Firearms Expert Reacts To Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s Guns

This is Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Ordnance at the UK's Royal Armory Museum, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from across history and this week takes a look at the weaponry of the bleak, dark future of the 41st Millennium in Warhammer 40K dark tide this is the closest we've come so far to a Balter in terms of this idea of ​​rocket ammunition, a fascinating area of ​​technology, this is a sort of highly stylized idealized version of it, be sure Subscribe and watch our previous episode of Warhammer 40K weapons when Jonathan took a look at Necromunda's weapons and if you like this type of content, we have a new season of Loadout airing on the channel right now.

New episodes will be released every Sunday and you can already watch our previous episode in the scar on the right. Let's take a look at the weapons of the dark tide. First impressions. Very good, it looks like a functional and credible firearm, although a little thick and bulky for what it shoots, which appears to be a conventional brass case. ammunition, otherwise we have the proper controls, we have a charging handle on the left side, a proper magazine catch game like this would normally just have the player magically take the magazine out of the gun and stick another one in, but this one has a the thumb latch on the left side for you to operate now, aiming with this doesn't allow you to use the sights because of the way it looks, it's much more like an old school FPS rifle where maybe it just widens your view a little and narrows down your scatter but you are not aiming, you are not announcing design.

You know, it's hard to deny that it doesn't look like an AK or maybe more like a Sega sporting rifle with that charging handle in the left hand or a psycho shotgun even with the how. In the pocket is the magazine, but it's spitting out some sort of elongated 556 adjacent cartridge cases and again, I'm not sure why in the future you'd want a longer case, I'd expect it if we still use, for some strange reason, conventional ammunition that the propellant would be super efficient and the cartridges could be really small. I would probably call this a submachine gun rather than a submachine gun, not only because it is compact but because it doesn't have a stock or, in fact, I think it has no provisions for one.

The design of this thing really looks appropriately Warhammer, what I'm noticing here is obviously the Wall Hammer series goes back to the well of the 1980s, 40K specifically, so you've got an ingrained sci-fi aesthetic. at that time and therefore you wouldn't have Picatinny rails, you wouldn't have learned little details like the magazine catch which also has a handy shroud around that style that appears to be a lift from the FN SCAR or similar modern rifle, it's on the auto rifle, it's also on this SMG, so little details like that, I guess they're like retcons, very, very minor repeating weapons, but, um, the original weapons.

From the first decades of this franchise it goes without saying that they wouldn't have had those features of modern

firearms

, now they haven't gone crazy, they haven't made this look like Call of Duty, which is great. The point is that a lot of these things are going to be designed to look cool and interesting, but then we have these little hints of today, in particular the Picatinny rail attachment system, which is not just cosmetic, of course, it's part of the game and I'm absolutely sure I'm going to see some optical sights too, oh alien flamethrower, whatever you want to call it incinerator unit, it's definitely something I associate with this universe, it's hard to give presence to a flame projector because it doesn't work. parts there is no ejection of the case, the muzzle flash is literally the entire event here which in itself is pretty impressive, but the most important thing is the way that if the flame hits a surface, it sticks and burns, that's the critical thing , the big problem is this.

Thickened fuel that you are throwing at high pressure and it turns out to be on fire so not only does it create heat damage and then it stops creating heat damage but it continues to burn and we see that to great effect on enemies there are two main methods of use for This too and because of that burning effect, I want to share the love a little and, um, give short bursts to several weaker enemies and then focus your main fire burst on the bigger ones or something. Well, by nature this seems to have an automated process, so you have the ability to deliberately fire a short burst and then give it full power when needed.

That could have a relevance not in terms of the waiting time, but typically the game. The flame gun will take a little while to start spraying that flank, which is actually realistic, that's how it should work, so if you have a short, automated version of your own fire, if that makes sense, then you can do it effectively, whereas if I'm trying to get ahead of myself and hold down the fire button and release to get just a short burst it could potentially be frustrating, so that's my opinion. I think they tried to shake things up a bit with the flamethrower this time, I thought.

I would show you a couple of things well: this is the number five British flamethrower projector, mark one, um, which is what the British called it, it's the gun part of the flamethrower, actually, all this does is point towards where, where to The burnt fuel jet goes at the business end, it's really what's missing, we don't have the backpack for this, unfortunately, now the other flamethrower I wanted to show you is not a flamethrower, it literally says on the box that we have the box. also and it says it's not a flamethrower, this was literally a weed burning gun that you can buy in a little housing in a sci-fi airsoft gun casing.

