Warhammer—End Times: Vermintide celebrated its tenth birthday in October, a fact that makes me painfully aware of how much closer I am to becoming rat fodder myself. The original Vermintide was a decent stab at Left 4 Dead-style cooperative action by developer Fatshark, but much like Valve's pioneering shooter, it has long been eclipsed by its superior sequel.
Consequently, Fatshark has taken an interesting approach to celebrating a decade of rat-squashing, bringing one of Vermintide's "most popular" maps into Vermintide 2. Yet Return to the Reik isn't a straight port of Vermintide's distinctive River Reik, as Fatshark hints in a Steam post that "Things are not as before".
River Reik was introduced in Vermintide's "Death on the Reik" DLC released in 2017. The DLC only has a 'Mostly Positive' Steam rating, which would seem to contrast with Fatshark's claims about its popularity. As mentioned, however, Return to the Reik isn't a straight rerun of the map. Fatshark says the new version brings "expanded, boat-focussed gameplay that puts deck skirmishes front and centre". There's also "more than Just Skaven" lurking in the surrounding woods—suggesting you'll encounter some Chaos hordes too.
In a separate Steam post from earlier in November, River Reik's designers delved deeper into the redesign. While it's visibly the same map, the new version is bigger, broader and busier than before. "Players familiar with the original will recognise a lot of it," Fatshark says. "But we also added more side paths, redid the terrain on various areas, added more encounters, and overall updated the level to represent the years that had passed since our last visit."
The centrepiece sailing section, meanwhile, sees your crew board a new boat armed with cannons, affording stronger defences against the increased number of sailing combat sequences. Finally, the map's ending encounter has been heavily reworked to make it "more climactic and exciting," though Fatshark doesn't specify how.
Unlike the original DLC, Return to the Reik has been added to Vermintide 2 for free. Fatshark also says that "this won't be the last map we make" for Vermintide 2, chiming with the studio's previous assertion that supporting the sequel is a priority over making Vermintide 3.
Return to the Reik is playable in Vermintide 2 now. Hopefully, it goes down better than Warhammer 40,000: Darktide's newly announced class, with the Hive Scum character prompting fans to ask: 'Out of all the 40k options, they picked this'?
