Total War: Warhammer – Battle of Black Fire Pass Developer Walkthrough
July 30, 2015 by lloyd
So, hopefully by now you’ll have seen the video where we got a look at the in-engine graphics of Total War: Warhammer featuring Karl Franz and his army taking on a horde of Orcs & Goblins. Now we have the full Developer Walkthrough where they run us through a battle at Black Fire Pass, a hugely important battleground in Warhammer lore…
It’s looking very impressive I think you’ll agree and with more video game conventions just around the corner hopefully we’ll get more and more in-depth campaign gameplay to check out too. For now I think you’ll be quite happy with how the game looks!
The game will work as a trilogy with the first part launching with four factions. Empire, Orcs & Goblins, Vampire Counts and Dwarfs are on the running order.
The mechanics have also been revamped so the leader of your faction can undertake quests where he can claim magical artifacts (like Ghal Maraz – Sigmar’s Hammer) and more.
We can’t wait for more!
"The game will work as a trilogy with the first part launching with four factions. Empire, Orcs & Goblins, Vampire Counts and Dwarfs are on the running order"
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looking to be the best Total War in a while
looks really promising. a curious timing though. when GW scraps their WFB range….
The history of WFB is part of the new Age of Sigmar. Its also a fleshed out universe, where the AoS one is new and unfinished. And certainly this game started development long ago. Better late than never!
Games probably been in development for a few years, might have something to do with it
Other than some new chaos sculpts and sigmarines AoS looks the same as WHFB, its not like they were basing the game around the rules, just the aesthetic. Besides im sure the dev’s see sigmarines as DLC…
My main gripe is that the game should be called Total Warhammer, not Total War: Warhammer
It does seem out of lip sink with GW currently and AoS’s release and WHFB demise, but how long does something like this have a lead time from initial concept idea to where it is shown now and it wont hit to 2016. Maybe it started a whiles back and no-one told them, or once committed the money is spent so production cannot turn back. just a thought.
Wfb isn’t dead, it’s just not supported by games workshop as a miniatures range. There is still a wealth of life in it, right now that’s coming out as video games. If they scrubbed it from the Canon then sure, it can be called obsolete but this isn’t the case. I’m glad the rich world of wfb is becoming accessible in a way that means I don’t have to buy and paint thousands of rank and file and learn an outdated rules set
Stkelly82 and redyeti are right – the established history of the Warhammer world as explored in 8th and earlier editions has not been expunged from the AoS canon. It is still very much part of the game’s lore, and is supposed to be viewed as the pre-history of the Mortal Realms, since from the perspective of the AoS point in the continuity it all transpired thousands of years ago, and only immortal characters that date from that era – like Sigmar (who used to be Karl Franz after he became the Incarnate of the Heavens), Nagash, Tyrion and Malerion (who used to be Malekith after he became the Incarnate of Shadow) actually have first hand experience of that era and remember the World That Was when it was still the Warhammer World.
It is even mentioned in the materials surrounding AoS that it is entirely possible to use AoS rules to recreate events from the Old World if you so choose (though you could instead just use 8th edition if you prefer; no one is going to stop you), and GW provide Warscroll rules for period characters to facilitate such games.
The Warhammer world we remember still exists in AoS, but is simply an earlier epoch in the timeline, much as the Horus Heresy is an earlier epoch in the 40K timeline.
Superb looking game. Love Warhammer Fantasy, love AoS and I love Total War, it’s a good time to be me.
Looks bloody amazing ! Cant wait to play it. But I think its gonna be a PC game. I haven’t seen any of the main titles of total war to anything but PC @Lloyd
i think the game will be on the Xbox one if not the 360 as well?
Looks like I’ll be putting Medieval II away!
I’ve been waiting for this game since I first starting getting into the hobby in 1997!
I still have this weird feeling that WHFB isn’t gone for good and after awhile they’re going to relaunch it. A kind of New Coke tactic to get both a new skirmish game out and trump up attention for Warhammer.
*Takes off his tinfoil hat.* Still loving how this game is shaping up. Looks great and the Dwarf in me is glad there’s none of them shifty Elves in sight.
Wow! I just wish I could sit my younger ‘Shadow of the Horned Rat’ playing self down and show him what the future held for videogaming in the Warhammer world 20 years later. I don’t think I could have even imagined that it would ever look this good.
Like you John, I’m already thinking about the capabilities of my gaming PC after that – on the same day I ordered a Metal Gear Solid V PS4 too…I hang my head in shame…
This is PC only and it looks great ! RIP WHF TT
This is exceptionally impressive gameplay, especially given that the game is still at a pre-Alpha stage. I will be very interested to see how it develops as the game is polished and tweeks are made to things like the unit impact on the charge.
