How character customization works in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide – Appearance, custom VO, character interactions

One of the many things that set Warhammer 40,000: Darktide apart from its predecessor, Vermintide, is character customization. Vermintide and Vermintide 2 had each player embody one of five pre-determined characters, with their own established stories, appearance, and relationships. In contrast, Darktide players will be able to build their characters from scratch, customizing their appearance and choosing their voice. Here is how character customization works in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide character customization

The player avatars in Darktide are known as Rejects: the lowest dregs of society, coming from all unfortunate walks of life in the grim-dark future of Warhammer 40,000. They are Imperial Guard deserters, criminals plucked from penal colonies, psychic mutants, and other would-be-executions that have been picked not for their skills but for their expendability.

Despite their lowly backgrounds, these characters represent dedicated classes in the game, each with unique weapons and abilities. Some are focused on taking out opponents at range, others up close with crude melee weaponry, and some use psychic abilities and divine manifestations to fight the enemy. Within these archetypes, players can freely change the presentation of their avatar, customizing not just their appearance, but also how they sound.

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Voices and interactions

After selecting your class and customizing your character appearance in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, you can pick a voice. This choice is irrelevant to the gameplay, but important for immersion in the game’s setting and world. Like in Vermintide, the player-controlled characters chat with each other over the course of each mission, exchanging lines that reveal who they are and how they feel about each other.

According to developer Fatshark, there are “thousands upon thousands of banter lines in Darktide.” Choosing the right voice pack will matter quite a bit, as you will hear your character joke, bicker, and bark at fellow players as the situation around them evolves, and you want to make sure that your chosen voice matches your own tone as closely as possible. Moreover, the types of spoken interactions you will have depend on the chosen classes and voice profiles of everyone in the group, as they come with their individual perspectives, quirks, and prejudices.