Warhammer 40,000 is likely one of the hottest tabletop miniature wargames on the planet and boasts a wealthy panorama of background lore that has been a thriving setting for novels, each tabletop and video video games, and an upcoming Amazon streaming sequence. Nevertheless, regardless of its recognition, I’ve at all times had bother entering into 40k. Of all issues, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s loading screens could have been what lastly modified that.
Regardless of the number of 40k’s adaptation mediums (and maybe due to how deep the lore that surrounds the setting can go), the grim darkness of the far future has at all times, for me, been intimidating to method. I might at all times hear ideas inside 40k that appeared extremely cool; A complete host of fantasy tropes transplanted right into a sci-fi background with no questions requested; Ork spaceships solely functioning as a result of they very strongly believed they labored; and an entire faction of zombie robots. Even the sheer, nigh-impossible scale of the whole lot inside the setting is a draw unto itself – big buildings, mechs, and tanks are simply cool! Nevertheless, I used to be by no means capable of finding a spot to start out entering into the background fluff that didn’t depart me scratching my head and opening a dozen different tabs to learn.
![Warhammer 40K Ultramarine minis posed for battle](https://techraptor.net/sites/default/files/images/Introduction-artwork-v3-1-2048x834.jpg)
Crucially, even earlier than I made a decision I didn’t really feel like doing homework to determine the place to start, 40k at all times appeared a bit edgy to me. It appeared as if it was attempting a bit too onerous to be darkish and funky. With Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, nevertheless, I didn’t encounter this downside in any respect: the sport goes to excessive lengths to place a highlight on among the sillier issues in 40k, and of all of the alternatives it has to poke enjoyable at its setting, Darktide’s loading screens do it greatest.
Whereas there’s a lot to like in regards to the sport’s use of its setting, Darktide’s loading screens do their utmost greatest to inform a narrative about 40k’s Imperium of Man, with its ideas taking the type of propaganda slogans. “You want perceive nothing to do your obligation,” “Tolerance begets heresy,” and “Forgiveness is against the law punishable by dying,” are simply among the tidbits of “knowledge” that the Imperium of Man espouses. The primary time I noticed Darktide’s loading screens, I couldn’t assist however chuckle. It felt as if a setting that, to me, had as soon as appeared prefer it was taking itself a bit too significantly was lastly letting me in on the joke: the Imperium of Man is totally terrible.
The proclamations of Darktide’s loading screens are so clearly bigoted, vile, and odiously manipulative that deciphering humanity’s energy buildings as something however a piss-take of non secular extremism is unimaginable, and Darktide needs you to chuckle at it. That is what made issues click on into place. The extra I realized about how issues turned this unhealthy in humanity’s future, the extra I bought out of the ironic, biting tone Darktide’s loading screens undertake. In its propaganda, we see the dogma of a civilization constructed upon deifying a determine who went out of his approach to abolish faith, and it made me ask myself what the setting of 40k is attempting to say about human beings themselves.
![Darktide's loading screens with very reasonable messages](https://techraptor.net/sites/default/files/images/Only%20the%20coward%20seeks%20compromise_0.jpeg)
Is what we’re experiencing within the science fantasy setting a dark parable about non secular management, the place higher-ups within the Imperium took benefit of the Emperor’s “dying” to leverage extra management over humanity? Perhaps how the Imperium got here to be within the state that it’s in is irrelevant, and 40k is exploring our tendency as a species to hunt non secular enlightenment – even when it comes on the expense of others – via the lens of a hyperbolic setting? For the primary time whereas experiencing any type of 40k media, I really feel genuinely compelled to reply these questions and discover out extra about this setting and its historical past, and I can’t imagine the a part of a sport the place you wait to do one thing extra attention-grabbing is what impressed this.
Whereas I nonetheless have nearly no concept the place to start unpacking 40k’s huge quantity of background lore, Darktide’s loading screens have performed their half to reframe the complete setting as greater than the sum of its components. Chainsaw swords, spaceships with crews equal to the populations of cities, and eight-foot-tall superhuman paladins that spit acid have all been put into context as part of the setting’s satire, and in consequence. the dimensions and outlandishness of the whole lot are clear as an extension of simply how excessive that satire is. I get it now: whereas clearly not the whole lot in 40k might be comedic per se, the setting stays huge, bizarre, and just a bit bit wacky, and I can’t wait to search out out extra.