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.