Chaos joins Skaven in Vermintide 2

Earlier tonight Swedish developer Fatshark revealed the first proper details about their sequel to 2015's multi-million selling co-op action game Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide.

Ahead of the reveal we had a chance to catch up with CEO Martin Wahlund to ask him about the vision for the sequel, the various changes including adding in Chaos Warriors to the battlefield, the new location (Helmgart), added variation, the new loot system, and the decision to stick with the original five characters from the first game but adding career paths for more variation.

"We had a lot of ideas from the first one that we wanted to implement", says Wahlund. "We have done it with DLC and updates and things like that, I think we have done over 80 updates for the first game, but then there are some structural changes we needed to do to really fix the stuff and make it an even better game and introduce new stuff."

One such area was that it was difficult for Fatshark to add further heroes to the game beyond the initial five, and while those five are returning for the second game, the foundation is now there to expand beyond that and the various career paths will also provide further variation.

"The key thing when you're doing a sequel is to keep what's good and improve in all areas and also have some news so it feels fresh", explains Wahlund. "And one thing that worked really well was the banter between the characters that we really love. We put a lot of effort into building these personalities and we wanted to keep the personalities but we wanted to add new visual career types, and visual models for the characters, and also new play styles."

The big news is obviously that you won't just be fighting off the Skaven this time around with Chaos being thrown into the mix.

"From a gameplay perspective, it's great because they are a really big contrast to the Skaven", says Wahlund. "The Skaven are squishy, they come in numbers, The Chaos are much fewer and they are really sturdy and tough."

This will also feed into more challenges and more variation in each map depending on the enemy types you'll face, as Wahlund admits that the specials in the first game each had roles to fill and there wasn't as much room for variation in terms of spawns.

The two games will also have some ties to eachother that are yet to be revealed, things that will be added in terms of story beats in Vermintide, and perhaps more, but Wahlund was unwilling to reveal exactly what Fatshark are planning.

Vermintide 2 is scheduled for release "early 2018", and while the first game launched first on Steam, no decision has been made as for the rollout on PC and consoles this time around beyond the ambition to release them much closer together.