We have attended a closed-door presentation of Secrets of the Machine God and the changes in the game’s itemization
If there is one studio that has proven to know what to do with the Warhammer license, it is FatShark. The Swedish team has opted for playable concepts very close to role-playing and direct action, always with a very clear playable style: playable madness where spectacle takes precedence over everything else. Now, and far from detaching itself from its latest game, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, the European studio has set out to improve it to its last consequences and give it the support that, due to performance problems and a crossplay absent, need. That’s how it is Secrets of the Machine God and the changes to game itemization.
How could it be otherwise, and taking into account how much we liked both Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and this one PvE set in the 41st millennium, at 3DJuegos we couldn’t resist attending the behind-the-scenes presentation of this new update, one that is available from tomorrowday June 25th.
First major update in a year
If we go back to 2022, the launch of Darktide was not all good. Although the Swedes are aware of their audience and the lore they work with, the improvements in the Autodesk Stingray graphics engine, a “dead” engine that Helldivers 2 has also used, and its sole release for PC were several stones in the way when it comes to growing up. However, FatShark was responsible for almost all of 2023 updating the game and bringing it to Xbox and Game Pass just 9 months after his departure.
With this work taking over the “to do” list From the studio, the development team worked hard on meaningful content for the game, and here is the result. As they mentioned Maxime Montera and Juan Martinezdesigner and executive producer of the game respectively, Secrets of the Machine God marks the first update that expands the base game in more than a year, and it does so not only with a new mission in the snowy planet Atelium Foundryplex Omega Vthe first map of the game with this environmental typology, which will lead us to discover more about the Adeptus Mechanicus.
We will have a new companion, a Mechanicus who will give us missions and participate without combat
In this case, the possibility that Secrets of the Machine God provides is to delve into the mythology of Warhammer 40K with a location, typology of enemies, structures and so on that is impossible to see in Hive City. This implies that the power of the Machine God will lead us to have a new teammate: a Mechanicus who will give us the missions and participate in them, although not in combat, but with guides and support to complete the levels. In more mundane terms, the FatShark team spoke of him as the Pedlar from Resident Evil 4, who will move through the levels without us realizing it. “There are times that he will appear in areas that we do not expect and offer us some type of help,” they quoted from the studio.
Apart from this character, the possibility that Atelium Foundryplex Omega V gives is to work on a map that is not only new, but will also include different secondary objectives at the end of the levels not only to enhance replayability, but to expand the playable range of the future of the game, one that we will talk about later.
Finally, the team has worked to include a highly requested new feature: different types of weapons. In total there are fourand to highlight we have the mythical Boltgun which, after testing it in the beta version of this new update, looks, sounds and fires like you’ve always dreamed it would. The rest of the weapons are double barrel shotgun, perfect for close combat with brutal damage and fast reloading, although with only two shots between reloads; the Shock Mauls, maces used by the Adeptus Arbites and Adeptus Astartes, with less damage than axes but with the possibility of stunning enemies; and, finally, the Power Picka mining pick that, after testing it, we can be faced with a favorite fan of the community. It is the first two-handed weapon in the game, slow and with excessive damage. Of course, these come with three variations that seek to balance slowness and damage—more damage for greater slowness, or faster by sacrificing damage.
Darktide’s future is bright thanks to itemization
Even so, and as important as tomorrow’s update is, at least in terms of having fulfilled the community by offering content, it is nothing without a clear roadmap, and for that a restructured future plan based on what wants and seeks community. While it is true that the team has not left its players aside, its intention from now on is for the player’s relationship with the game and the study to be close and fruitful. To do this, the team has focused on the itemization of the game.
Although the term may sound new, it is the dialectical response to something that has always been done in this industry and that was born with MMOs: the balance and distribution of the itemstheir guys and the various effects, powers and statistics that are attributed to them. In this case, Darktide had, and has, several flaws to cut and that is why itemization has become the main task for the studio.
One of the pillars they have founded is to clearly clarify what the player’s iteration is like with the objects to be obtained. “There has been established a much clearer path to follow so that the player knows which item he can get at the moment and which in the future,” they quote from the studio. It may take five hours or eight, but there will be greater clarity and statism when it comes to continuing a path “from rookie to hero” to get better.
With this in mind, the other great pillar is Mastery. This is a system that allows players access a build much clearer character, established and with weight in the game, but above all that it suits your needs. This is part of this path towards improving as a player and FatShark wants to respect our time and for it to have tangible validity in the game. With this in mind, they have been redesigned and added new menus for improve individually The different weapons with points that we will get by playing.
This means that each weapon will have its own progress bar until we reach the maximum level, one that we should not follow if we do not want that same weapon for our build, but that seeks to offer a more constrained experience and where we always have control. “We want to create a link between the players and the items, so that the players feel close to what they get,” the studio mentioned, and for that they will move away from Vermintide 2 to have a system of items and individual elements, and for this they will have added new blessings for the game and increased the number to twelve Blessings per weapon.
Be that as it may, Darktide does not have everything said beyond this. Although the team wanted to focus solely on these details, we were able to discuss the possible inclusion of a new classsomething that could be under consideration although there was no clear answer, or even a mode singleplayer purely narrativesomething that, if it arrives, will be within a while.
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