You can even see where the magazine for the airsoft gun would have gone, so it looks like part pop culture sci-fi flamethrower, although it looks too clean and effective for um, for 40K, an interesting part of culture of weapons and armor that we think we should preserve even if it's not a flamethrower, this thing is a lot of fun, this is a semi-automatic grenade launcher of some kind that is um, I think it's described as a gauntlet and that's how it fits, it's part of the receiver that wraps around the hand, you can see this, it is not necessary.

I have to tell you that allows it to be used and I guess where the gauntlet part really comes into play is that these huge guys can use it as a melee weapon. He certainly fires it with both hands when in reality he fires it like a grenade launcher. but then when you go to town with other people it's just a one handed weapon, it behaves I would say and even sounds a lot like something like an M32, any repeating grenade launcher has that bloop sound and is kind of realistic, you can see it. it has an arc trajectory but it's quite flat so you don't have to artificially compensate for the drop effect on the target, this has to be in terms of high explosive, even if you don't it has too much hollywood fireball if it was meant to be something realistic, it's not, so we want final people, there's a pretty cool smoke after effect after the flame, which is realistic, it contained some kind of incendiary capability like that, you'd see some smoke coming out of all. right, I'm more familiar with this because even I know about bolt pistols or bolt

guns

, this has to be a bit complicated for normal human-sized people, so I'm actually getting the information on the screen. that, uh, you get auto fire when fired and semi auto when aimed, of course this thing doesn't have a bus stop unless it's modifiable to have one and from memory I don't remember Bolt having one I guess.

The idea with the Space Marine at least in my head would be that he would be able to keep this thing rock solid without having a butt, that's not the case for regular people, but if you put a butt attached to him, he doesn't really have the classic silhouette, this is the closest we've had so far to a Bolter in terms of this idea of ​​rocket ammunition, it's very very basic, it's a cast metal body with a simple steel tube placed in it and a hammer rear-action that fires backwards over the tip of the bullet, it's not really a cartridge because it's a self-contained bullet, so the tip doesn't really do anything other than push it into the primer because it has a center shot. the primer buried here you won't be able to see that then fires the bullet and then there are four exhaust holes in the base and that is the exhaust that propels the bullet, it is not the explosion inside that pushes a projectile, it launches itself, It's literally a miniature rocket, so it accelerates over the hammer, reassembles it, another bullet appears behind it ready to fire, that the tube is just a guide to follow its path, it's the rotational stability of the rocket projectile. which keeps it stable, a fascinating area of ​​technology, this is kind of a highly stylized idealized version of this foreign interest in ammunition here, looking at the magazine, we can see that it's double stack, it's very large, but then the projectiles are very large and sound or, um, rockets, missiles, ammunition, indeed, you can see that it has a The central fire primer there is something happening in the front that we don't have in the gyrojet round, which is clearly what contains the payload that rips people to shreds, which is very impressive and cool, so it's interesting this with all my ramblings about how this. would actually work, it's almost like calling them Rockets, it's more of an emphasis on their explosive capability, they're more like grenades, they're not really meaningful rockets in the way that the gyroscope is.

I don't think you know that they don't They fly by no means slow They don't accelerate from the muzzle like a rocket They shoot like a miniature grenade and behave like a miniature grenade ramp 78 The body dies We move outside my area of ​​

expert

ise with weapons of directed energy, especially those that are composed, there is no particular reason why an energy weapon, a laser weapon, would be required to look so much like a conventional firearm with the magazine where the magazine would normally be the same shape as it would have. Normally what catches my attention is the view.

I like the fact that it's pretty busy with switches and dials and what looks like a duct or something on the right side separates it a bit from modern generic Call of Duty. Look Red Dot it's kind of funny that it has what's known as EOTech's uh Death Donut reticle with the circle with the four marks and the dot in the middle hey, if it works, keep it for forty thousand years, but the thing That's cool to me, the gothic shape of the cut arch church window is a great way to blend it into this world.

