PC Gamer recently took a trip to The Creative Assembly’s UK headquarters to see the feverishly anticipated Total War: Warhammer in action, and they’ve uploaded a batch of screenshots that show off the game’s cinematic fantasy battles.
It’s time to get excited, fellow Warhammer fans, because this looks great. Sure, the shots are clearly tweaked and posed for maximum dramatic effect, and most PCs probably won’t be able to get the game looking this good, but on the other hand just LOOK at those Demigryph Knights charging into battle alongside the Emperor.
The skirmish being shown here is The Battle of Blackfire Pass, an example of the game’s new ‘quest battles’. If human leader Emperor Karl Franz can defeat the ork hordes and regain control of the Pass, which links the orkish and human kingdoms together, he’ll unlock the ability to wield the legendary Hammer of Sigmar. Each of the game’s faction leaders will have their own quest battles to complete, and doing so will net them unique items, abilities and mounts.
An accompanying preview reveals that CA has been hard at work ensuring that Warhammer’s menageries of monsters and mutants bring an entirely new feel to the Total War series.
“There’s a lot of work we’ve done on the animations, to make the combat seem more dynamic and responsive.” says project lead Ian Roxburgh. “The sheer amount of animations is huge—even down to the amount of different skeletons, 30 types as opposed to 5 or 6 in previous total war games.”
That includes giant spiders, airborne wyverns and eagles, vomit-spewing trolls and more. Each of the game’s factions will bring their own hideous monstrosities to the field, which should put the hammer in the nail of the traditional rock-paper-scissors approach to strategy in Total War. It’s all very well matching your spearmen against an ork wyvern-rider, but prepare to be horribly maimed when he simply flies over the front ranks of your defensive line.
“We’re playing with each of the races like it’s an individual Total War game in its own right,” says the game’s battle designer Simon Mann. “They are so diverse, we want to revel in that.”
Total War: Warhammer is now listed on Steam, but the release date reads simply ”coming soon”. It’s not yet clear whether we’ll get our hands on it this year or next.
