Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy – Beta Impressions

Coming from developer Owlcat Games (Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader), Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy is an upcoming turn-based cRPG that is currently in development and going through its closed beta, with no release date revealed yet.

Players that purchased certain game editions through the official site (no pre-orders via Steam or other platforms are available yet) also got a chance to try out the closed alpha and the currently ongoing closed beta to see the game for themselves and submit their feedback to the developers.

Of course, Dark Heresy is not yet finished by any means: not only does the content cut off at a certain point, the beta is also missing companion quests, some voice-acting, and is generally in need of some severe balance tuning passes when it comes to combat. And bugs. Of course there are bugs. Still, the core of the game is there, so it’s time to tighten your grip on a heavy bolter and see what Dark Heresy has to offer.

Note that there will be mild spoilers ahead: the general position that your protagonist finds themselves in, mentions of the companions and certain situations you will face, outlining the Convictions, and so on. Just about as much as you’d see scanning the game’s Steam page or the official site, no in-depth details.

Prepare your Vox-caster, this is our Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy beta impressions.

The events of the game take place in the grim dark future of the 41st millennium. The Imperium of Man is beset by dangers on all sides: the insidious xenos, corruptive Chaos, the various enemies within, be they heretics, witches, mutants or something else, and the continued survival of humanity cruelly grinds away hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of lives for another bleak day of existence.

In Dark Heresy, you leave behind the freedom of being an illustrious Rogue Trader to instead become an Acolyte of the Inquisition. That means that you are but one of the many loyal little cogs that keep this ruthless but necessary organization going, seeking and destroying the enemies of the Imperium and ensuring no one shows impermissible weakness to Chaos or any undue interest in xenos.

While the game’s approach is quite different from Rogue Trader, it also deals with the dichotomy of being an RPG protagonist extremely well. As an Agent of the Golden Throne, you have a vast amount of power when it comes to dealing with “normal people” – even those who belong to the nobility or various factions of the universe, which gives you a right to boss them around during your investigations. Within certain means, at least.

On the other hand, as an Acolyte, you are still relatively low on the pecking order even on a normal day. And the events of Dark Heresy prove to be anything but normal for your protagonist who had come into contact with the Tyrant Star, and survived. Now, your Acolyte’s life hangs by a thread. The Inquisitors are either dismissive or outright hostile to what such a sudden stroke of luck could entail, and only the personal protection of Lord Inquisitor keeps the Acolyte’s head firmly attached to their shoulders – for the moment.

But that also means that you now have to prove your worth to your very Ordos by carrying out assignments sent your way and figuring out the connection that formed between you and the Tyrant Star, and how it is related to the larger scale events happening around the sector. Innocence proves nothing, and that includes your own innocence in this question.

And so you have this duality: on the one hand, you have not only the reason but also the power and the obligation to insert your nose into everyone’s personal matters. On the other hand, your position is not as iron-clad as that of the Rogue Trader, even a newbie one who can brazenly brandish the Warrant of Trade, and you just might want to avoid pissing off your superiors and the high and mighty of the Imperium too much.

Overall, the tone of Dark Heresy reminded me of Tyranny, even if you swap the position of a battle lawyer for a battle detective, but way more over-the-top in your highly recognizable Warhammer 40k grimdark style. You even have a boss wearing an ornate golden mask that you report to!

If you thought Lord Captain von Valancius had an unusual retinue that comes from all walks of life much to Abelard’s displeasure, you haven’t seen anything yet. Your Acolyte’s duty to the Imperium will see you visit a variety of worlds during your investigations that will also put you in contact with sometimes unexpected groups, leading to even more unexpected companions with a wide range of beliefs and opinions.

Naturally, you will join forces with other Acolytes sent to accompany you, but what about an Ogryn? Some Xenos? A Rogue Trader bored to tears that cares not for your work and simply wants entertainment? All of that and more awaits you in Dark Heresy. To avoid listing unnecessary spoilers, you can check some of them out via the official site.

