Being a spiritual successor to Fatshark's own Vermintide series of games, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has a lot in common with Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2. The horde-based combat, mission structures, and inventory system are just a few elements that Warhammer 40,000: Darktide borrows from the aforementioned titles, but all of them are heavily modified to suit the game's futuristic setting. Add in the more fleshed-out ranged combat and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is shaping up to be its own unique series.
There are many things that Warhammer 40,000: Darktide improves upon the Vermintide games, but one of the biggest changes has to be the character customization. Vermintide focuses on a handful of characters, each with a pre-determined backstory, voice, and appearance. Players can adjust all these things and more in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide's starting character creator and adjust some of these options as they see fit by interacting with the main hub's Barber-Chirurgeon.
Building A World Within A World
Upon starting a new game, players must choose what class they want to be. They can pick from the Veteran Sharpshooter, the Psyker Psykinetic, the Zealot Preacher, and the Ogryn Skullbreaker. There is a high chance that Fatshark will include more subclasses for each of the currently playable characters, as well as include new classes as the game evolves.
Players then set up their character's backstory. This includes choosing their character's homeworld, childhood, how they grew up, and defining moment that led to their current path. These choices determine how a character interacts with the world and its inhabitants. One zealot might fancy themselves in a position above their teammates while another will want nothing more than to serve the Emperor of Mankind. Players can also choose from three available voice types per class as well as name their characters, with the former choice affecting their predisposition toward the world and the latter swapping players' in-game handles for their character names.
Flaunt What The Emperor Gave You
Once a character's backstory, personality, and name are set, players can focus on their physical aspects. Body type (referring to a character's gender), face, eyes, hairstyle, facial hair, facial tattoos, body tattoos, scars, height, and sentence type can all be chosen, with each category housingseveral options to choose from. While Warhammer 40,000: Darktide's character customization isn't as complex as a game like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it has more than enough choices so that players will be able to create their unique characters.
Players should take note that they cannot change the Ogryn's gender, as all Ogryns in the game are male. Sentence type is also a vague customization option. All it does is change the color of a character's starting attire. Clothing options that are unlocked after starting the game retain their original colors and a character's sentence type will not affect how they look.
Taking Nature Into One's Own Hands
Apart from the gender, sentence type, height, and name, the rest of a character's physical attributes can be changed at any time for free via the Barber-Chirurgeon on the Mourningstar - the large ship that serves as Warhammer 40,000: Darktide's main hub area. The Barbar-Chirurgeon is a lesser version of the game's character creator, as it doesn't allow players to change the aforementioned attributes and backstory. This makes sense as the player's character has already been established in the world and cannot rewrite their past.
The Barber-Chirurgeon gives players the freedom to choose from other facial and body features - allowing for more customization options apart from the available clothing and appearance options in a player's Cosmetics tab. Having the ability to go back and redo one's physical features for free shows just how many options Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has over its spiritual predecessors. Whereas Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2's cosmetics only allowed players to swap a character's face, clothes, and weapon skins, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has far more variety when it comes to tuning their avatar's finer aspects. Should players feel the need to change things up, the Barber-Chirurgeon is always waiting on the Southwest side of the Mourningstar.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide releases on November 30, 2022 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.