Welcome to the next installation of our Darktide 101 dev blog series. We’re interviewing devs working on Darktide to share what it’s like to create the game.

For today’s blog, we’re talking about Voice Over Recording and VO Rules. Have you ever been surprised by a piece of dialogue you’ve never heard before? Have you ever wondered what it’s like in the booth when recording your favourite lines? Today, you’ll get to find out how it works.

Our first topic is written by our VO Design guru, Ola. Take it away, Ola!

Darktide's VO system was built off of the way VO worked in our two previous ‘Tide titles, with a lot of additional bells and whistles.

This VO system is a context-aware system, where we send queries to see if we can play something and it will return results based on what the current status of the game is.

We track many many different contexts for this purpose. Some examples include:

• How much health and ammo do the players have?
  
• Are there other players or enemies nearby? If so, how many?
  
• Is the combat intense?
  
• What previous dialogue has played and how long ago was it?
  
• What weapons do you have equipped at the moment?
  
• Which players are in the game?
  
• Which mission are you in?
  
• What trust level* do you have?

(* Trust level is based on the player level 1-30.)

Based on all of these contexts, we set up dialogue rules. These are buckets of VO lines, and when the system finds a match, it prioritizes it based on the amount of contexts it has hit. The more specific a line is, the higher priority it has to play.

We currently have around 90,000 voice lines in the game spread across a total of 6,000 rules. (For context, Vermintide 2 has approximately 39,000 voice lines.) Some of these rules are insanely rare. Part of this is by design. But part of it is that with such a large amount of rules requiring different combinations of contexts, some are bound to be very rare.

The idea is that even if you have played the game for a very long time, you should still feel that from time to time you come across lines you've never heard before. Our player character personalities also play a big part in this. Many lines vary from personality to personality. Therefore, some lines will only ever play when both of those personalities are present in a game together. And as we have 21 personalities, this creates many combinations that take time to discover.

Our most common VO rule is a rule that’s activated when Newly Infected assault players.
This rule has been played 70,000,000 times in the last 30 days (at the time of writing this).

It has the following requirements:

• For that specific enemy to not have played their assault rule* in the last 8 seconds.
  
• For all newly infected to not have played their assault rule* in the last 4 seconds.

(* Assault rule refers to a rule that plays a voice line when an enemy is attacking or running toward the player.)

Our most rare rule is a bonding conversation between the female Savant Psyker and the Ogryn Bodyguard, where the Savant complains that the Bodyguard tends to get in the way due to his size.

In comparison, this rule has only been played 19 times in the last 30 days.

It has the following requirements:

• Have at least one friend nearby;
  
• No enemies nearby;
  
• For the tension to be decaying (meaning combat has just taken place);
  
• To have the female Savant Psyker present in the game;
  
• To have the Ogryn Bodyguard in the game;
  
• For there not to have been a banter conversation within the last 140 seconds; and
  
• The Savant Psyker to have triggered the “friendly fire” VO on the Ogryn Bodyguard within the last 90 seconds.

Now rare rules are okay, but this is close to non-existent. In an effort to make this rule play somewhat more often, I have recently tweaked these requirements to:

• Have less than 3 enemies nearby (from 0);
  
• No banter in the last 100 seconds (from 140); and
  
• For the female Savant Psyker to have triggered the friendly fire VO on the Ogryn Bodyguard in the last 180 seconds (from 90).

From time to time, we do these kinds of tweaks to the dialogue to try to shift what will be heard, tune down the most common conversations and tune up the rarest. All to keep the dialogue feeling like an alive and dynamic experience for all of the players! (Note: I personally get a real kick out of seeing people posting rare conversations on reddit.)

We put together a video with a series of voice lines that can show the specificity with which these voice rules are created, as well as the pure talent from our voice actors. These lines include:

• Zealot hears a Horde coming
  
• Veteran bonding conversation when low on health
  
• Pskyer finds ammo when a Zealot is low on ammo
  
• Veteran sees an Ogryn on a killstreak
  
• Psyker sees someone hogging ammo
  
• Ogryn finds a health boost while a Veteran is low on health
  
• Ogryn responds to friendly fire from a Zealot.

https://youtu.be/n8Zbzw2DGug
Alright, that’s it for now! If you’re excited to hear more about this topic, we have plenty more to talk about like the sound design of Darktide, implementation and WIPs, collaboration with level design or other disciplines, etc. If you have any specific questions related to voice over rules, or you’d like to hear more on the topic, please let us know.

Our next topic is written by our Sound and VO team member, David. Go for it, David!