The beta introduced 10 recruitable companions, some of them obviously more complete than others, but all unique. Out of the bunch, you can bring five with you at any time. Note that it is quite beneficial to swap the party from time to time as companions offer their unique insights into investigations, sometimes giving you just enough clues to figure out a next step or a connection you might have overlooked otherwise. It is possible that the full version of the game will feature even more to choose from.

Of course, the game also features plenty of memorable NPCs, including your Big Boss and a number of Inquisitors you will cross paths with. Some of them will prove to be exactly who you thought at the first glance, others will show surprising depths as the events of the game unfold and you get a chance to see them from a differen side.

Despite being a member of the fun police together with uptight Saro, you are not entirely forced into being a staunch, zealous believer of the Imperial Creed and the Emperor of Humanity – or what would be Dogmatic in Rogue Trader. Sure, your character being an Acolyte of the Inquisition does put the brakes on how far the roleplaying element would go, at the very least in the beta content, but you will have plenty of decisions to make – to the heated disagreement of your companions from time to time.

Some of your actions or dialogue choices will change your character’s Conviction. Dark Heresy moved away from Rogue Trader’s system of Iconoclast / Dogmatic / Heretic and introduced four new ones:

• Monodominant – an uncompromising exterminator of even the slightest signs of heresy, driven by the high ideals of duty, service to the God-Emperor’s will, and self-sacrifice.
• Amalathian – a staunch believer in the God Emperor’s grand design, the fulfillment of which demands unity and accord within the endless ranks of the Imperium’s organizations and from Humanity as a whole.
• Xanthite – a faithful servant of the God-Emperor who believes that the forces of the Archenemy can and must be used for the benefit of the Imperium, for in their righteous hands, those very forces will become a weapon of truth.
• Xenos Hybris – an adherent of the necessity of xenotech research and cooperation with xenos for the sake of achieving the goals of the Imperium.

Another notable difference from Rogue Trader is that some choices now give points for two convictions at once. Hitting certain ranks of a Conviction gives bonuses. For example, Monodominant Rank I gives a passive called Expose Heresy that increases the protagonist’s Lore (Heresy) by 10 points.

When one of the alignment branches reaches Rank II, the opposite branch cannot be raised above Rank I. When a branch reaches Rank IV, it becomes the character’s main focus, and any other branches cannot go higher than Rank III.

You know the drill, an Owlcat CRPG means there’s that one integral system that plenty of your gametime will be revolving around: the kingdom management in Kingmaker, Mythic Paths in Wrath of the Righteous, warp travel and exploration in Rogue Trader.

That much is true for Dark Heresy as well. Gone are the days of freely roaming the warp, now you will try the role of a private battle detective with the new Investigation system – or, rather, a web of systems that form the core of your experience, both narratively and gameplay-wise.

It goes something like this: Lord Inquisitor gives you a task or a number of tasks that require you to venture to a specific location. In beta, you simply choose the endpoint that unlocks with the quest and immediately teleport in, although it might change in the release version of the game. Upon arrival, you meet the NPC that you will be working with and possibly reporting to, learn the details and start your work. The investigations and tasks you will have to tackle vary quite a bit: finding the reason for a fellow Agent’s disappearance, searching for missing people, investigating a murder, finding and delivering items, and more.

The one big case that breaks into a myriad of smaller tasks. If we take looking for the missing Agent as an example, you will want to ask the superiors about the mission the Agent was pursuing, follow in his footsteps, interrogate possible witnesses…. and then do it a few more times when you start piling up the clues. On the way, you might run into a few smaller – in terms of the general Dark Heresy scale – battles.

As a picture of the possible events begins to emerge, you will be able to connect various bits of evidence with a conjecture – but beware, not all of your conjectures are correct, and some correlations might not exist at all, no matter how much you want to connect them to the case.

Once you believe that you have found the answer and enough evidence to support your claim, you can close the case and submit your report to your superior, usually an Inquisitor. So far without an exception, what followed is a lengthy encounter or a series of battles that might stretch for a couple of hours due to Dark Heresy’s unique touch (more on it down below in the gameplay section).

