In the run up to the reveal of Darktide’s latest new class, speculation has run rampant in the community. A week’s delay on the announcement only created more space for fans to stretch their imaginations, placing their bets on everything from a Sister of Battle to a kroot warrior to an Adeptus Mechanicus tech priest.
So when the new class turned out to be ‘Hive Scum’—essentially just an archetypal criminal—the reaction was, predictably, disappointment.
Watch On
As ever, some of the discussion is toxic and overly harsh on both developer Fatshark and Warhammer owners Games Workshop, who tend to become the target of elaborate conspiracy theories whenever a piece of Darktide content disappoints. But I can understand where the anger is coming from—and it speaks to what seems to be a fundamental impasse between the studio and the community.
I am the lore
The Warhammer 40,000 setting is absurdly dense at this point, enjoying the benefits of almost 40 years of accumulated lore and storytelling. That means there are a lot of cool archetypes in it that you could put in a videogame, with everyone having their own favourite pick.
Start building a list of the classes people might want to see out of all of that, and ‘criminal guy’ isn’t going to rank high. Those who would pick it would probably be thinking of the iconic crime families of Necromunda, with their wacky and exaggerated traits—not generic and lowly scum.
The other thing Warhammer 40,000 offers in abundance is cool, ridiculous, and often elaborate weapons—so it’s easy to see why people wouldn’t be impressed by the Hive Scum bringing a collection of junky, improvised guns, shivs, and crowbars, with dual-wielding as an underwhelming central gimmick. (Though I have to admit, I can’t help but smile at what appears to just be two sharpened corkscrews used as knives.)
All together, it does feel like a very underwhelming choice. In a world of gene-spliced warriors, alien mercenaries, space pirates, and twisted cyborgs, what we’ve ended up with is about as close to ‘just some guy’ as the setting allows—visually drab and conceptually bland. It’s hard not to feel at least a bit deflated by that.
So the question is: why Hive Scum?
Gang man style
There are some thematic reasons to go with a more humble archetype like this. People tend to think of Darktide as just a Warhammer 40,000 shooter, and imagine the possibilities as unlimited—but it does have a fairly specific narrative premise.
New classes need to fit into the game’s ragtag army of conscripted convicts and Inquisitorial agents. They also need to make sense within a system where players can create their own characters—rather than playing unique, premade individuals as in the Vermintide games. A lot of the more outlandish options, particularly aliens, could clash with both the lore and the game’s aesthetic in that context. And we certainly know that Fatshark takes the Warhammer 40,000 setting very seriously.
From that perspective, the Hive Scum certainly fits in perfectly—not only does the game take place in a hive city, there’s a nice parallel there with the law-abiding Arbites class released earlier this year.
One could certainly point out, however, that that’s a rod Fatshark made for its own back. Vermintide 2 offered a more permissive premise, with subclasses representing different possible paths each character’s life could have taken, and the playable heroes all being named individuals meant that they could represent unique situations rather than broad archetypes. That more playful approach allowed picks as outlandish as a Grail Knight, a Slayer, and a Necromancer.
Has Darktide simply committed too hard to its more dour style and customisable characters?
On the other hand, because these are full classes, not just subclasses, they also need to support a wide range of possible talents, playstyles, and weapons—for many of the possible classes speculated by the community, that would be tricky. It’s through this lens that I think the Hive Scum starts to make the most sense: it being a pretty generic archetype allows it to contain other, more specific concepts as playstyles within it. When you read the dev blog explaining the talent trees, and visualise it as a class that can be a gunslinger bounty hunter, frenzied assassin, or a combat drug-addicted battle chemist, it does start to seem more interesting.
As interesting as a kroot mercenary or a skitarii vanguard, though? Well… no, and that does bring us to what is almost certainly the primary reason behind this choice: limited resources.
Supply drop
While in players’ imaginations the sky is the limit, in reality Fatshark’s means have always seemed more limited—understandable for a mid-sized independent studio, even if it is one that’s enjoyed a lot of success over the years. Speculation frequently stretches as far as thinking new updates could roll in an entire new enemy faction, or a complete change of setting, when the reality is that the history of Vermintide and Darktide has never suggested that kind of reach.
Aliens, tech priests, space marines… all of these would require whole new animation sets, complete character customisation options, and in many cases would have little or no overlap in weapons with existing classes. It certainly doesn’t suggest laziness to surmise that the studio isn’t able to make that amount of work happen within the five months it’s been since the previous new class.
Another ‘guy with gun’ is a blander choice, but it may be a more realistic one—and hopefully one that allows more time for putting together fun and exciting talent trees rather than puzzling over how to even make a Sister of Battle work. Still, it’s hard not to think that more unique and exotic choices could still have been possible within those limits—perhaps a death cult assassin, rogue trader, or a psychic null?
This mismatch between what the community expects and what Fatshark delivers, even at its most ambitious, seems to be a never-ending source of friction, and perhaps with a setting as rich and beloved as Warhammer 40,000 it’s unavoidable.
Certainly laying out the facts doesn’t make the Hive Scum reveal any less disappointing on the face of it, and I do completely understand the reaction to that trailer. But ultimately, rather than seething over what we’re not getting, I’m looking forward to discovering what thrills and surprises the new class might offer under that humble exterior. At the very least, I’ve got to get my hands on a pair of those corkscrews.
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