SHOTS IN THE DARK

Bash heretics to save a wonderfully horrible world in WARHAMMER 40K: DARKTIDE

- Sean Martin

Warhammer 40K eats people. I don't mean that it will consume your life, or that your home will be taken over by the countless models that you don't have time to paint. No, I mean the setting itself is fuelled on corpses - whether it's the soldiers of the Astra Militarum dying in crusades, the Administratum clerks toiling over documents, or the criminals forced into permanent sentence.

It’s a truth that Warhammer 40K: Darktide understands; whether it’s you or the Poxwalker you’re about to cleave in half, you’re both just meat in some god’s army. In a not-sodifferent life, that medicae servitor, tending to the wounded while encased in machinery, might have had your face instead. Plainly stated, it sucks to be a human – or an ogryn – in 40K. You probably told some sergeant you were tired of eating corpse starch, and now you’re here, a prisoner of the Inquisition, sent to liberate Hive Tertium with a shovel and some old lasgun, to burn your life at the altar of a mute god.

It’s easy to understand why playing as a Space Marine makes for a far better power fantasy, but just like Vermintide before it, Darktide is not about the most powerful characters in the setting. That’s not to say it doesn’t make you feel powerful, but it’s a kind of measured power. A handful of Space Marines could probably free Tertium by lunchtime, but alas, it’s up to you and your band of misfits to save the hive; or what’s left to be saved anyway.

SEA CHANGE