“There are different layers in it,” observes Nilsson before giving an in-game example. “You’ll have events, like three tornados coming in and going towards as you’re trying to extract and get to the dropship. One of the tornados picks you up and throws you away from the dropship. Suddenly, one of your enemies throws an incendiary grenade in front of the tornado and it turns into a fire-nado.”
With both the online functionality working well in the demo and the game just easy and fun to pick up and play, Exoborne is shaping up to be a solid live game experience when it makes its full launch. Meanwhile, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has recently unveiled its latest update and it’s a doozy, including the addition of a fifth playable class, the Arbitrator, who has their own weapons and combat pet, a Cyber-Mastiff. For inspiration, the development team looked not only at the extensive Warhammer lore but also the game’s sister title Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
“We knew from Vermintide that the pet class was very popular,” explains Darktide design director Victor Magnuson. “The Necromancer character is one of the most popular characters in Vermintide. We thought a pet class would be cool and we started to look at what we could do. We found the Arbites and thought him with a Cyber-Mastiff would be a really cool combination.”
In addition to re adding a new character class, Darktide has significantly refined the overall gameplay experience since its launch in 2022, reworking talent trees and adding the Havoc Game Mode that noticeably raises the game’s difficulty. In addition to the team’s hard work, Magnuson credits coordinating with community testers, a small group of hardcore players, when trying out new content and changes to Darktide to see how they’ll connect with the larger population. This has led to the game building from its launch to developing a stable and growing player base as it approaches its third anniversary.
“We’re in a really good state. Players are generally quite happy with what we do, which is really fun because then it doesn’t feel as hard to do stuff,” reflects Magnuson, who has been working on Darktide for the past seven years. “It’s about coming up with fun ideas rather than working on fixing problems.”
Working closely with longtime Warhammer writers Dan Abnett and Matt Ward, Darktide celebrates the legacy of Warhammer 40,000 with action-packed missions, brutal weaponry, and character classes true to the lore. And even if you missed Darktide at launch, the game has only become more accessible to new players, with a whole host of new content and the tightest the gameplay and technical presentation has ever been.
