort to generate content isn’t lost and people can use those missions as training scenarios with higher difficulties or simply replay them for fun. They don’t have to be terribly long, just enough so that they can actually tell a story about specific things our character did. Those solo missions could then make a real narrative that progresses that moves behind the repeatable missions.
The issue is that that kind of thing just takes work. Someone has to build it, the voice actors have to record lines etc. I completely understand why they couldn’t get that done, but that’s really how they need to do it for the game to have a satisfying narrative element.
I’ve been catching up on some Eisenhorn novels (by Dan Abnett), just finished Penitent, and the descriptions of the hive in that, Queen Mab, has a very similar feel to the snippets of lore and conversation we’ve heard about Tertium, so there’s definitely been a lot done to establish the setting. Storywise it feels like a prologue at most so far.
You didn’t click the link did you? Or do you think he’s lying? In which case he’ll be blacklisted from Fatshark and from other devs. What would be the point?
What about that video Fatshark posted on Youtube touting Dan Abnett and the game’s compelling story? What about the media outlets that all said similar things to what Skillup was told?
I will not adjust my wording. They knew exactly what they were doing.
I think its pretty obvious that their claims about some world class story driven tide-like game were all PR to drum up hype. There is no story to the game beyond the intro. As you progress in levels and are “summoned to the strategium” all they do is tell you in edgy terms that youre doing good work but its not enough. They rephrase that 4 or so times and thats the sum of your story.
I think the whole traitor thing was a big mistake on their part. Putting that in makes it feel like there was supposed to be a story about it, but they never got around to actually adding it to the game and what we see if just left overs
I mean when I got to the level 30 cutscene I had totally forgotten about that character from the level 5 cutscene, and all they did was nod at me.
Because to me it was some new random NPC I had never seen before I knew immediately that they were going to die in the cutscene, why else were they in it?
If there had actually been some story that made this person out to be a comrade that we interacted with and they were there levelling with us, it would have been better and landed
I saw the video. I actually appreciate you linking that to aid the discussion.
I can imagine how the information provided allows deviant interpretations if one is not familiar with the genre or previous titles.
However, it does not provide proof to your claim that there was any malicious intent to mislead consumers into buying that product using false advertisement. Nor do other sources brought forth so far.
I did some research online, and other than that video by SU I cannot find anywhere that actually says the game would have this big story in it. I did find a hell of a lot of interviews and articles talking about the game having a ‘compelling story’ but in those articles the story is always discussed as being told primarily via level design and character voice lines.
I didn’t find anything past the prologue to be interesting at all. "I noticed you but I still don’t trust you’ 4 times is not exactly compelling to me however the overarching idea of the game does have a compelling story though. A planet corrupted by chaos that is too important to lose and an enigmatic inquisitor using prisoners as cannon fodder to try and save the world.
Had I read these articles before getting the game I would have expected at least some type of campaign story going into it. But I wouldn’t say that not being there means they would have lied to me.
