From the start of the pre-order “beta”, there has been something that feels off about the game for me. For a while I have been struggling to figure out what it was exactly, but now that the game has been “released”, I think I’ve finally nailed it down. In order to better explain, let’s first discuss the two games that Darktide draws the majority of its main elements from.
The first game is Vermintide 2. Because of course. In VT2, you play as one of five heroes in a campaign that has a very clear cut overarching plotline. Rasknitt has employed the help of the Rotblood hordes in order to deploy the Skittergate to take over and destroy Helmgart. All of the main mission paths in the game are very clearly and directly related to the goal of the Ubersreik 5, which is to stop Rasknitt and his Chaos aligned friends at all costs. Pretty much everything in the game flows from this overarching plotline, including the main gameplay loop: a ragtag group of heroes with just enough power to hold their own in the face of overwhelming odds as they fight to accomplish their goals.
When you play the game (even at its launch in 2018 mind you), you choose a specific career with a special ability to fight against the hordes of Skaven and Rotbloods. Many of them might have been broken and buggy at launch, but even so, they had clear very clear intended impacts on the gameplay. Even just standing in the Keep lobby, you could look around at your team composition and clearly see their chosen role for whatever the game was going to throw at you. It was perfectly reflected in the gameplay too. Hearing the Slayer scream “GRIIIIIIMNIIIIIIIR” as he throws himself at Chaos zombies or hearing the Bounty Hunter yell “ROAR, MIGHTY DUO” as he shoots at a Rat ogre, you know exactly what is taking place and the potential impact that it can have has you fight to defeat the enemy. This sort of cohesion gives the gameplay charm, personality and depth and it all relates back to the overarching narrative of the game. It makes the gameplay more enjoyable (for me at least, and I’m sure it does for others too).
The second game is Deep Rock Galactic. In the game, you play as a low level dwarf that is simply fulfilling their role in a much larger “machine” of sorts that has a defined goal in the game’s lore. You choose from 4 classes that have a set kit of weapons and gear to choose from. You pick and choose your loadouts within each class to fit your playstyle. You are given the simple task of accomplishing missions as “management” sees fit. These missions take place across multiple zones of the planet and they rotate. Not only that, but the game uses procedural generation across the zones of the planet to make the environments vary over time. As you play, you can see similar areas but rarely (if ever) will you encounter a mission environment that looks exactly the same. When you play, you use your kit to fulfill your chosen role in order for the team to accomplish the mission. The game really makes you feel like you’re just a lowly dwarf being sent out on mining missions across the planet. Everything is cohesive in terms of the overarching format of the game and the gameplay flows directly from that.
Now let’s take a look at Darktide. In the game, you make a series of character customization choices that ultimately determines…what color of burlap pants the game gives you? I guess you also choose how your voice sounds.
The game also has special abilities for each character. For example, when you play as the Veteran, he/she activates their special ability to…shoot slightly better and faster than usual while babbling about Traxis and Epsilon? When the Zealot uses their special they muster all of their might to…sprint 60% faster for 10 feet? These “special abilities” simply fall flat in the face of the unique abilities that each class had in Vermintide 2 (without even mentioning the fact that this game launched with only 4 main “careers” with no subclasses available).
Now what about the missions? In Darktide you are going out on missions to…do what exactly? I guess I’m out on a particular mission because some Servitor bot wants me to scan trash cans covered in Nurgle gunk. We are supposed to be lowly soldiers in the “machine” of the Imperium’s fighting force being sent out on missions across a hostile hive. But there is no procedural generation for the game’s environments. The “mission conditions” are simply modifiers from Heroic Deeds that are tacked on randomly. Other than that, the missions are the exact same every time. Oh, and there’s something about a traitor amongst the ranks that somehow maybe affects what you’re doing out on your missions? I’m not really sure about that though because the game would just crash whenever a cutscene would start.
From a pure gameplay perspective (the act of just hitting or shooting things), the game is brilliant. But in my mind, the glaring problem with the game as a whole is that it does not know what it wants to be. Does it want to fully embrace the Hero based power fantasy of Vermintide? Or does it want to embrace the “toiling peons” narrative of Deep Rock Galactic? Whichever it may be, as the game currently stands, it accomplishes neither because the gameplay and overarching narrative of the game are not cohesive. And that makes me sad because I think the potential is there.
