Warhammer 40K Dark Tide was originally scheduled to debut on Xbox Series S|X “soon after” the PC version (launching November 30, 2022). It turns out Xbox players had to wait nearly a year, but the game is finally launching tomorrow on consoles (including Game Pass), and it also comes with significant improvements.

In late January 2023, after a disappointing launch, developer Fatshark announced that it would focus on fixing the game before releasing new content or launching the game on Xbox Series S|X .

Since its release on PC, Warhammer 40K Darktide has received 12 patches that have improved various aspects of the first-person action game. However, Patch 13 will likely be the biggest yet. Wccftech attended a preview event hosted by Fatshark and shared all the details.

The studio’s original plan was to release new classes every quarter. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Fatshark is currently making up for it with a major overhaul of the entire class system. The developers understood that the class felt relatively stale and there was little player agency when it came to experimentation.

With the class revamp starting tomorrow, Fatshark believes Darktide will feature three class specs per archetype, or 12 classes in total. However, it is actually much more free-form than that. For example, a veteran class doesn’t need to go all-in on a sharpshooter or support build. You could choose to do each one halfway, but that’s just one possibility.

Each archetype has six abilities, for a total of 24 abilities, 16 of which are completely new. In addition to that, he will be adding 3 new talents per archetype, for a total of 12 new talents. When a character reaches maximum level, she is given 30 talent points that can be used for specializations.

The talent tree includes the following skill types:

• Blitz ability (grenade slot)
• Combat Abilities (Ultimate, limited by cooldown, but very powerful)
• Keystone (Iconic talent that drives your playstyle)
• Talents (interactive buffs that tie into the core gameplay loop)
• Aura (team buff spread through consistency bonus)

Build experiments are completely free. Players can re-evaluate their characters at any time outside of missions. The previously introduced loadout system allows you to save on talents as well, and you can also inspect other players when in the lobby and adjust your talents accordingly.

The developers said that the new system has the indirect advantage of being easy to adjust whenever needed, thanks to its flexibility. When it comes to the Xbox launch, the following specs were shared by Fatshark.

• Xbox Series S: 1080p 30fps
• Xbox Series X: Graphics mode is 4K 30fps, performance mode is 1440p 60fps

Warhammer 40K Dark Tide fully supports cross-play between Steam, Microsoft Store PC, and Xbox versions. However, cross-save is limited to Microsoft Store PC and Xbox. After the presentation, Mr. Fatshark graciously answered several questions in a roundtable format.

[WCCFTECH] Will this update improve my PC’s performance?

yes. We’ve put a lot of work into performance to ensure it runs smoothly on Xbox (both S and X), so all of those improvements will also make their way to PC.

Of course, some do more, some less, depending on the system and previous bottlenecks, so it’s a little hard to say exactly.

But a lot of work has definitely been done on the performance side of the game overall. This is like a free bonus you get when Darktide releases on Xbox. We cannot guarantee that all systems will see improvements.

But basically, you should see improvements across the board. And it’s certainly an ongoing work that we will continue to do.

The new class system looks very exciting, but I’m worried that I’ll end up creating a ton of work for myself in the future in terms of keeping so many different builds viable? ?

We hope so. Of course, it’s a scary proposition for a system to be this free. Of course, there will be meta-builds and such, but the good thing is that we’ve built this system in a very robust and very flexible way, so it’s very easy to deploy and put together. I already did. We’ve done some pretty extensive community testing on this with our hardcore community of players. We were able to provide them with system updates on a daily basis.

I’m not saying I’ll keep doing that forever. I don’t want to mess around with the build too much, so I’ll probably try to keep it quarterly or something. But at least the system is built in a way that allows it. I look forward to being able to proceed with my classes more flexibly in the future. There’s a lot you can do here, and you can tweak and fine-tune your build, which was previously very difficult because the previous system we were using was very rigid.

Yes, that’s scary. There are definitely some insane builds out there that we probably haven’t found yet. Some bills may not be viable, but that’s part of the fun.

We have a long-term commitment to Warhammer 40K Dark Tide and look forward to seeing what we do with the community on this game.

[WCCFTECH] Have you adjusted the amount of aim assist on your controller on both PC and Xbox compared to the original PC release?

yes. It’s actually based on a weapon-by-weapon basis, but yes, I looked at the entire in-game controller settings. The game has been greatly tweaked and improved since we released it. At that time, the basic functionality of the for controller was available, but it was not tailored for controllers.

Now you can actually enjoy this experience natively. There are also a number of different control settings. I think there are about five. We also made it easy to switch to a different controller configuration.

The controller and gamepad experience previously used in Warhammer 40K Darktide has been significantly improved on both PC and consoles.

How many builds can I create with the new system? Also, will all classes be able to support all roles such as DPS (damage per second), support, etc., or will I be limited to certain classes?

There are three things that seem like obvious builds. But we had a goal of having at least eight builds that we knew when we created the system. I don’t know exactly where we landed. It’s probably a number that is the actual number of all permutations.

But I think it is. I don’t know if there’s probably about 20 different builds, but then they just make small changes over time. But each tree has at least three very distinct and very easy to understand builds, and at least eight more that are variations of those builds.

And it offers five different loadouts that can be hot-swapped. So, if you get into the game and find that there are other variations out there, you can switch to none, without any additional cost.

Another aspect of this is that it opens up many new avenues for blessings, old and new. This patch also includes some new and improved blessings, as they suddenly become more viable.

As an example, I love playing Ogryn. Every time you crit, you get the blessing of taking ammo from your reserve and putting it in your clip. This allows him to use it as a combined gun with one talent that does not consume ammunition each time it fires.

Combining these two allows you to fire continuously for about 3 minutes without having to reload or anything. Combine this with having a friendly veteran, and you also get ammo from him, so you can always laugh and throw giant bombs at everything you see. This is just amazing. I love it.

The combination of blessings, perks and traits, different weapons, and different talents you have opens up many new adjustment spaces in the game that did not exist before. That’s the exciting part of this update.

Finding these synergies has become very easy. I love psykers, but they used to have Brain Burst in their Blitz ability. This was basically focusing on a single target and making your head fly.

But now, for example, you can choose a crowd control ability that basically electrocutes you within the area of ​​effect. And when you combine that with Ogryns who shoot everything in their path, you get Zealots with a prayer ability that restores toughness to everyone, making them very tanky, crowd control, You can shoot everything at the same time. So it’s really cool.

[WCCFTECH] Does Xbox Series X support ray tracing in graphics mode?

it’s not.

Thank you for your time.