As it happens, my old PC finally up and died on me a few weeks ago, after my brother took it on himself to clean inside it without bothering to turn it off first and managed to fry several components, thus forcing me to get a long overdue update (he still insists that this means that what really happened was that he did me a favour) . As a result, I am all set to play Warhammer: Total War when it comes out.
Ah, may your frame-rates by high and your temperatures low brethren
Look like a few weeks might be lost on this account
Bring the fantasy world alive. Simply brilliant fun
Looks great! Hope its available for Mac!
Miss playing the Horned rat many years ago. Hopefully this will rekindle a lot of old memories.
A definitive WFB Total War is, at the very least, a really nice send-off for the game. Looking forward to playing this for years and years and years to come.
I sooo hope this is going to be good but I have learnt to take total war pre game coverage with a pinch of salt. A lot of things promised in Rome 2 and empire just weren’t there and often the games shine once the modders get their hands on it but I remain hopeful.
I wonder if GW will bring back mass battles if this is successful. PC Master Race? Arkham Knight, checkmate
Thought it was PC only. Looks great. Not interested in giving GW money for minis anymore but if they keep licensing the IP out to make PC games I’ll save a buck or two for them.
If there is a console version I hope it’s a port and not influencing the initial product. You can do much more on a PC and I’d like to see a much larger feature list.
awesome. the way Warhammer games should be played – with big armies
Glad it’s not being ruined with AoS.
Ohh my god, ohh my god, Oh my god!!!!!!
Where’s Chaos, Elves (all kinds), Lizardmen, Ogres & Skaven? Three letters chaps… DLC
@lloyd Best total war game ever my arse… None of the tw games has yet recaptured and achieved the playability they reached in the first totalwar game was based on a strategic board game Shogun which is a brilliant game. The battles were always secondary, and that game was for its time fantastic.
This new version seems like they are going ditch the strategic side in favour of this limiting quest based approach, which for me takes away the whole reason I played the TW games. I maybe alone in this but I think this is a continued decline in a series of games and is going to be all glitz and shiney shiney and just a series of battles, the original substance and concept behind the series of games will be lost and this will just become another world of warcraft, just set in the warhammer realm. but i guess it’s what people want they want fancy graphics and cinematic battles. but still good to see thay are sticking with the PC
Adding to this i wonder if this is actually a total blunder for GW as well because they are a miniatures based game company, who is going to by Age of Sigmar if they can play Warhammer on a a computer without having to paint the minis.
@commodorerob – As I say in the video I’ve played Shogun Total War and really only spent my time playing the meta map game which was great but didn’t really feel the need to play the battles. I do “want fancy graphics and cinematic battles” I may then play more of them rather than let the PC resolve the battles.
“Seems like they are going ditch the strategic side in favour of this limiting quest based approach” – Have you seen the map side of the game? I haven’t seen anything about the campaign side yet. I was thinking Quest Battles may be mixed in with battles for cities/realms etc.
“this will just become another world of warcraft, just set in the warhammer realm” – That’s been and gone it was called Warhammer Online
“who is going to by Age of Sigmar if they can play Warhammer on a a computer without having to paint the minis.” – Dawn of War did nothing but help 40K in my opinion so I don’t see why this would be any different. It’s the main reason I got drawn back into this hobby after uni.
So I say wait and see. The lunch of the last Total War game did not go smooth now is the chance to make a good comeback from it.
I missed Shogun I only started playing at Medieval Total war and like you Lloyd I would often auto resolve the battles and just really enjoyed the campaign map gameplay. Part of the reason for this was that my PC didn’t handle the battles very well and because they took about 20-25 mins to play and on average I would estimate you need to fight about 300 to win the game.
I skipped Rome (PC not good enough) but when I did buy a new PC Medieval 2 had just been released and I was epically disappointed. The campaign map play had been changed dramatically your armies now walked around as an avatar. Although you still had city building the number of provinces were drastically reduced and essentially there was not longer much point to the game unless you enjoyed playing the battles.
I hope that for this version they may have gone back to allow more campaign map interaction but I kind of doubt it. Will be very happy to find out if I’m wrong but I won’t be getting this unless some of the old map play is brought back.
I would disagree – I think Medieval II was pretty solid when it came to the strategy and intrigue you’d get involved in as well as the big battles you’d be fighting. Might not be as top notch as Shogun but I think it did a great job of mirroring the period.
From what I’ve heard of Total War: Warhammer there will still be the map based strategy where you have to control cities and such but the Quests are an addition to this so you have a focus – a bit like the Council/Senate missions etc in other games.
I think it’s going to be a lot of fun