Hey Everyone, 

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For Grim Protocols, we are releasing a new mission known as Dark Communion. To celebrate its release, we interviewed some of the devs and Fatshark team members who helped bring it to life. 

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We’re going to talk a bit about the narrative that inspired it, the level design process, the art and the visual effects. As always, we want to give you an overview of the process of creating the mission, but we still want to leave some things unsaid for players to discover for themselves when they boot up the map for the first time. Let’s dive back into the carnival.

Level Design

With Dark Communion we wanted to forward the narrative of the Moebian 6th activities in The Carnival, as well as their relationship with the Cult of Admonition. This level sends players deeper into the heart of the Carnival district, following reports of sinister, ritual activity and a growing presence of heretic cultists. You’re being sent in to investigate these reports, but as always, things can and will escalate, so keep your eyes peeled and your weapons ready.

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While building the previously seen missions set in the Carnival district, we had already planned to revisit it when the time was right. As such, players are likely to have already noticed, for example, the Cathedrum of Messelina Vengeant, seen in the background near the beginning of Warren 6-19 - now you will get to see it up close, and purge the heretics on its steps.

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The other parts of the mission follow our usual modus operandi of interconnectivity. We wanted to revisit certain parts with a new coat of paint, and introduce new combat spaces that are different, while staying true to the DNA of the already established architecture.

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As always, Jesper Kyd also created a masterpiece of a track for this mission. 

Bringing it Back to the Carnival

Is this a continuation of the Carnival maps?

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Absolutely, but not only that. This level sees the culmination of the threads that began in the Carnival and continued through last year’s Orthus Offensive. We now know that Wolfer and the Traitorous 6th have made the Carnival a base of operations for their foul, tainted stimm production. While the warband continues to stymie their progress, their shipments are still getting through, as evidenced by that unfortunate business with the Moebian 21st, poor souls. Killing Rodin Karnak was a blow to their plans, but we already know that Rinda is still at large. Somehow, they brought her back from the brink of death. She’s calling herself the Herald of Admonition now. This mission promises to shed more light on what is driving the Traitorous 6th and their tainted stimms.

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Will future missions continue the story that’s being played out in Dark Communion?

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Without giving away the mission ending, there are definitely new leads to follow after the conclusion of Dark Communion. Though, what those are, you’ll have to find out alongside the warband. 

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Who are the Cultists?

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Originally assumed to be rabble-rousers and disorganised, disenfranchised gangs of hive citizens, we discover in Dark Communion that this is not the case and something much more sinister lies behind these yellow-clothed maniacs.

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Since the mission is to ruin the ritual, does that “close” Rodin’s story? What would have happened if the ritual had worked?

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When dealing with the fell powers of Chaos, it is unwise to write off any victory as final. The warband seems to have dealt with the threat for now, but who knows what effect those foul energies could have on Tertium.

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 Does this mission herald the start of a new narrative arc? Gloriana felt self-contained narratively, but Dark Communion raises a lot of questions.

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To us, Dark Communion is a continuation of several of the previous story arcs in the game, it harkens back to the story we started to tell with the release of the Traitors Curse update but also starts to show us that there is more to the cult of Admonition than the warband has previously understood. We’ve got loads of plans for future storylines.

Art Design

For Art Design, we reined in Environment Artist Jonatan W. to give his thoughts on working on Dark Communion. 

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What was it like designing the art for this mission? 

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Most of my work was on the setpieces for the end event, but designing that was really fun. There was already a rough blockout for the event in the level that had Stimm tanks from one of our older levels with cables running up to a chaos star that was hanging over the altar. That gave me a good idea of what to make. 

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After clarifying with the level designers what the objectives were and how you would interact with the event, the actual work on designing and creating the units began.

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What kind of feeling were you trying to capture with the end event?

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Since the event is set inside of a cathedral, I thought it might be cool to make something that resembled church organs in its silhouette. I thought it would frame the altar and Rodin in a nice way when you enter. 

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I came up with the design of the two large vat tanks that would pump out fluids to Rodin from a central dispenser and started blocking it out. For some reason, I got the image of a horror monster being brought to life and retro-tesla coils stuck in my mind and thought that designing something like that would be neat, and fit into the whole vibe of trying to resurrect Rodin.

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Were there any challenges?

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Yes there were some technical and performance limitations to consider. Making destructible units always has some inherent challenges, not only from a technical standpoint but also from an art perspective! Like making nice transitions in destroyed states and getting VFX and sound in to sell it properly.

Visual Effects

Hi everyone, I’m Felicia and I work with visual effects (VFX) for Darktide. When I got the task to work on the new mission - Dark Communion, I knew that this was right up my alley. Scary and spooky Warhammer 40k with cultists and a ritual and a lot of new effects? Sign me up! 

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After the level designers had done the blockout for the level I knew that it was gonna be a cathedral that you could see from the start of the mission and the direction I got was that you were supposed to see that something scary and big was happening over there. I usually try to look at real life videos for visual effects (like snow, explosions, steam, rain etc.) but how does it work when it comes to more illusion-like effects and references that I can’t find in the real world? Then you have to imagine what it will look like and mash things together. Like what indicates a spooky atmosphere above a cathedral? I knew it had to be big. I thought of some kind of thunderstorm that was just above the cathedral and experimenting with different behaviors and it ended up with a spiral of clouds to make it more unique than just a thunderstorm. 

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After the clouds above the cathedral, then most of my work came in the end event inside the cathedral where the ritual was going on. 

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The second thing I started to work on was the shields that are a big part of the end event and the gameplay. For these I got concept art so that I knew kind of how it would look. So I knew that it would be green and look a little bit like northern lights in its behavior. It’s a mesh with a material on it so it’s not any particles except when the shield goes down when smoke is pushing the player back as the shield goes down.  

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We also have the cultists that are keeping the shields up to protect the ritual. When it comes to these effects I just knew that I wanted it to be kind of rough but still have subtle things that you wouldn’t notice at first but it does a lot for the feeling. Like adding a distortion when the cultists effects are hitting a shield so it kind of wobbles on the shield as an impact from the cultists.   

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When you have destroyed all the shields you get to the altar where you will destroy tanks, resulting in a big energy explosion. It was gonna be a build up over some time, so I did 4 different stages and I was thinking of some kind of implode explosion with a lot of energy.  So at first it would start off with a small indication that the energy is getting bigger and bigger in the energy source (the corpse) until it finally reaches maximum and then explodes. 

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And the last thing that happens is Rodin’s soul leaves his body and flies out of the cathedral windows. How does a soul look/feel like leaving the body? That was the question I asked myself and I thought of some smoke that is spawning from the body and flies in different directions so you can’t mistake it as smoke from an explosion, to make them stand out so you as a player understand that it’s something more than just smoke. 

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Hope you liked to step into my visual effects mind and ideas that became the effects for Dark Communion, this was a really fun mission to work on and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do! 

– The Darktide Team

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