When Darktide’s Arbites Class DLC arrived, it came alongside a free update called *The Battle for Tertium*, which finally added a campaign mode. Rather than the story coming to a halt once the prologue ended, players had the option to be guided through missions with bespoke voiceover, cutscenes, and unique enemy spawns. This approach made it feel like you weren’t just grinding maps for gear repeatedly.
We won’t find out what Darktide’s second class DLC will be until its reveal on November 11, but Fatshark has confirmed that the game’s story will continue to expand.
“I wouldn’t say it necessarily always will be attached to a new class or anything like that,” said design director Victor Magnuson. “But each new piece of the game will add to the overarching story of the game.”
Magnuson explained that integrating a narrative into Darktide has been challenging. Since two players might come to a mission with very different experiences and varying patience for slowing down gameplay to include story elements, the team’s approach is to “just add it piece by piece.” He elaborated, “We build the narrative as little puzzle pieces that slowly fall together, and then you see the bigger picture, whatever it is. But yeah, we are definitely going to be adding to the story of the game.”
Another challenge for the Darktide team was designing a whole new world for the game to take place on. Unlike the Vermintide games, which had a wealth of material from the Warhammer Fantasy world—with the tabletop RPG’s adventures serving as useful sources—the expectation for a typical Warhammer 40,000 game is that it will be set on a unique planet.
“It was a big difference,” Magnuson said. “I remember working on Vermintide 1 and 2; we really did look at the adventures and took a lot of inspiration from the adventures for different scenarios and missions.”
Creating *Tertium* from scratch meant visualizing many aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 universe that had rarely been explored before. These elements soon became increasingly important parts of the missions. For example, trains have become a recurring feature.
Trains, Magnuson explains, have “just become something that stuck around, and we keep doing train missions.”
Chief creative officer Anders De Geer recalls there was initially a specific reason for this choice.
“I remember a meeting with a lot of Games Workshop people,” he said, “and then I asked them, if you got to pick something that you would want to see come to life, what would that be? I remember [artist and miniature sculptor] Jes Goodwin’s answer was trains. Trains and train stations.”
This insight helped shape the unique world of Darktide and the kinds of missions players experience as they explore *Tertium*. With continuous story updates and DLC content, the game is shaping up to offer a rich narrative experience alongside its action-oriented gameplay.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/darktides-narrative-will-be-expanded-as-part-of-future-updates-we-are-definitely-going-to-be-adding-to-the-story-of-the-game/
