What if Darktide had a "Heretic" mode?

Two weeks ago the upcoming co-op game Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, developed by Fatshark, had its Closed Beta Test from the 14th to the 16th of October, and I got the chance to try it out. As a fan of their previous game, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, I've been interested in Darktide ever since its reveal trailer came out two years ago in the summer of 2020. Despite some performance problems (I had to turn my settings to Low to keep the game above 40 frames per second, which is quite bad on my GTX 1070), I had a good time with the few hours I had with the Darktide Beta, and I'm very much looking forward to the game coming out. 

Now as the game's final release date of November 30th draws closer, I thought it could be fun to pitch a possible gameplay mode for the game. After all, one of the key aspects of this blog is to daydream about interesting game concepts, so why not gamemodes for existing or upcoming games as well? 

What is Darktide?

First, I'll give a quick overview of what the game Darktide actually is for those of you are unfamiliar with it. (Although I doubt that anyone would read this without already knowing about the game.) 

Darktide is a first person co-op horde shooter, based in the grimdark future of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, which has had its fair share of video game adaptations. Just like the developer's previous two games, the fantasy themed Warhammer: Vermintide and its sequel, the game is heavily inspired by games like Valve's Left 4 Dead, where four players fight through linear levels while trying to survive against large hordes of enemies and different kinds of special creatures with unique powers. Whereas in Vermintide the players battled in a fantasy setting against endless waves of evil ratmen called the Skaven, hence the name, in Darktide the players are prisoners sent to clear out a futuristic city of corrupted and mutated Chaos-worshipping cultists. Many of them resemble zombies, whereas some have guns and armor, slightly changing the dynamic of combat compared to the mostly melee-focused Vermintide games. You see, one of Fatshark's areas of expertise is their satisfying first-person melee combat, where each hit of a sword, mace or the like connects believably with its targets and often sends body parts flying. However, in Darktide they also have a bigger emphasis on long range weaponry, as its science fiction setting obviously has a lot of different sorts of guns to offer. 

Neither Vermintide or Darktide (as far as we know at this point) have any real player-versus-player (PvP) focused gamemodes and instead their focus is purely on cooperative gameplay. There is no Versus mode like there is in Left 4 Dead for example, where one team of players can play as the "Special Infected" to try and stop the survivors from getting through a level. 

But what if Darktide had another type of special gamemode, in which one of the four players could secretly turn traitor? Some kind of a... Heretic mode? And before you dismiss the idea completely as a lazy Among Us knockoff, I'll tell you why it would both fit the lore of the game and wouldn't have to take anything away from the co-op focus. 

How it would work

Again, if you are unfamiliar with the lore of Warhammer 40,000 (not that I'm an expert either), an important element in the story of the world and Darktide are the four Chaos Gods. They are essentially like the four Devils of the Warhammer world, with each one representing different aspects of life and the mind. There's Khorne, the Blood God, who is all about battle, anger and martial prowess. Then there's the seductive Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Excess and Pleasure, basically the god of sex, drugs and rock n' roll. Also there's Tzeentch, the Lord of Change and Sorcery, who essentially represents ambition, knowledge, trickery and mutation among many other things. Lastly there's Nurgle (or Papa Nurgle as he's been jokingly dubbed by many fans), the Grandfather of pestilence, despair, death and rebirth. He's basically responsible for most of the diseases in the world, and he also blessed us all with the gift of Covid-19 not so long ago. Nurgle is the central Chaos God in both Vermintide 2 and Darktide, spreading his gross filth everywhere. 

Papa Nurgle at work.

One thing that connects all the four Chaos Gods is their way of getting followers. They all are known to corrupt people, luring them with great promises, only to essentially turn their heretical worshippers into slaves and fodder for their armies, while usually also mutating them in horrible ways. With Nurgle that promise is usually tied to the fact that, although he makes his minions into diseased and gross abominations, they also become incredibly resilient and lose any sense of pain in the process. In a way, he can make you almost invincible and grant you eternal life.  

This is where the Heretic mode would come into play. Imagine that during a mission, as you and three of your buddies are fighting your way through hundreds of disgusting Nurgle worshippers, one of you starts to hear a voice in their head, promising them eternal life and making them doubt their teammates. The player would then have the option to turn Heretic and try to covertly sabotage the mission before the others find out about his betrayal, getting a big reward if they succeed to be the last one alive. 

This idea actually has its roots in a DLC mission for Vermintide 2, in which a very similar scenario occurs when a Chaos Sorcerer starts to occasionally whisper things to some of the characters. However, in that mission the whole thing is purely for flavor dialogue and doesn't really have an effect on the gameplay. The next step would to take that concept to its logical conclusion where it actually plays a part in the mission. 

But I don't think the Heretic aspect should be a thing that you always have to worry about when playing Darktide. The game is all about co-op and teamwork after all, and I could imagine the possibility of someone suddenly ruining a challenging mission in the last few minutes would easily be very discouraging to many players, even if it has a solid foundation in the lore. Most likely it should be an optional challenge among the other difficulty factors that the players could choose to turn on for the fun of it.

There is of course a good chance of the developers already planning on implementing something like this OR more likely some of them thought of it but then scrapped the idea after realizing it would not work. I don't claim to be smarter than the people at Fatshark, and if a mode like this never comes out, I'm sure they have good reasons for it. 

What do you think? Does something like this sound like an interesting idea? Tell me in the comments or tweet at me @JohaHeinonen!