Some things seem like such a foregone conclusion that you’re honestly shocked that it took so long for them to happen. When Creative Assembly announced earlier this year that they were going to be creating a Total War title based on Games Workshop’s worldbeloved line of Warhammer fantasy figurines and tabletop games, the reaction was one of expected exuberance, but also relief that the seemingly inevitable had finally come to pass.
I, too, was curious on how the match made in heaven was finally put together. Was it the death of THQ – and the subsequent acquisition of many of their assets by Sega – that allowed things to come to fruition? “Actually,” says Lead Writer Andy Hall, “THQ never had the Warhammer license – they only had the Warhammer 40,000 license.”
The real origins of the title go back to 2012, when Hall was working on the “other side of the fence” at Games Workshop. “I was in the licensing team at the time. Both teams worked really hard… GW wanted a Total War version of Warhammer, and the Total War guys really wanted Warhammer. The stars eventually aligned, basically.” The two companies had been engaged in discussions as far back as a decade prior, he went on to reveal.
The Total War series is known for many things: deep, strategic campaigns, and grand-scale realtime battles. The Warhammer team at Creative Assembly is dedicated to bringing all of these to Total War Warhammer, but also aims to create a title that’s very distinct from the history-based games the company is best known for. After all, you certainly didn’t see flying gryphons and orc armies in ancient Rome. But now that they have access to a universe where these things are a given - well, it would be silly to not use them, and use them in a big way. Literally, in some cases.
One thing was very clear when we went to see Total War: Warhammer at E3: the game is still in the very early stages of development. Much of what we were shown was simply concept art. However, the snippets of gameplay demos that we did see were nothing short of astonishing. If the actual gameplay can meet the graphical benchmarks of the non-playable, prealpha demo that Creative Assembly showcased behind closed doors, then we are in for a treat with the final game.
Within each of the armies featured – the Empire, led by Karl Franz, and the greenskins, led by Grimgor Ironhide – was a staggering variety of different troop types: orc shaman spellcasters, cavalry with wolf mounts, steam tanks, and so much more. An important addition to Total War Warhammer is how different the varied factions are. In the historical Total War titles, different groups had a few distinct advantages and disadvantages. This time around, however, the different factions might not even belong to the same races. Different factions will offer drastically different playstyles, says Creative Assembly, allowing for more dynamic battles than ever before. Seeing these hordes of soldiers clash with each other in ways you could only dream of previously is a delight. And as war wages you can zoom in as you please to see the detail on each unit, watching gleefully as they execute their foes without mercy.
Among the new gameplay features being introduced are battlefield-razing magical spells, flying units, and giantsized units. These have never been seen in a Total War title before, and their debut was striking. At one point on our demo, a spell was cast and a giant foot came down from the heavens, Monty Python-style, to crush an entire unit. Soon after, Karl Franz, mounted on his majestic gryphon, swooped down from the heavens to tear apart a group of ground units. Meanwhile, the greenskins were fighting elsewhere with forest goblin troops mounted atop a giant spider, accompanied by giants that could take down a slew of troops with a single attack.
What we were shown was only a glimpse of everything that will be in the final product. “Trying to get a majority these troop types in – and doing them justice - was difficult,” notes Hall. “Warhammer is a game that’s thirty years old. Over the years, it’s constantly grown and developed. Each of these races has a whole gamut of miniatures… but to see a miniature like Karl Franz come to life in a way I could have only ever imagined before was fantastic.”
A new addition to the game system is “Heroes,” who act similarly to the Agents of previous Total War titles. Heroes can be brought into combat and are highly customizable: as they fight and grow, you can pick out skills and traits (from, as Andy Hall says “almost thirty levels of skills”) to your liking in a way that’s completely new to the series. Be careful, however – if you send a hero into combat, there’s always the possibility that they won’t make it back.
Was it tough to get all these new additions to work in an engine that’s never seen them before? “With each new version of Total War, the engine gets iterated more and more,” says Hall. “We’ve got a larger team now… and that’s one of the reasons we can do Total War Warhammer at this time. Earlier, development of this title would have interfered with our traditional history-based games. Now, we’re in a place where we can have two separate teams. Since we’ve got the dedicated team, we can really tweak the engine to get to a place where we can have things like dynamic air-to-air, air-to-ground combat, giant spiders, and all these other wonderful monsters that are walking around.”
But what of the campaign mode to tie all of these epic fights together? Details are still sparse, but Creative Assembly promises that they will soon reveal more about how the game’s campaign works. Unfortunately, you’re going to have a wait a while yet for the game, as the current release date is sometime in 2016 – but that’ll just make all those human soldiers your Arachnarok eats when the time comes taste all the sweeter.