Total War: Warhammer Come together for new Quests
June 2015 – At E3 we met with Total War developers The Creative Assembly to get an interactive walkthrough on their project. The Total War franchise is a well known product in the marketplace, and several years back they got access to the Warhammer assets and license through their owner Sega. The two products had a lot of baseline synergy, so combining the game plat into a single game made a lot of sense and was an obvious match. The Total War franchise is a series of RTS (real time strategy) games, and Warhammer is fantasy and lore universe game that has a long time following in paper & pencil games, table top games and video game incarnations.
Total War: Warhammer – Great Sword Attach – early development screenshot
The 2016 release targeted game is planned for the PC/Linus/StreamOS platforms. It features all new assets created for the combined game. Unlike prior Total War games, there is no historical constraint on the story line as the fantasy and lore world are created by the developers, not actual events. The quests and battles feature 4 races, any two of which are playable at one time. In the game play shown at E3 it was “The Battle of Black Fire Pass: The Battle of Black Fire Pass” and featured a battle between a human empire and Greenskins which are the collection of goblins, orcs and other monsters.
The game uses its own render engine and population based AI engine. As a result, there is more interaction between secondary characters in the game than appear with typical Unreal, Havock, Cryengine or the Autodesk Gameware tools. The characters have dialog that is driven by its own AI engine so it is not a script based game play. The final game will have 4-6 major campaigns that are set in different environments (snow & ice, mountains, desserts, etc) and each campaign is designed for 200-250hrs of game play.
Total War: Warhammer – Arial fight sequence – early development scene
Each of the quests and the battles are designed around a narrative path and issue rewards based on strategy and decisions in the game. There are thousands of characters in the game, and each race of being has multiple sub-factions. These sub-factions are used for extended game play and storyline which includes building and operating the country where the sub-factions and the beings natively reside.
The depth of the character base allows for detailed action using the Total War feature of dynamic view and panning of the action on the battle field. The AI engine allows the secondary characters, around the ones being controlled, to engage in automated battle. The gameplay and the game view is also supported in the vertical direction, with air battles and grand overviews.
The game play is being designed to be true to the Warhammer worlds, with the action and interaction that is possible with Total War.
