Definitely looks cool, especially with the Norsca map. That said it also come across as quite staged and pre-order pushing, especially with Darren being quite a veteran Total War player and making very basic TW conceptual mistakes.

Do wonders if there will be options for Chosen / marked units for Chaos. All this stuff seems to be Undivided focused, so it should be interesting to see how their tech tree work. Heck the Empire stuff has evolved quite a bit from their first reveal / earlier gameplay vids where the armies had less upgrades, plenty of ways to do something cool and unique for Chaos.

It has been quite fascinating to see the game develop over the last months, there’s a lot of challenging decisions to make to translate the Warhammer universe into the Total War franchise. Some of it, though indeed not entirely fluffy. makes quite a lot of sense from a mechanics point-of-view (Book of Grudges, named characters getting their famous gear as upgrades, certain characters working together etc). Other things, like seemingly no way of counteracting magic, completely ignoring the very present dispel element of the game, certain alliances being possible or penalty free (Dwarves and Vampire Counts in an alliance, not a chance in hell, the High King’s bodyguards would probably lob of his head right there and then) and quite limited unit options within armies do make me wonder where the game will go post-launch. There will be DLC, Total War is pretty much infamous for it at this point, especially given that the standard game comes with only four playable races. There will be lots of room for expansion with new armies and army-specific units and heroes. A little bit sad there’s no Skaven or Lizardmen in there at this point, maybe somewhere down the line. They would definitely add more options for asymmetric gameplay.

That said, with Creative Assembly’s past in QC, general release and netcode issues and dlc-ification they’re definitely not getting a pre-order from me. Cutting out an entirely finished army as a playable faction for a pre-order bonus is just sleazy and not the kind of business practise I want to help promote!

On the plus side though, lots of folks will get to play around with full armies, without having to take out a small loan and a few month’s worth of hobby time 😉