Games Workshop never detailed how the Skitarii's most iconic weapon reloads, so Fatshark helped model it after a gaming classic

Darktide Skitarii aiming at a Packmaster and dogs — (Image credit: Fatshark)

What weapon comes to mind when you think of a Skitarii in Warhammer 40k? A Shock Maul? An Arc Rifle? Or even the cool Transonic Blades that the Sicarian Ruststalkers use? For me, and a lot of others, it's their iconic longarm, the Galvanic Rifle. Visually, it resembles a flintlock with a glowing blue cylinder mounted on its undercarriage, a cool combination of old and new. But it's never been entirely clear how it reloads—does it take a clip? Or is it a revolver rifle?

Well, when creating the Skitarii class for Warhammer 40k: Darktide, it's a problem the developer Fatshark had to tackle:

"It took us a while to figure out how they actually work and Games Workshop didn't know either," says lead designer, Victor Magnuson, during the preview session I attended. "They've never looked at them in this type of detail before either, so it's something we worked together with them to figure out, how this would actually work in this type of fidelity."

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So what weapon was chosen to help model the Galvanic Rifle? It allowed us, says Magnuson, "to pay homage to a gaming classic, the M1 Garand, which is a weapon I really love using in other games". If you don't remember the M1 Garand, you probably haven't played much Call of Duty or many WW2 shooters. Part of what makes this rifle so iconic gaming wise is its *feel*, especially the signature "ping" when you run dry and have to slot in bullets to reload.

"We came up with this idea where there's a clip of actual bullets that you put in," explains Magnuson. "And then the coil thing on the bottom is where the galvanic charge comes from. This is the type of weapon we've really wanted to do in Darktide for a long time. I'm so happy with how it's ended up, it's super satisfying to use."

As someone who's been playing the Skitarii class this last week and has almost exclusively used the Galvanic Rifle as my ranged weapon, I've got to agree—it feels really good. Fatshark also did a wonderful job with the Transonic Blades, usually reserved for Sicarian Ruststalkers, but here it was allowed to create a sword and dagger combo for the Skitarii, too.

If you want to play Darktide's new Skitarii class, it's out now on Steam.

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.