For Darktide, we want all of the voice-overs (VO) to sound natural, as if they belong in the world of the game and they come from the character that is speaking.

There are many things to keep in mind to achieve this goal. For example, when recording voices it's therefore important to be consistent when it comes to the mics and how they are positioned relative to the actor/actress. In both of the recording studios, OMUK and Molinare in London, we use the same type of DPA mic that sits on a person’s forehead. This gives the actor/actress the possibility to move and do gestures while talking.

For Darktide, most of our voice-over is either barking during combat, or talking while walking or even running. It's important to capture this sense of movement and effort. We have tried to achieve this by actually letting the actor/actress move during the recording or add pauses and breaths before/after or in between words. Imagine how you would talk while jogging with a friend. That’s what we’re going for during the session.

Before and during the recording session, my role as a game developer/voice designer is to give the voice director and the actor/actress as much context as possible about the game and the specific situations. For example, if the voice-over line is meant to be delivered while someone is being dragged up after being knocked down, it’s important for the actor/actress to convey this through effort and strain in the voice. If I had to pick, the most common comment from me to the voice director or actor/actress, it’d probably be: "Can we have a bit more effort and movement in the voice please?" It's not super fun when you see how sweaty the actors/actresses are, but it's necessary for world-building.

That’s all for the first peek into what it’s like to record voice lines for Darktide. Would you like to hear more on the topic, such as drafting the voice lines, or what lines are the most difficult to get right? Maybe a deeper dive on the enemy voice work? Do you have any questions for our voice actors? Let us know!

And so ends our second Darktide 101 dev blog. What topic would you like to hear about next time? Do you have any questions for the devs working on Voice Acting and VO for Darktide? Comment below
and we’ll try to get some more dev replies for you!

Until next time!

Earlier this month, we released an Introduction to Itemization dev blog. After sharing the first looks of Itemization, we got a lot of messages from players. We collected over 13 pages of feedback, questions and concerns. As promised, we're following up on them.

While we cannot answer all of those questions yet, as some things are still being decided and iterated upon, we wanted to answer a batch of them today. We will continue to share more answers as we move closer to release! We want to hear more of your feedback and opinions through this dialogue.

Note: All of the questions we’re answering in this are pulled directly from the comments on the Forums, Reddit and Discord. We kept the players’ wording instead of writing our own questions.

Before we dive in, we want to make it clear for those who might’ve missed prior communications: WE ARE BREAKING THE LOCKS WITH THIS REWORK. 🔓

Question
When StrawHat said that players will begin with a headstart in the new system, does that mean that we won't have access to blessings we did previously and therefore forcing us to grind for the tiers all over again?

Answer
No, the actual blessing sticker book will be translated to experience into Mastery. It does mean that you actually can even learn blessings you didn't before if wanted.

Question
What if I already have a perfect 550?

Answer
Already owned weapons won’t be touched, they’ll remain intact.
(Note: We are doing some blessing tweaks and balances with this update to accommodate for the new system, so some numbers might change.)

Question
Soooo... my old weapons don't just disappear right? Guys, it took me 500+ hours to get all the stuff I want through your RNG casino, so that would be more than just a little bummer. Will already unlocked weapons be converted 100%?

Answer
No, they won’t disappear and they will stay 100% intact as they are. You will keep the entire arsenal of weapons that you have acquired previously.
(Note: We are doing some blessing tweaks and balances with this update to accommodate for the new system, so some numbers might change.)

Question
How does Mastery XP work? Do you get more for higher difficulty missions? What if you fail a run?

Answer
The amount of Mastery XP is based on what difficulty the player plays. The higher the difficulty, the higher amount of XP is awarded. Experience gained will remain the same, no matter the weapon you use the most during a mission.

If you fail a run, you will be awarded a portion of the XP just as with normal Experience and Ordo Docket rewards.

Question
Mastery is not tied to a specific weapon in your inventory. It has its own progress per weapon family that includes all marks, that unlocks blessings and perks for that weapon family. Do I have that right?

Answer
Yes. Playing with any weapon (different marks) within a weapon family will progress that entire weapon family’s Mastery. Note: There can be several weapon families within the same school of weapons, such as Lasguns and Autoguns. They each have multiple weapon families, containing a number of Marks (e.g. Infantry Autoguns and Braced Autoguns).
TL;DR - If you play with a Lasgun Family A Mark X, you will progress your Mastery into Lasgun Family A. So every other weapon mark in Family A will benefit from the Mastery progression into Mark X.

