Fatshark isn’t holding back. Darktide’s first major update of 2025, Nightmares and Visions, lands soon, and the biggest changes are reserved for the Ogryns. The developers have torn down and rebuilt the abhuman behemoths, giving them more versatility than ever before. No longer just meat shields with clubs, the Ogryns are getting a redesigned skill tree, reworked weapons, and a greater emphasis on tactical variety.
It’s a fundamental shift. And for some, maybe an unsettling one.
What is Darktide?
For those new to the grimdark depths of the 41st Millennium, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a co-op first-person shooter developed by Fatshark, the studio behind Vermintide. Set in the hive city of Tertium, it plunges players into the ranks of the Imperium’s rejects – convicts, outcasts, and heretics-turned-penitents – forced to fight in the name of the God-Emperor.
Much like Vermintide, Darktide is a hybrid of brutal melee and frantic ranged combat, where teamwork, positioning, and resource management are the difference between survival and becoming another corpse in the underhive. Unlike Vermintide, Darktide leans heavily into ranged combat, offering a wider variety of firearms, explosives, and class-based abilities.
Players take on the role of one of four classes:
- Veteran Sharpshooter – A disciplined marksman trained to bring down elite enemies with precision.
- Zealot Preacher – A fanatical warrior of the Ecclesiarchy, thriving in close combat and ignoring pain in the Emperor’s name.
- Psyker Psykinetic – A psychic conduit wielding warp-born powers at the risk of their own sanity.
- Ogryn Skullbreaker – A towering slab of muscle bred for war, excelling in raw strength and durability.
Darktide launched with high expectations, drawing in Vermintide veterans and Warhammer 40K fans eager for a cooperative shooter drenched in lore and grimdark aesthetics. But the launch was rocky—content was thin, progression systems were frustrating, and technical issues ran rampant. Over time, Fatshark made significant updates, tweaking balance, revamping crafting, and adding more missions.
Now, Nightmares and Visions marks the next big step, reshaping how players approach the game—especially if they favour the walking tanks known as Ogryns.
Strength in Ignorance?
Ogryns have always been simple creatures. Towering walls of muscle, crude weapons in hand, smashing through anything too slow or too foolish to get out of the way. That raw power remains, but Fatshark wants Darktide’s brutes to be more than just living battering rams.
Gone are some of the rigid ability restrictions that kept them locked into a single playstyle. In their place, new skills emerge—like an ability that lets the Ogryn stun weaker enemies simply by dodging. Yes, dodging. A concept foreign to the Ogryn way of life, but one that might just save your hide when the heretics come in waves.
Weapons aren’t being left behind either. While the Ogryn’s signature clubs and cleavers get tweaks, ranged combat is also seeing some love. The goal? To make gun-focused builds not just viable, but fun. Because while there’s something poetic about an Ogryn reducing a heretic to paste with a Latrine Shovel, there’s also satisfaction in turning a Traitor Guardsman into a fine red mist from a distance.
Beyond the Ogryns
The update isn’t just about everyone’s favourite slab of meat. Fatshark’s latest balance pass sweeps across the entire game, touching up melee combat, tweaking secondary weapon attack speeds, and perhaps most importantly, scrapping the infuriating mechanic that erased special weapon abilities after a stun. No more losing your precious power-ups just because a Plague Ogryn backhanded you into a wall.
And then there’s the new endgame content. Nightmares and Visions introduces Psionic Visions, a fresh challenge mode flooding the battlefield with hordes in Mortis Trials, alongside updates to Havoc Mode. Reception is cautious for now, but with the full list of changes still under wraps, players are waiting to see if this breathes new life into Darktide’s endgame grind.
For now, all eyes are on the Ogryns. The developers have even partnered with Game Lantern to let players experiment with the revamped skill tree in an online simulator ahead of the update. It won’t be long before the real test begins.
Nightmares and Visions launches March 25 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The heretics won’t know what hit them.
