Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy is the Mystery Game I Didn't Know I Wanted - Alpha Test Impressions

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Access to the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy Alpha was provided to us by Owlcat Games. Thank you!

The alpha for Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy has just begun for those who pre-ordered the higher-tier editions, and we got access to let you know how it plays, and more specifically, how it plays on the Steam Deck. I enjoyed Rogue Trader, Owlcat's previous CRPG in the Warhammer universe, so let's see if Dark Heresy continues the good run.

Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy (Alpha) - Gameplay Impressions

Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy seems to take a slightly different tone than Rogue Trader before it. Although playing in a very similar manner, with an isometric perspective and your traditional cRPG controls, Rogue Trader focused more on combat and action, whereas Dark Heresy adopts a more investigative tone. In fact, one of the key gameplay mechanics you're introduced to early on is "evidence", clues that you find on your journey, which open up new dialogue options and are used to draw your conclusions in the investigations that you carry out.

This all forms part of your "Inquisitorial Journal", which you can use to track evidence and clues and piece together events. It's quite an unusual mechanic for this setting, and you'll definitely need to be in the "thinking" mindset to play this game, but I don't dislike the direction they're heading in here.

Dialogue options in the game largely discourage combat, although it is in the game, more so as a last resort if no diplomatic options succeed. Basically, if you lack the necessary character skills, you'll likely see combat more often. In fact, in over 2 hours of playing the alpha, I didn't encounter a combat situation once. There were options to initiate combat, but as long as you had the required diplomacy skills, you were able to avoid these encounters. Even in more complex situations, there usually seemed to be lengthier ways to handle the situation than just blasting your way through.

Like Rogue Trader, it's a very dialogue-heavy game, perhaps even more so given the investigative elements, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the majority of your playing time might be spent with the dialogue window open. That being said, the dialogue is very well written, and if you're into your Warhammer 40k lore, there's plenty to get your teeth into here.

Ultimately, Dark Heresy is looking increasingly like a game that relies on logical thinking, an understanding of Warhammer 40k lore, and, given the content in the alpha, likely a fair few moral dilemmas for an inquisitor. The game definitely doesn't shy away from more mature themes, as you would expect, so if you're after an investigation/mystery-solving game in the Warhammer universe, Dark Heresy is shaping up to be exactly that.

Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy (Alpha) - Steam Deck Performance

Although Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy is slated to have some controller support at launch, there wasn't any in the alpha build I got to play, so I had to run a Keyboard controller template to play the game.

Surprisingly, there is already a Steam Deck graphics preset in the game, but it does not appear to be properly optimized yet: the frame rate was around 20-25 FPS, with the GPU at 100% load the entire time. Given that the preset exists at all, we can assume the developers will further optimize for launch to achieve a playable 30 FPS experience.

We can improve performance slightly by putting all settings to "Low", so there is some scalability on the table still, but it tends to hang around 25-30FPS then.

Overall, the alpha was playable on the Steam Deck, thanks to the game being point-and-click and turn-based in combat, so there is no need for fast reactions or smooth gameplay.

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