Dan Abnett has a lot to say about Warhammer 40,000 – and so he should. The author behind some of the most beloved Warhammer 40,000 books ever written has been thinking about the lore of Games Workshop’s grim dark universe for 20 years. But it’s not all about the Space Marines stomping about imperiously, shouting “for the Emperor!” while blasting all in their path to bits with guns large enough to suit a tank. In penning the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, which is about Warhammer 40,000’s regular human infantry, and the Eisenhorn trilogy, which is about inquisitors who hunt down heretics and demons, Abnett gave Warhammer 40,000 a more human face. Unlike the genetically boosted Space Marines, bog standard humans are squishy, vulnerable and, crucially, relatable. It’s exactly this expertise that sparked Abnett’s involvement with Darktide.
Warhammer 40,000 Darktide is the next game from Fatshark, the developer of the much-loved Vermintide series of fantasy Warhammer games. Like Vermintide, Darktide is a co-op focused first-person shooter / melee hybrid in which you fight against the odds. Yes, it’s yet another Warhammer 40,000 video game in a sea of Warhammer 40,000 video games – that sea just swelled to ocean scale, by the way – but Darktide stands out because it’s a bit different. You do not play as a Space Marine pushing back the xenos on an alien world in some universe-shattering galactic war. Instead, you play an ogryn, what I think is a tech priest, and perhaps an Imperial Guard soldier or two (Fatshark is keeping a lot of its cards close to its chest at the moment) – a motley crew that ends up helping an Inquisitor investigate a mysterious Nurgle-worshipping cult that’s spreading across a continent-sized hive city.
This is why Fatshark wanted to work with Abnett to create Darktide’s world. He’s been thinking about Inquisitors, the Imperial Guard and hive cities for years. Who better to flesh out Darktide’s virtual innards with all the gurgling horror befitting the (best) chaos god, Nurgle?
You can probably tell by now that I’m a sucker for Warhammer 40,000 lore. And so when I was presented with the chance to interview Dan Abnett and game director Anders De Geer about Darktide’s story, I just had to do it. Read on for what I can only describe as a Warhammer 40,000-themed high-five across a Google Meet.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide – Writer Reveal Watch on YouTube
How did your involvement come to be?
Dan Abnett: I was basically invited! Simple as that. I’ve got some previous form when it comes to Warhammer 40,000. And also games, come to that. And it seemed like a fun thing to do. The guys at Fatshark asked me if I’d want to be involved. They had begun to structure what they wanted to do. So there was a rough landscape of what it was going to be. And obviously, I had enormous faith in them, because I knew Vermintide was extremely cool. And we just sort of went from there, where it was really a matter of me brainstorming with them, and filling out the gaps. You know, we want something like this, how can we finesse that? What can we resolve it into?
I have to say I’ve really enjoyed it. As somebody who’s essentially worked in the Warhammer universe for over 20 years, in all sorts of different forms, in novels, in comics, and also obviously observing what Games Workshop do in terms of the game, the amazing artwork and the amazing miniatures, it’s so much fun to translate all of that imagination, all that stuff I thought about or imagined into a new form. And in this case, something that is sensory and moving and, as it were, real. I’m not saying come to life for the first time, but come to life in a completely different way for the first time. And that’s been a real treat. And I think they’re doing an amazing job of it.
At that early stage, what did you know of Darktide? What exactly were you told and exactly what were you then charged with doing?
Dan Abnett: The basic premise existed. They knew what they wanted to do, they knew what sort of setting they wanted, and what the mechanics of the game would be, and therefore what sort of characters and situations we would need to create in order to support that. But most of it was a blank slate. So we knew, for instance, we wanted a Hive world, a Hive city, but it wasn’t named, and we didn’t know much more about it than that. So it was a matter of then exploring that and working out all the possibilities and picking through the lore and imagining things and coming up with stuff like that.