Watch ten minutes of fantasy warfare in Total War: Warhammer’s first gameplay

By Will Fulton July 30, 2015

Blizzard may have no public plans for another Warcraft real time strategy game, but fortunately for those of us looking to get a fix of large-scale, orc-on-human battles, we have Total War: Warhammer scheduled for 2016. Sega and Creative Assembly have released ten minutes of in-game footage for the upcoming strategy game, along with developer commentary to illuminate the action.

The scripted campaign Battle of Black Fire Pass shows a clash between the human army of the Empire, led by Emperor Karl Franz, and a Greenskin horde of orcs, goblins, trolls, and giants, led by Orc Warboss Grimgor Ironhide. While previous games in the long-running Total War series have all been based on historical warfare from various periods and regions of the world, Warhammer is the British studio’s first foray into the fantastical.

The varying scale of units — from squat little goblins launched kamikaze-style by ballistas, up through towering giants snatching humans from the field to eat — makes the battlefield much more varied than the previous entries’ symmetrical lines of human infantry and cavalry.

Orcs leap into the air and humans brace themselves for impact as lines of soldiers clash. The squads look both dynamic and individuated, and the developers plan on making them more so. The commentary mentions their intention to give special focus on making the impacts of clashing lines more explosive and physical, especially with cavalry.

Set for release on Windows, Mac, and Linux in 2016, Total War: Warhammer is the ninth game in Creative Assembly’s Total War series of real-time strategy games. It fuses the large scale battle mechanics of Total War with the classic fantasy setting of Games Workshop’s Warhammer universe. First introduced in a 1983 tabletop miniatures wargame, Warhammer has grown into a massive, multimedia franchise, also spinning off the popular Warhammer 40,000 sci-fi/fantasy fusion spin-off.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

Gaming

How to increase your approval rating in Manor Lords

A medieval market in Manor Lords.

Building your population in Manor Lords is one thing, but making sure they want to stick around and continue to grow is the real challenge. You could have the ideal design for a village, or the perfect tactical mind for conquering the entire map, but if your approval rating is too low, you won't survive your first winter.

Happy people are the grease that makes your kingdom an efficient machine, but what is it that people value? It can be hard to tell at times why your approval rating isn't going up, or worse going down while playing your first few games. We've zoomed in on all our citizens to learn exactly what you need to do to increase your approval rating.

Gaming

Is Manor Lords multiplayer or co-op?

A medieval market in Manor Lords.

You can easily lose hours designing your village and appeasing your citizens in Manor Lords all by yourself. There are so many different avenues to achieve victory, but the only competition or help you can normally find is in the form of NPCs. Other factions around the map can be helpful or harmful depending on how you play, but what if you wanted to team up with a friend to combine resources, or perhaps compete to see who can crush the other first? Many strategy and city builders thrive on multiplayer components, but does Manor Lords offer those same modes? Make sure you know the answer before making your purchase if that's your intention.
Is there multiplayer or co-op in Manor Lords?
To cut to the chase, the answer is no. Manor Lords is a purely single-player experience through and through. There are no cooperative or competitive modes in the game at all, so there's no way to interact with anyone else either on PC or console. This game was just released out of early access, and there is plenty of content on the way, however, we regret to inform you that multiplayer is not in the plans for the time being.

One developer took to the Steam forums to release an FAQ on the game. One question specifically asked if there is any multiplayer or cooperative gameplay in the game. The response said that "he focus is on a refined single-player experience, with no multiplayer or cooperative modes planned at the moment."

Gaming

All console commands and cheats for Fallout: New Vegas

The courier holding a gun with a welcome sign in the background in Fallout: New Vegas key art.

From the moment you begin your adventure in Fallout: New Vegas, you've already cheated death. Your first playthrough of the game should be done as the developers intended, though maybe with a couple of mods to make the experience a little smoother, but nothing that breaks the game. That said, it's been over a decade since the game came out, so odds are you've already played through the intended way at least once. This is when you can have some fun tinkering with the game and play using console commands and cheats if you're on the PC version of the game. There are a ton of commands you can input to manipulate your character, the world, objects, and more. Here's a full rundown of all the cheats there are and how to activate them.
How to enter console commands
Opening up the command console to type in your cheats is just a single keystroke away. While in the game (not paused), hit the ~ key located below your escape key. This will remove your HUD and bring up the prompt to type in any of the below cheats.
All Fallout: New Vegas console commands and cheats

Because there are so many console commands, we're going to break them down into general categories to make it easier for you to find what you're looking for based on what you want to do.
Faction and reputation cheats
addreputation <form id> <variable> <amount> -- Increases your reputation with a faction.