In today’s Feature Highlight we will look specifically at the new mission, what it is all about and how it came to be. To help us journey through the tunnels of lower Tertium we have gathered Karl, Lucas and Sara, some of the people that worked on the new level. Take it away guys!
“I am Karl, Senior Level Designer, and I’ve been one of the main developers on the new level.” ~ Karl
“My name is Lucas, I am the Associate Art Director on Darktide, and I help oversee the visual quality of the game.” ~ Lucas
“I am Sara, and I am the Lead Level Artist on Darktide, and mainly I make levels.” ~ Sara
New Level, Spillway
This new mission, called Spillway, is part of a live story where the Agents of the Mourningstar set out to help out with tasks asked by different Tertium nobles. The first two missions in the story, without spoiling too much of the campaign, lead us deep into the depths of Tertium.
We will journey to the domain of the Ragged King, the leader of the Water Cartel, who needs us to investigate a spreading corruption.
The first two missions will feel familiar, but the story elements of these are completely new. After going through them you will end up in the new mission, Spillway, and for this one we have added mechanics not seen in Darktide before.
It will be up to us to gather the warband and get ready to figure out what is going on, and as we progress through the mission, the story will unfold and we will encounter a threat we haven’t faced off against before in the form of a new boss!
As exciting as that is, we won’t cover the boss battle today, since we don't want to spoil too much, instead we will focus on the level design of this new mission.
Veteran Darktide players will recognize the start point of the mission, as we will be close to the Torrent, the major water recycling facility of Hive Tertium. Familiar terrain down here if you have played any of the missions set in this area, ruled by the Water Cartel. As you progress however, it will start to look quite different. The further you go into the level, the more Nurgle corruption there will be, and the level design becomes more and more claustrophobic.
“In the beginning you can see the vast backdrops of the Hive, but as you go you get more and more into the level it gets more dense.” ~ Karl
Finally, if you push through the corruption, you will find yourself in the boss arena of the level, and it will be quite clear where the corruption stems from!
Visual design
There's been a lot of focus on the outskirts and outside of the Hive City lately, so we knew we wanted to do a level that was set inside again. After some internal pitching we settled on the concept of going deeper into Tertium than we have ever done before, and after some thinking we came up with Spillway.“We looked at some different avenues to explore, but the one we got most excited about was going deeper into the Hive. The mood and vision came from there.” ~ Lucas
Now we had to think of what the function of the area had, and we settled on this deep place filled with junk and water reservoirs, it’s basically the origin for one of the major life support systems of the Hive.
We then started to merge the visual elements with the gameplay design we had in mind, as we knew that the further players will progress, the more the infestation of Nurgle will be clear. As mentioned, the starting point looks familiar, but as you travel through the mission, we had to create a bunch of new assets and VFX, to really capture the corruption.
There are a lot of fleshy bits, buboes and pus added to the tunnels you will end up in! Some assets are made to look like living organisms, and we have used various inspiration from all the lovely Nurgle artwork and as always the tabletop miniatures themselves.
“I really like the mouth we added to an asset, it’s really creepy.” - Sara
This is one of the most infested and corrupted areas we have made so far in Darktide, and it was really fun for us to add all the bits and pieces to bring it to life!
Level design & gameplay
So let’s look a bit at how the level plays out for you all. In the early parts of the level it is Darktide as usual. We will fight off waves of enemies as we progress deeper into Spillway. At a certain point you will happen upon a Moebian 6th outpost, and after taking out the leader of the outpost you will uncover a certain symbol that will be very important for the rest of the mission.
You then venture into a sprawling network of tunnels, and here we have added a mechanic we haven’t had in Darktide before, branching paths. We have these rooms where the warband needs to make a decision on what path to take, and the symbol you uncover earlier in the level is key to taking the right path.
All paths lead to the same destination point, but making the wrong choice here results in a harsher experience for the players. It might be trapped, you might have locked doors to get through or extra tasks. We have tried to randomize it as much as possible so the level feels fresh upon replaying it. The symbol you need to look for itself is also randomized between playthroughs.“The wrong paths should be hard, but not impossible.” ~ Karl
The warband doesn’t take this decision on a team basis either, so you can go in different directions, and we went to extra lengths to make it so you can see the other paths from the one you took yourself.
This means that if you take the right path, and the rest of your team venture off on the wrong one, you can spot the hardships they have to endure, but you can’t help them until you get back together.
We will have two different points in the mission where this decision on what path to take will have to be made. The first time it’s between two paths, and the second time you will have three choices to really spice it up!
In the end, all paths lead to the boss arena we mentioned earlier, and you will have to face off against the fulcrum of the corruption spreading in these tunnels. But we won’t go into the fight itself as we want players to get to experience this themselves, making this a good point to wrap up this Feature Highlight.
All in all, it has been really fun and challenging for us, adding the branching paths to this mission and getting to dress up old tunnels in Nurgle filth. We hope you are excited to assemble the Warband and get to the bottom of the corruption, and then be ready for a real tough fight once you get there!
That’s all for today. The free update, Depths of the Damned, comes to Darktide on the 29th of September, and in the meantime we will see you on the Mourningstar!
- The Darktide Team
