Warhammer End Times: Vermintide

Interview

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While I was at EGX, attending the conference, playing games and generally chatting to anyone who would listen, I was lucky enough to speak with Daniel Platt, Lead Level Designer at Fatshark for their upcoming title: Warhammer End Times: Vermintide. I got my hands on a ten minute demo of the first level and experienced some of the cooperative gameplay before Daniel and I could meet up for a chat on the title.

Scott

 

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Daniel, can you tell us a little bit about the game?

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Daniel

 

Well yeah, it’s a first person co-op game set in the Warhammer fantasy universe, you play as four players in a team and try to get through and survive the horrible cataclysm called The End Times.

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Scott

 

Now, I have just played through the demo that we have at EGX and it’s very similar in mechanics to Left 4 Dead, was that an intentional decision by you guys?

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Daniel

 

Definitely, we feel it is a very underserved genre, we feel that Valve did co-op really well with Left 4 Dead and we feel like it’s a shame there aren’t more games like it. It’s a really smart mechanic and we feel like we are a game in the same genre as Left 4 Dead but we have added on our own things like loot and melee combat which is very nice to have.

Scott

 

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Ok, so can you tell me about the loot and how that will play into the character progression?

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Daniel

 

Yeah, as you finish a level you roll dice to get your own loot and you can improve your chances to get good loot by completing certain missions in the level, or certain challenges rather and also playing on a harder difficulty, then you roll and you get a higher ranking item sometimes. These items with have traits that give you certain abilities and you can customise your character as to how you want to play. It’s not strictly a class based system but it is kind of towards that, you have several different classes you can play as.

 

Scott

 

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In the rich world of Warhammer why did you choose the Skaven as the enemies?

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Daniel

 

We definitely feel it has been undeserved, there are very few games about the Skaven and they have a huge fan base online, we felt that it was a good opportunity to capitalise on. A few players will be like “Why didn’t you do Orks, why didn’t you do Chaos” but half the players are like “Wow thank god someone is doing something with the Skaven”. Especially around here we have had so many Skaven fans come up here and say that’s cool.

Scott

 

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Can you tell us if there is any post launch support that you are going to provide? Any DLC?

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Daniel

 

Definitely we are going to do some free DLC’s and also some paid DLC’s. The thing about the paid DLC’s is that you will always be able to play together. The one hosting the game will have to own the DLC but everyone joining doesn’t have to own it. It depends on what the community wants after release and we see how it does, to see what we are going to go for but we have a long standing plan to support this game for a long time both free and paid DLC’s.

Scott

 

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This game is launching on Steam. Is it launching on consoles?

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Daniel

 

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Yes, we haven’t set a date for that yet but it will be around sometime in the near future.

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Scott

 

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Will there be any cross platform support, any cross play?

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Daniel

 

Not that I know of, I don’t think I can answer that question. That would be nice but I don’t have the technical knowhow to say anything about that.

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Scott

 

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Is there anything else you would like to add about the game?

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Daniel

 

It’s out on Steam on October 23rd, it has just appeared on the Steam page so you can pre-order now if you want.

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