Yes, another Orks DLC Thinkpiece

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Longtime creeper, first time poster. Local Runtherd checking in.

As an absolute Ork fanatic I’ve often though about how da boyz would fit into Darktide. There are some great ideas out there already but here is my quick two squigs.

Why Orks are probably not a good idea for the next bad guys
The average Ork is bigger and meaner than the average humie. If Darktide is trying (and, I feel, succeeding) to portray the human side of the grim darkness of the far future, four basics fending off a propa WAAAGH seems a bit off. The afore-linked “Winds of Spore” opus talks about hordes of gretchin, which makes sense, so ork boyz and nobs would be rarer. Again, makes sense. But wouldn’t that be a bit boring? Snots and grots are cool but who wants the main, swarm baddies to be little goblins?

Da Green Choice
As someone who has always wanted a live service shooter game where I can level up an ork, I think it would be far better (should our prayers to Gork [or Mork?] come true) to have a DLC where we players get to be Blood Ax Kommando mercenaries.

This could be a simple reskin of the existing characters and progression mechanics:

  • Bullgryn = Nob
  • Veteran = Dakka Boy (or Snipa)
  • Psyker = Weirdboy (or Flama Boy if that’s too much)
  • Zealot = Slasha Boy

Our Kommando Skwad gets a mishun from the humie gits and then gets plopped down somewhere on Atoma to crump Chaos gits. Bing bang boom. Awesomeness for all.

Why this works
If, again should our prayers be answered, they were to release such a DLC, this is the straightforward choice to including Orks in Darktide. First, it requires less development as missions could largely stay the same and character progression could be very similar to what it is now, leaving only asset development as the main hurdle.

  • new character art
  • Loota boy = Hallowette
  • Mekboy = Hadron
  • Flyboy = Masozi
  • Runtherd = Melk
  • etc

This works internally because we know the Inquisition is not completely opposed to hiring ork mercenaries (see the Ghazgkull novel, etc).

So instead of a full-blown expansion, we players can just be the ork boyz of our dreams (instead of zoggin’ humies) in a lore-friendly way.

That’s all.

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Maybe in a future game, not in Darktide.

Not all 40k game need to try to include everything and it’s better to introduce smart and useful things that make sense

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…are you saying Orks isn’t smart and useful??

Kidding. I hear what you’re saying and I don’t expect da boyz to appear in this game. Just thinking out loud.

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I’m saying they aren’t smart to be put in Darktide, same for the Genestealer in fact

But in the future if they do an Ork game, it’ll probably have them as the enemy, rather than the players.

And if they do an Greenskin game, I’d prefer a Fantasy game (Or even AoS)

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Greentide game would be nice.

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As much as I like that Darktide is a 40k game that finally puts regular humans front and center I think a different approach would have worked a little better for a live service horde shooter. Playing as orks would be a lot of fun (currently fantasizing about a Tarkov level deep kustom shoota builda).

Greentide would be a logical progression of the series, but tbh I think Deathwatch space marines instead of humans or orks would be a really good fit. Having access to multiple space marine chapters would give plenty of opportunities for fun banter between characters, space marines have pretty simple character models that would be easy to make a wide variety of cosmetics for, seems like they’re getting some pretty crazy new weapons in recent tabletop editions too.

Like I said I really like that DT has this gritty “you’re a bunch of f*ckups doing the Inquisition’s dirty work” feel, but something where you can more reasonably pull some of 40k’s crazier and over the top aspects would just be a better fit for this type of game imo.