Total War: Warhammer - Revealed?

The Total War Center Forums have a post from a user named StormOfRazors who received an early copy of a book called The Art of Total War, which shows off the visuals created over the years for the strategy franchise (thanks IncGamers).

This seems to accidentally spill some beans about the future of the series, as it contains references to an unannounced game called Total War: WARHAMMER, a concept which dovetails nicely with the collaboration between Creative Assembly and Games Workshop announced a bit over a year ago.

The post includes pictures to help confirm the news, so if this is a hoax, it is particularly elaborate. The reference is brief, but clear. Here it is: "We're also experimenting with this in the mobile space, with Total War: KINGDOM, and taking the series to a fantasy setting with Total War: WARHAMMER."

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TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER® ANNOUNCED

SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON – April 23, 2015 – SEGA of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe, Ltd. today announced a new title from UK videogame studio Creative Assembly ™; the first in partnership with Games Workshop®, creators of the well-known Warhammer Fantasy Battle tabletop wargame and accompanying range of miniatures.

Total War: WARHAMMER® for PC, Mac and SteamOS, coming soon.

Now in its 15th year, the award-winning Total War™ continues to offer a unique combination of huge-scale real-time battles and an addictive turn-based campaign game of statecraft, politics and empire building.

Total War: WARHAMMER will take the series to a realm of grand high fantasy for the very first time in its history. Our rules have changed, and with change comes war on a scale as yet unimagined.

The limitlessly deep and rich universe of Warhammer heralds a new era for Total War. Gigantic monsters, flying creatures, legendary heroes and storms of magical power take their place on the battlefield, alongside thousands of warriors clashing in real-time tactical battles.

In the turn-based campaign game, players will find the Old World an unforgiving and treacherous place, filled with endless war and cunning alliances alike. Whichever race you choose to play as and however you seek conquest, you will be faced with a conflict that threatens to tear the very fabric of reality asunder.
The first in an epic trilogy of titles, Total War: WARHAMMER will deliver hundreds of hours of absorbing gameplay. It will combine with two further standalone instalments and additional content packs to create the single largest Total War experience ever.

“We’ve always loved the Warhammer universe, and couldn’t wait to approach it with the same colossal scale and authenticity that has characterised our titles for the last 15 years,” said Total War: WARHAMMER Project Lead, Ian Roxburgh. “We’re bringing it to life in a way that nobody’s attempted before.”

For the latest news about this title and the other Total War games in development, visit www.totalwar.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Total War’s Youtube Channel for future news about gameplay videos.

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1. Warhammer: Total War
2. Rage of Dark Gods

Priorities will be key. Warhammer's lore is vast and varied, with dozens of factions and hundreds of wildly different units. Managing the way that's presented is going to be a challengeand one which brings the series up against one of its more contentious issues: the handling of DLC.

"In Attila we have something like 5 or 6 different animated skeletons," Bartholomew tells me. "We've got a human, a dog, a camel and a horse and what have you. In Warhammer, we've got something like 60+ across the trilogy. So, it escalates out of control massively, and the only way that we can contain that within a normal price for a game is to start breaking that into understandable chunks and releasing it in sequence, and hoping that we're providing really great value for our fan base, and that they see that and come with us.

"We're always really sensitive to what the fans say about the volume of DLC and what the DLC is, and whether the DLC's worth buying, or whether they feel it's been cut out of the main game, and to a certain extent, you'll always have that line that you're drawing, that's never going to satisfy everyone. We recently released the Celts DLC for Attila and we got a lot of feedback on the forum saying, 'This should have been included in the main game'. I think some of us would agree, but if we did, then we would have had to have dropped something else out of the main game in order to make way for it.

"We're always really sensitive to what the fans say about the volume of DLC and what the DLC is, and whether the DLC's worth buying, or whether they feel it's been cut out of the main game"

"There's a finite amount of resources that we can put into making a game to sell it at a certain price point, and the fans don't always necessarily want to hear that or appreciate that, but unfortunately that's the choice we always have to make when we're making games in order to ensure
they're successful."

As a result, Warhammer will ship with four factions: Orcs, Empire, Dwarves and Vampires. It'll be the first in a series of three games in the universe, with each follow up being a standalone "Attila-sized" expansion, which can either be played alone or added into the first game. The end result, says Bartholomew, will be the biggest single Total War game that the team has ever created.

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SEGA of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe

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