That leaves the experience feeling wildly inconsistent and drawn-out: first, you have hours of talking, exploring, poking your nose into every nook and cranny you can find, but next to no battles. Then, there are non-stop battles that last forever until you finally break through them, return to Bastion Serpentis with a report, and the cycle begins again.

Perhaps with the addition of companion quests, more side quests and puzzles, and just more in general, Dark Heresy will break away from this cycle, but at the moment it doesn’t feel good. You manage to first get tired from the Investigation, and then from battle, instead of the two being given to you in doses.

The funniest thing in terms of Investigations, that finding and reporting the truth might not always be the best option. Say, our random agent from the example above ended up dying in a tragic accident – do you report that and potentially draw ire of the poor chap’s boss that was left looking like a fool? Or do you use whatever evidence you have to blame a local crime boss or an upstart noble, thus allowing the Inquisitor boss man to save face while also getting rid of a potential thorn in the Inquisition’s backside?

Being kind and true doesn’t produce the best result in the Warhammer 40k universe. Still, touch and interact with everything and everyone on your way, you never know what will give you an extra clue.

Additionally, at the moment, it feels like the system provides a ton of narrative variety and replayability in terms of your final decision and its consequences, but not in terms of the gameplay. It does not seem like there are vastly different ways of going about your business, like allying with different people to get the result in another set of actions altogether.

Although, remember Chapter 1 of Rogue Trader where the events on the planets could change depending on the one you visited first, the Navigator Station, Prison or Rykad Minoris? At least two main quests follow that mechanic, with some paths opening and others closing for good depending on which planet you chose to be your first.

Now let’s take a closer look at the gameplay side of things.

As always, a new game begins with the choice of difficulty – Custom, Story, Normal, Daring or Hard – and the creation of your Acolyte. Note that you can change the difficulty at any point if your choice proved to be too hard or too easy.

Character creation is not really all that different from Rogue Trader – you choose your portrait and voice, followed by the archetype: Warrior (melee fighter), Soldier (ranged fighter), Operative (one hit – one kill type of assassin, can be melee or ranged), Officer (buffs and extra turn for allies, debuffs for enemies), or Mystic (caster), with unique specializations to choose from that further specify what your character can do within their chosen archetype.

What follows is the Origin that not only affects your gameplay with passives, but also has unique narrative interactions, especially for a Sanctioned Psyker. Finally, you wrap up with characteristics and appearance – body type, hairstyle, tattoos, beards, augments , and hop right into the game to investigate, solve puzzles, gather your warband, and command companions.

In addition to the Investigation system, the biggest change came to combat when you compare it to Owcat’s previous game. Many have considered Rogue Trader to be too easy, with enemies falling apart from Abelard’s iron fists and Argenta’s heavy bolter fire quite handily even on the highest level of difficulty, be they spawns of Chaos, Space Marines or a shard of a god. Owlcat Games heard those complaints, and the monkey paw curled in the distance.

To that effect, the combat system received several new features: Armor, Morale and Precision Shots that have certainly affected the flow of battle and the general difficulty of the game. Let’s go over them one-by-one.

• Armor Durability – basically, an extra bar that your characters have to deplete before getting to the HP. Naturally, unique enemies, bosses and characters wearing heavy armor have a bigger amount of Armor Durability. Certain effects – bleed, toxin – can ignore it, while weapons like daggers and Las-guns have unique interactions. Makes enemies twice as tanky.
• Precision Attacks (both melee and ranged) allow the attacker to choose a particular body part of the target, with varying chances to hit. These attacks also leave injuries (not to be mistaken with the Wounds, as in HP) – light damage to arms, severe damage to legs, etc. eventually leading to status effects like Immobilized or Disarmed. Injuries ramp up the use of Medicae kits like there is no tomorrow.
• Morale – do you like using Heroic abilities? Now enemies can use them, too. This system takes over the Momentum from Rogue Trader, and fluctuates as the battle unfolds: reinforcements arriving, characters dying, Officers and leader-NPCs barking orders, etc.

