Skip to main content

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

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.

Editors' Recommendations

Will Fulton
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…
PlayStation Plus’ most notable free April offerings come from Microsoft
Four players stand together in the 4v4 PvP mode of Minecraft Legends.

Sony outlined all the new offerings PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers can expect in April; surprisingly, Microsoft is the company behind two of this month's four offerings, Minecraft Legends, and the Overwatch 2 Mega Bundle.

On April 2, PS Plus can get those two things free of charge in addition to Immortals of Aveum and Skul: The Hero Slayer. Immortals of Aveum is a single-player shooter where players use magic instead of weapons. Although the thing it's most notable for is flopping upon its release, Immortals of Aveum is still a solid shooter that you might have missed out on, and you should give it a shot now that you can get it through PS Plus. Meanwhile, Skul: The Hero Slayer is a tough 2D platformer roguelike that should entertain fans of that genre for quite some time.

Read more
These are the 10 best gaming PCs I’d recommend to anyone
Graphics card in the CLX Hathor PC.

We review dozens of gaming PCs each year. In 2024, there are a ton of great options, but we've narrowed down a list of the 10 best gaming desktops that deserve your hard-earned money.

In 2024, we still recommend the Alienware Aurora R16 due to its fantastic design, solid performance, and decent value. However, there are several other options depending on your needs and budget. If you want a deeper look into how we evaluate gaming PCs, make sure to read our post on how we review desktops.

Read more
Mecha Break’s robot customization shakes up the battle royale formula
Mecha Break robot head with glowing blue eyes

Mecha Break isn't the kind of multiplayer game you can master right away.

You might equip a lance that you barely know how to use because it seemed like a good idea, and spend the rest of a round attempting to bash yourself into enemies to help your teammates. It incorporates action that's more similar to that of Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon than it is to the shooter-focused gameplay in Gundam Evolution, Bandai Namco's multiplayer mecha shooter that shut down last year. Overwatch does come to mind, but in a way where mechs are still the focus rather than the pilots within them.

Read more