After years of letting us chop up evil rats in Vermintide, Fatshark's heading to the 41st millennium, where a group of Inquisitors will delve into a hive city that's been taken over by a Chaos cult. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is another co-op first-person melee affair, but the studio won't be tossing the previous game aside.
Fatshark already announced its plans for Vermintide 2 before the Darktide reveal, teasing the Chaos Wastes expansion and more career DLC, and now it's reaffirmed its commitment in a letter to the community.
With the announcement of Darktide, we understand that you might have a lot of questions—mostly surrounding our commitment to Vermintide 2. The answer is simple: We remain committed to Vermintide 2.
We are looking forward to the continuous development of Vermintide 2, and the next major DLC update coming is Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – Chaos Wastes. We are also already working on the next career following the positive reception of the Grail Knight… and of course, so much more that we are not ready to announce.
While Vermintide 2 replaced its predecessor, Darktide is Fatshark branching out with a new setting and characters, so hopefully the two can co-exist. The setup, with a foursome killing their way through a city infested with monsters, seems very similar, but we're still waiting to find out about classes, customisation, any of its systems—it's all a mystery.
Darktide doesn't have a release date yet, but you can expect to begin purging the hive city next year. Chaos Wastes is coming sooner, with Fatshark aiming to release it this winter.