Getting Morale +10 allows the character to use their Archetype-defined Heroic ability. Morale -10, meanwhile, makes the characters “Broken” – leading them to becoming Staggered and missing their turn, or even panicking and attacking their allies. In random encounters it can also lead to the enemies giving up, allowing you to finish the battle instantly.

This is where Officers come in clutch once again. While Owlcats did nerf the Archetype’s performance compared to Rogue Trader, they also gave them Morale manipulation. Buffing it for allies, lowering for enemies – and Morale is king, especially in heavy AoE encounters.

And let me tell you: all encounters in Dark Heresy are AoE encounters, even the ones that don’t seem to start that way. Which wouldn’t be too bad if you had as many ways to deal with a full screen of enemies as you do in Rogue Trader, but you do not.

At the moment, it feels like both Warrior and Soldier Archetypes are severely undertuned. In turn, that leads you to filling your party with Operatives, Officers, and Saro, because Saro, your Pyromancer Sanctioned Psyker companion, is your only reliable way to AoE large swaths of people, xenos, mutants, heretics and so on.

So most battles in Dark Heresy unfold like: Masterful Firestorm – Demoralise: Humiliation + Extra Turn on Saro – Masterful Firestorm, rinse and repeat, until the burning DoT does its job. In between Saro and your Officer(s) taking turns, your Operatives will shoot and stab the targets with the most Wounds/Armor. With some extra Precise Shots to arms and Morale manipulation, you might be able to avoid being attacked much – if at all.

Sadly, that much is true for the unique encounters as well, even the ones that have interesting objectives that go against your usual “kill everything” and great verticality and interactables. I will remember the Valkyrie battle for a long, long time, having replayed it a dozen times.

To wrap it up, let’s talk about smaller but still noticeable changes compared to Rogue Trader, namely reputation & vendors, UI and voice over.

Gone are the days when your buyer status was decided by reputation and Profit Factor. Dark Heresy returns to a more classic system where it is the combination of reputation, or Rapport as it is called in-game, and good old Scints, allowing you to directly sell and buy items from the quartermasters. Back to looting everything that isn’t nailed down!

I hope that Owlcat Games will consider refreshing the consumables stockpiles such as the medicae kits, grenades, and so on. With the game’s AoE-heavy battles and the new system of precise shots, your group of misfits will be looking way worse for the wear after battles that had no characters taken down.

At the moment, the beta features only a partial voice-over, but the developers have revealed that the release version will have a full voice-over. That is, when it comes to the dialogues – the exposition bits are still yours to read.

Last but not least, UI. It is quite interesting to see the changes in UI between Rogue Trader Alpha, RT beta & release, and the Dark Heresy beta. The dialogue window is now present as an unfolding typewriter record, and its verticality allows for more comfortable reading due to taking over a bigger portion of the screen.

Additionally, there are certain changes when it comes to battle UI, inventory, and so on, providing better clarity at a glance. For those who care about the looks, the game also offers extra “transmog” options such as hide helmet, armor, backpack, cape, and so on.

To sum it up, when you first boot up Dark Heresy after playing Rogue Trader, it might seem like the changes aren’t that many – the models and PoV are similar, it’s still turn-based, still brutal and over-the-top grimdark. But when you go back, that’s when the differences start being more obvious: better animations, a great amount of in-engine cutscenes that makes the world feel more alive, and much more.

The difference between Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy is similar to the difference between Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous. Extra time and different setting within the same universe allowed Owlcats to experiment on and refine the roleplaying approach, change combat, and introduce a brand-new Investigation system that gives the game an entirely different vibe.

Much like the studio’s previous games, Dark Heresy promises to be a great party-based, story-driven cRPG that doesn’t shy away from complexity, politicking, conspiracies, tactical combat and brutality. In fact, it seems to revel in it, forcing players to not only encounter xenos and heretics, but also acknowledge the cruel and weak sides of humanity.

TL/DR: full release when, I can’t wait to get sucked into another Owlcat game for 300 hours or so.