Question
There's no farming blessings at all anymore. You just directly unlock the ones you want with the Mastery points. At full Mastery you'll have all blessings at all levels unlocked. (Yes or no?)

Answer
Yes. As you gain Mastery with a Weapon Family you unlock blessing points (among other things); these points can then be freely used to unlock any blessing of your choosing: the more blessings you unlock, the more powerful versions of blessings you are able to unlock. When you have reached full Mastery with a weapon family you will have unlocked all the blessings available for that family. Moreover, in the new system, you’ll be able to freely swap out any blessings and perks on any weapon, at any level of Mastery, without them becoming locked after two changes.

Question
So every weapon we buy/earn has a random-ish stat cap, and our Mastery of that weapon’s family (so autoguns, shotguns, etc) lets us build that up via expertise?

Answer
Yes. We are still working out the finer details of this system. But in essence, as you gain Mastery you will unlock more Expertise within that weapon family. You can then choose to invest into that weapon and increase the stats of the weapon while keeping the predetermined stat distribution the weapon was created with.

Question
This system is the anti-choice system, it’s the system that forces you to grind every single weapon family before you can try a build.

Answer
The Mastery system is an addition to the existing crafting system that allows players to steadily unlock every Blessing for a weapon family, instead of relying exclusively on RNG to obtain them.

True, there will be some grind to fully unlock all the blessings at their most powerful tier for a weapon family. The system however lets you have full freedom in which blessings you unlock, and in what order, so being able to unlock a specific blessing for a build should be a manageable time investment. We are still experimenting with the exact time investment needed to fully unlock all blessings for a certain weapons family. We are also adding more tiers to most blessings, making previously higher tier blessings available at lower tiers.

Also, loot is still part of the system. The fact that we are still keeping the RNG loot system in place (Emperor's Gift, Sire Melk’s Requisitorium, The Armoury Exchange, and the ability to Consecrate weapons at Hadron’s Shrine with random upgrades, etc) will allow players to get to weapon builds that they have not unlocked in their Mastery before they actually get there. The loot system will be able to shortcut you to things that you have not yet unlocked.

Question
If the only way to upgrade a weapon is to use it, players won't want to try new weapons because of the marked drop in power they'll have to put up with for as long as it takes to grind out the upgrades.

Answer
Powerful weapons will still be distributed through stores/Emperor’s Gift. You can start with already high tier weapons to grind the Mastery, similar to what the game proposes at the moment.

Mastery will just open the toolbox to the player for them to experiment.

Mastery doesn't “gate” a person from acquiring a weapon with a given blessing, it only gates you from freely being able to add it to any weapon of your choosing. The loot system can still allow players to shortcut to a more powerful blessing before they unlock it in the Mastery.

Question
Is ‘weapon potential’ a new stat? Is it tied to the base power level? If it is a new unrelated stat does that mean a 371 power weapon with a low weapon potential rating has less possible power increase than a say 342 power weapon that has a high weapon potential rating? Please give us examples with actual numbers to compare.

Answer
Weapon Potential just refers to the stats distribution. For any weapon in the game, they actually have the potential to be maxed out. Every weapon now has the potential to reach a 380 stats rating. Note that maxing out does not mean reaching 80% on each stat: every weapon is created with a pool of stat points that have been distributed in the different stat buckets, and every weapon has the same potential maximum number of stats that can be distributed.

DISCLAIMER: The following images are NOT representative of the final UI / work for Itemization. They are meant to illustrate the different potential stat distributions of a maxed out weapon (the darker grey number).

Question
Sorry if this has been asked, but with this itemization rework, will characters that can use the same weapon archetypes have a shared inventory to those weapons? So no more fancy lasgun that only my Psyker can enjoy, now my Veteran and Zealot can too? This has been one of my biggest gripes.

Answer
No, it will remain as it is today, where any item is unique to the character that has it.

However, we can say that we’re opening up more weapon families to be shared between all classes. It's still case by case, but for example, shotguns will be available for all classes.

Question
Given that blessings are currently shared across characters, it’d be a massive step back if progress was silo’d.

Answer
The Mastery / blessings unlocked are shared by account. However, any applied Expertise is at an item level and character level.

Essentially, if you have the Infantry Lasgun weapon family at 100% unlocked on Character 1, when you go to Character 2 and find a new Infantry Lasgun, you’ll have all the blessings unlocked on the new gun. But you’ll need to spend the materials to apply any Expertise changes on Character 2.

Alright, that answers the first batch of questions. We will answer more! If anything in this post is unclear, please let us know below. This will help us collect more feedback and ensure we answer them in our future posts.

Thank you!