His name is fine, so this impression here is for me as a filthy casual Warhammer person, it's a bit Gears. of War, but I know as soon as I say that Gears of War is what it owes to Warhammer and not the other way around, but yes, a different design aesthetic, but it absolutely fits with the Voltas design aesthetic, not caring less about the ergonomics. it's blocky, it has screws or rivets everywhere, lots of big, easy to grip controls, stylized, pretty brutal looking bayonets, not sure if that's where Ripper comes from or if it's the way it explodes, so the description It tells me it's going to explode and fully automatic and that the bayonets work, so it's going to be interesting abroad, okay, I'm a little slow on the uptake of this one, but it's clearly an automatic shotgun, the huge cartridge case it flies out the top of the gun, the bolt.

The thing with a functional bolt on top reminds me and I forget what it is, it has a riot weapon effect to be less lethal. Riot gum someone posted online saying real life Bolter 40K, the way it works is very reminiscent of where you can see a lot of the action as it opens up and it's a slow fire rate that is designed for proper control . I guess it's potentially used for that, but with the bayonets on the front probably not, it's just a very thick short stubby. automatic shotgun with a bayonet on the front bayonets on shot

guns

of course rare but not unheard of the 1897 trench gun had a bayonet as to how the bayonet works it is such a short weapon you just have to push it in front of Bayonet fighting with firearm models is largely an elastic and psychological weapon.

Here is a key function of how the weapon works. Okay, first impressions. This sounds very familiar to me. I don't know if it's because I've seen it on something Warhammer or if it just looks like something else, so the front half is very stylized, very blocky, very Warhammer, even the pump grip that you can discern is very good, which What gives it away completely as a shotgun is the stock which is It is a very traditional semi-pistol grip shotgun butt, it has a rib on the top which is a characteristic of shotgun barrels, but here the rib extends all the way around the barrel. body and I am also recharging while using it, so this thing is veryFairly conventional shotgun in terms of its effect, there's a lot you can do with an FPS shotgun, the way it operates is nice, although I think what's notable is the old alternative fire here, where we're taking advantage of the ability of a five shotgun. different rounds, it's very rare for games to model that some of the more realistic ones do that, but for a pretty interesting sci-fi game, they've taken advantage of the actual capability of a shotgun and somehow justified the existence of a hand pump in This thing, something I occasionally complain about is why would you do it? have a pump action on a future shotgun when we already have auto loading shotguns, they are using it here to allow you to alternate fire by inserting the special round now, a smaller gain would have you just pull the trigger and you'll get that.

The side effect here is that the player character manually cycles that special round into the gun because loading it just loads it, you don't enter the chamber, so if you just pull the trigger you'll get that normal shot. first and then with the auto-loading ability, then you would get your special shot. The actual effect shown again is a real effect achieved by extending a shot to a certain height, either with a highly specialized choke at the end of the gun or a real external duckbill nozzle attachment, not so, You can't make it extend further this way, you can only limit the top of the firing pattern, so a duckbill attachment turns a pattern like this into a pattern like this, this gun spins a pattern like saying this in a pattern like this based on something real exaggerated and made to happen through ammunition which is not one thing and I'm not sure what one thing would be, but the answers in the usual virtual postcard AI, okay, another The last gun remembers much like the ordinary one from the game, but with a different barrel and a strangely old-fashioned looking wooden shotgun style, but with an exaggerated metal buttplate, so the core system seems to be the same as I've seen in the other one.

What I noticed is the play ability to load a shot with the little meters that seem to match the huge radiator in the barrel of this thing that looks a lot like the old 1914 French Hotchkiss pistol, which if you look up the picture of that has a gigantic radiator in roughly the same place on the barrel, possibly even an inspiration for them. I don't know if this is a laser weapon that you can charge and that has to contain heat, so a radiator in the barrel makes sense. looks different now, the bayonets and shotgun style butt give a real touch to this, this reminds you of the 1897 Winchester 1897 trench gun from WWI or, that's right, you don't have the ability to pump and it has that green angle. futuristic look that a lot of the weapons in this game have, but it's topped and topped with a bayonet shotgun stock, the overall length is also very reminiscent of that, okay, I think he deserves some credit here for making a revolver from video game that really looks.

