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Warhammer 40,000: Darktide was considered one of my most anticipated video games of 2022. I couldn’t wait to play Fatshark’s first-person shooter evolution of the rat-infested melee frenzy that was Vermintide 2. Sadly, it had its fair proportion of points at launch, from efficiency frustrations on PC to a lackluster development system and loot financial system. Now, the studio is engaged on a kind of fated live-service sport turnarounds, and it apparently begins with a giant revamp of its RPG ability tree.
Fatshark informed PC Gamer it’s presently engaged on releasing a significant replace in October that may add extra nuance and customization to character builds. Darktide is a darkish fantasy loot shooter about repeating the identical missions again and again as they get remixed by procedural era, random spawns, mutators, and your individual arsenal. However with solely 4 lessons at launch and a smattering of ability upgrades, the squad-based dungeon crawler ran out of fuel actual fast. The October replace is meant so as to add a bunch extra passive and lively skills with new choices for combine and match.
“We wished gamers to get a bit extra company into the lessons, a bit extra experimentation, assist much more totally different play types,” Darktide sport director Anders De Geer informed PC Gamer. “Principally what we’ve accomplished is reimagine what a category in Darktide is. That is our large replace: we’ve expanded the expertise timber, added a ton of recent choices and talents, passives and actives.”
As an alternative of getting one perk level to experiment with each 5 ranges, every level-up will let gamers progress by the brand new ability tree and tinker with one thing as they progress. Examples of recent skills embody a dome protect for Psyker (the mage class) and extra taunt and grenade choices for Ogryn (the tank class). From the look of the ability tree it looks as if a extra Borderlands strategy to construct crafting, with different paths that increase the underlying class position in additional methods. Backside line: leveling up ought to really feel extra rewarding and offer you extra possession over your character.
Whether or not or not that finally finally ends up being the case stays to be seen, however hopefully it could possibly assist pave the way in which for a Darktide turnaround. The co-op shooter was supposed to come back to Xbox Sequence X/S someday in 2023 after being delayed. It’s presently free to strive with a paid PC Recreation Go subscription, although at this level it’s in all probability price ready for the October replace.
Replace 8/23/2023 4:09 p.m. ET: Fatshark confirmed at Gamescom 2023 that the sport fill lastly come to Xbox Sequence X/S and Recreation Go on console on October 4. Right here’s the announcment trailer: