"out Of All The 40k Options, They Picked This?": Fans Are Furious...

The Hive Scum trailer has proved less popular than a plague zombie, with detractors calling it a bland and uninspired concept.

In the run up to the reveal of Darktide's latest new class, speculation has run rampant in the community. A week's delay on the announcement only created more space for fans to stretch their imaginations, placing their bets on everything from a Sister of Battle to a kroot warrior to an Adeptus Mechanicus tech priest.

So when the new class turned out to be 'Hive Scum'—essentially just an archetypal criminal—the reaction was, predictably, disappointment.

"We could have had a tech priest, but instead we get someone I've probably seen milling around in the centre of Manchester drunk at 2 in the afternoon," says one comment on the trailer on YouTube. "Out of all the 40k options they picked this?" says another, echoing a common sentiment.

The main subreddit is full of similar comments, from "this is like going to your baby reveal and finding out you're also not the father level of disappointment" to "lazy and boring choice for new class".

As ever, some of the discussion is toxic and overly harsh on both developer Fatshark and Warhammer owners Games Workshop, who tend to become the target of elaborate conspiracy theories whenever a piece of Darktide content disappoints. But I can understand where the anger is coming from—and it speaks to what seems to be a fundamental impasse between the studio and the community.

The Warhammer 40,000 setting is absurdly dense at this point, enjoying the benefits of almost 40 years of accumulated lore and storytelling. That means there are a lot of cool archetypes in it that you could put in a videogame, with everyone having their own favourite pick.

Start building a list of the classes people might want to see out of all of that, and 'criminal guy' isn't going to rank high. Those who would pick it would probably be thinking of the iconic crime families of Necromunda, with their wacky and exaggerated traits—not generic and lowly scum.

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The other thing Warhammer 40,000 offers in abundance is cool, ridiculous, and often elaborate weapons—so it's easy to see why people wouldn't be impressed by the Hive Scum bringing a collection of junky, improvised guns, shivs, and crowbars, with dual-wielding as an underwhelming central gimmick. (Though I have to admit, I can't help but smile at what appears to just b

Source: PC Gamer