Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters Previews
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Complex Games' turn-based tactical RPG Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters should be going live on May 5, 2022. And seeing how that date is just a couple weeks away, you might be interested in reading some hands-on previews for the game. You can find a few of those below:
The real measure of Daemonhunters won't be apparent until we see how it all comes together—the cosmic campaign, the development of your squad, the big decisions about what crises to prioritise. I wasn't able to see how planets evolve depending on how quickly you decide to liberate them from the Bloom; bring in new recruits and build them up from scratch, experimenting with different loadouts; or use the valour deed system, where you can accept challenges—like completing the mission without using willpower—for extra requisition, which seems like a smart way to spice up the fights, especially as you grow in confidence.
IGN:
At the same time, Daemonhunters doesn't want to let us find some one-size-slays-all tactics and fall into a routine. Nurgle's corrupting Bloom raises every turn, and when it reaches 100 percent, something is going to go sideways – but I never knew what. It could be additional reinforcements, or a miasma of strength-sapping plague getting barfed out of the Warp onto the middle of the map. This is another incentive to get in, kick ass, and get out quickly, but even at top gear I was never able to clear a map without having to deal with at least one of these curve balls.
"We definitely played it a lot, both back in the '90s and then just refreshing ourselves on the classic when we originally got started [on developing Daemonhunters]. What I would say is it's definitely a spiritual successor - there are a lot of links, both on the story side there are some light links, some other details too, and on the gameplay side." Naturally that means some things have changed quite a bit. "I think you'll see, not an effort to replicate what was there, but to modernise, doing something that sort of creates something new but also fits what the audience for turn-based tactical games don't really expect but demand, these days. It's certainly not a sequel or anything in that regard, but there's going to be a lot of familiar ground for anyone who loved Chaos Gate coming into Chaos Gate - Daemonhunter."
I also had the opportunity to chat with Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters creative director and Complex Games co-founder Noah Decter-Jackson about the game’s inspiration, story variety, difficulty, and more. March forth for the full interview.
You’ve mentioned that it was Complex Games that pitched the idea for Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters to Games Workshop. Why were you interested in making a game about the Grey Knights and this particular corner of the 40K universe?
Yeah, so it actually didn't start with the Grey Knights. The chrysalis of the type of game we wanted to make was a turn-based tactical RPG with strategic elements. There are not many games out there that combine those [...] but we really wanted to work in that space. Internally, on our side, what we had started with was the idea of, at a large scale, at a galactic level, dealing with an outbreak of an intergalactic plague. That was really kind of the chrysalis of what we wanted to deal with, from a gameplay standpoint -- fighting [against] or managing a force [...] that wasn't necessarily physical, that you couldn't just deal with, with artillery. It required a more complex approach to resolving, and we wanted to build our storyline and campaign around those ideas.
And so the natural fit, given we've had a lot of experience working with Games Workshop already and our knowledge of the universe, was to work with Nurgle. Because Nurgle is the Lord of Plagues. The Chaos God of Plague and Disease. And so that that's really where our concept started. And through discussions with Games Workshop, I think the natural fit for the counter agent for Nurgle [...] was the Grey Knights. You have this elite force, it's very mobile, and can move easily through different systems within the galaxy. It's just sort of the natural antagonist for the Chaos Gods. So, that's kind of how that evolved. It actually didn't evolve out of the Grey Knights, but our focus on this idea of fighting an intergalactic plague and Nurgle.
The second mission of the preview took place on an Industrial World, which is secretly being corrupted by a Bloomspawn. The Grey Knights land in the empty streets of a city but soon come across Bloom-infected soldiers, who are dug in and are protecting themselves with Overwatch, giving them a free shot if an enemy approaches. Luckily, the Grey Knights can obliterate enemies from afar with grenades and can use Overwatch themselves, to shoot down any mindless foes that try and run in. It was during this mission that the Grey Knights could make the most of their AoE special attacks and weapons to try and take down foes, but a Warp Meter Surge brought many dead enemies back as Lesser Poxwalkers, turning the tide in the enemies' favor. The Warp favors its own, so it's in the player's best interest in Daemonhunters to finish a mission quickly.
Grey Knights can use their psychic powers (capped by Willpower points) to empower their attacks. This ranges from making storm bolters less embarrassingly piddly (I shot a cultists and he’s still standing? Come on!) to turning a machine gun salvo into an AoE explosion. But if you’re using actual powers, you can buff a trooper’s defense, use special strikes or, as an Interceptor, teleport up to 15 squares and attack as many enemies as you can within that range. That’s how I nearly completely destroyed one patrol in a turn.