It's different, you can tell it's a revolver I guess by the shape of the grip and the cylinder, but they've tried to change this a lot so it's not just another Magnum. We have a little bit of detail if there's a hammer there. they are cylinder stop notches on the cylinder, that's how this thing works, although the trigger is not capable of double action fire now, according to the description, technically semi-automatic, a revolver can't be good, it can be before it People correct me in the comments, but the vast majority of revolvers are not semi-automatic, they only fire in one shot every time you pull the trigger because you are pulling the trigger all the way, there is not enough travel, there is not enough length of the trigger. trigger here for this to be anything other than Single Action, but needless to say I'll do it.

I'll leave you with something about that circular trigger guard housing and the flatness of this frame reminds me of something I think I'm thinking about and God knows if this is an inspiration or not. but since a version appeared on Mandalorian, maybe the Bergman semi-auto pistols have that circular trigger guard style, it's a scope, but that's where my brain goes, let's see how this thing works in operation, this reminds me of Big Smooth Cylinder , very large rounds, only five fit in the cylinder, must be something like a Smith Wesson 500, but honestly, this is its own thing, the reloading, there is some thought in it, more than necessary, frankly, for a game of this nature.

Needless to say, there is an attempt to hold the unfired rounds with your thumb, which isn't very efficient, but it would work and they bothered to try, which is good, it appears to have an ejector star. the center of the barrel that is not used and there is some kind of rod at the front under the barrel that I thought was going to come into play so maybe the user is just ignoring that and using gravity, the rear sight is a A bit curious, it has two large adjustment knobs for unknown purposes which would tend to be for some type of elevation and windage adjustment.

You wouldn't need both if it were just one. It's clearly not a Target revolver, so I don't really know why those whoa, this thing is a little left, there are those conventional rounds again which I'm not a fan of in Far Far Future sci-fi. Sorry belt linked rounds, this is a belt fed pistol. I don't see how those bullets deflect into what is apparently an upper and lower barrel. The barrels have very thick heat shields which remind me of a number of designs. I assume the Browning M2 is the one that is going to shoot. The link comes to mind, especially since this is called heavy.

I have no sense of scale, but I think given the rounds it will probably be 50 cal or equivalent, but they look a lot like 50 BMG, albeit from a profile view. I can only see a belt and I'm thinking yeah, they tampered with it, they're just deflecting bullets up and into the sunset. No, this is actually reminiscent of a couple of our anti-aircraft mounts that we have in the collection here at the Royal. gun stores where you have, well, the one I'm thinking of is four guns and you have shots going from belt boxes, side by side at different heights, to the different guns, basically exactly like that because it's two guns that are bolted together .

From the looks of it, it works with a trigger, of course they are offset back and forth, but that makes sense because the feed region of the gun has to line up with the belt, so actually moving the top one back. back. It actually makes some sense, so what seems like a pretty crazy and silly design is actually starting to make sense to someone who has a tremendous amount of strength, which is funny, the external fire modes here are pretty intriguing. , in fact, it is similar to deploying a bipod in a more realistic FPS way, so we get reduced dispersion when we turn the handle and brace the thing more deliberately and which is logical.

I've noticed something that takes away some of the realism, like we care about realism, but the cocking handle is on. the top, yeah, okay, that's accessible to the gun on the top, how are we cocking the gun on the bottom? I imagine this is a case where the cocking handle would pass directly through the bolt of the Top Gun and be physically attached to the ball. all the way down, weapon in a different location and pure brute force means you can both from A charging handle, that's what I'm going to use, it's dead, okay, this is very unusual of all the weapons we've seen, it's sure.

To say this is the only one based on a real weapon, it is now a Warhammer m79, although the scope is not used, it is held in place. The layout is almost identical, it's in the same place in the canyon, although I suppose that dictates it. the site ladder, the real thing, you press this button and this thing can be implemented in the game, it just sits there looking cool and flapping up and down, but yeah, it's remarkably similar from here on out, almost identical, it looks that they have replaced it. some of the wood they have studied an m79 to create this weapon if we open it up, look, but the rifling on the barrel is also evident in the video game version, what can I say?

It's an m79 in space, okay guys. I hope you enjoyed our review of The Guns of Warhammer Dark Tide. The more I see that game the more I want to play it, as always we at Royal Armories would love for you to come visit one of our physical museums if you can. We have our own YouTube channel that you can also come and check out, not just me on there. There is plenty of meat, we also have social networks, of course, you can check them. And also some events that will take place in the new year.

Alright, guys, take care of yourselves.