The latest Total War: Warhammer trailer just came out… and with good timing. As someone who figured the game was a fairly straightforward strategy game–like the old Warcraft games–I was pleasantly surprised to see there’s more to it.
First off, you choose to play as one of five factions: The Empire (humans), Dwarves, Greenskins (orcs and goblins,) Vampire Counts and Chaos Warriors.
From there, you essentially get two games in one. They’re integrated, so what you do in one affects the other.
Game Mode #1: Grand Campaign
One mode, called Grand Campaign, gives a 10,000 ft. view of the map. Here you control what’s going on with your armies and towns. You’re managing resources, civilizations and the military all at once.
You also use this mode to control what your hero is up to. He can be out doing side quests for sw33t l00t and leveling up, assassinating bad guys, sabotaging your enemies, or sent to help your armies.
To be honest- thinking of that kinda reminds me of the old school Heroes of Might and Magic.
But, you know. After 21 years of improvement.
This is one thing that makes Total War: Warhammer look better than I’d expected. I didn’t realize you can customize your hero’s armor, spells, etc. I figured they’re locked in. In fact, it’s almost like customizing a character in an MMO like Rift or World of Warcraft, as you have various skill trees.
Game Mode #2: Battles
The second kind of mode is basically what you normally think of with war games. You’re controlling various units in your army as they go head-to-head with the enemy. Sometimes this will be in the middle of a field, other times it’s at the gate of a town or castle. It can also (apparently) be underground.
As far as I can tell, it’ll look something like this:
- Mages in the back lines wreaking havoc but probably have the constitution of a baby squirrel.
- Knights riding in to impale infantry… unless they have pikemen or spearmen.
- Giant monsters stepping on people, because that’s much more humiliating than smashing them with your club.
- Flying creatures having aerial dog fights with other flying creatures.
In other words, good fun!
All of that said, this guy can explain the Total War: Warhammer trailer a lot better than I can. I’ll let him take it away.
