Total War : Warhammer - first video of gameplay released

Finally, video of actual gameplay has been released for Total War : Warhammer. (Or as I call it, Total Warhammer).

The game is still in pre-alpha, so there's still a good amount of tweaking and testing to be done. That being said, I think the gameplay looks pretty good for a pre-alpha. I've been a fan of the TW series for quite some time now, and am excited to see CA change the formula and go into the fantasy realm of Warhammer. (also a fan of Warhammer, but haven't gone as in depth in the series).

Some of my favorite parts of the video include the giants/larger characters bashing normal sized units around. Im just a fan of Orcs in general to. (The cavalry being launched when shot at 3:50 is awesome to)

Magic is something that's new to TW, and it looks pretty awesome IMO. The Orc gods foot stomp was impressive.

Aerial combat in TW now? Only a little bit is shown, but I cant wait to see how far they can push it. Wyvers/Dragons/whatever all clashing with eachother over a massive melee battle? Sounds good to me.

CA does mention that they want to increase the punch of the charge of the cavalry, which seems pretty bad in the video. They do have plenty of experience with cavalry in previous games, so I have no doubt they will have this fixed fairly soon.

The other negative I have to point out that bugs me is that it looks like characters still may get stuck in combat animations. For example, around 7:40 ish, when the wyvern comes down on the gunners. The wyvern picks up one of the soldiers with its mouth, but it looks like the soldiers around just kind of sit there and watch while the wyvern finishes the animation. This has been somewhat of a problem in the most recent few TW releases to. One guy starts performing a kill combo on an enemy for a few seconds, and the soldiers around just kind of sit there and watch without running in or doing anything. Im not sure what happened with this in the recent TW series, but it was different when looking at Medieval 2 for example. In Medieval 2, soldiers were more individualized, and would take a chance at striking other opponents, rather than being fixed on one single enemy, or instead of just sitting back and watching a 1 on 1 duel, a few would jump in and help fight.

Anyways, I'm pretty excited to see CA taking off the reigns and delving into the fantasy realm. Units wont be held back due to trying to be somewhat historically accurate, which I think gives the developers a good bit more of wiggle room this time around. Then again, I'm reminded that when CA takes a massive jump from one style of game (looking at Rome, Medieval 1 & 2, swords/cavalry/archers, etc.... then jumping to the gunpowder age in Empire....Empire was a disaster at launch and CA basically gave up on that game and let the modders handle the problems.) I really hope this jump to a different era/time/style, or whatever you want to call it, doesn't have the same problems as the jump to Empire was.

It's always been curious to me that the TOTAL WAR franchise has never gotten much attention stateside. For reasons I've never fully understood, the US gaming press has never liked the series.

I wonder if this will change all that.

Don't have much time to play computer games these days. But when I did the TOTAL WAR Franchise was one of my favorites.

originally posted by: Moresby
It's always been curious to me that the TOTAL WAR franchise has never gotten much attention stateside. For reasons I've never fully understood, the US gaming press has never liked the series.

I think it's because consoles have a bigger market in the US. (This is just from personal experience/observations), and TW is a PC only game. Also, TW can be an extremely long game to play, and the market is dominated by terrible games like COD at the moment. Faster paced games seem to do better here at the moment. (this is in general though. Other games have been hits, but fast paced games like COD still dominate the US)

a reply to: buni11687

Any chance they will release another table top emulator like Final Liberation again or is that all done for us old farts?

I saw the poor guy just frozen there in the fight too. This is an alpha build though. Those sorts of the things would be polished out hopefully over the course of the beta and then to release.

The idea of the aerial battles is cool. What kind of game will this be? Tactical? 4x?

I kept wondering where the pikemen were when that line of boar riders charged in. Then I saw them dealing with the heavy infantry.

I do agree they need to make the cavalry impacts look less like the riders just sort of charge up to the line and then politely stop.

a reply to: greencmp

I don't really have any idea if they will. It would be cool if they did, and I would probably play it.

a reply to: ketsuko

I saw the poor guy just frozen there in the fight too. This is an alpha build though. Those sorts of the things would be polished out hopefully over the course of the beta and then to release.

If they're using the same engine that they have for the past few games, this may be a bit of a problem even after beta build and final release. Even with the latest TW release (Attila) and many patches later, I still see guys just freeze up while watching some other character do a long combo on another. Fortunately, it doesn't happen as much as it did in Rome 2 (it took over a year to fix that game, and it still has awful combat mechanics at times), but it's still there.

This current engine does look pretty darn good graphically, but when it comes down to the core combat mechanics, I would rather have the combat mechanics from the earlier games, such as Medieval 2.

That being said, I hope they pull through on this one.

I hope they dont mess it up like they did with rome 2. Ive bought every game they made and im more impressed with the modders than the makers.

The mods are much better than anything CA releases. M2TW was the last good one.

One of my favorite series. Can't say they are all perfect but have over 800 hours in Total War Rome 2. It's my favorite time period.

originally posted by: TacticalStats
One of my favorite series. Can't say they are all perfect but have over 800 hours in Total War Rome 2. It's my favorite time period.

I really loved the original ROME: TOTAL WAR.

Hi my name is Lys, and I am a TOTAL WAR ##@$@#ADDICT!



DA WAAAAAAGH! is coming (tm)

Can't disagree but with the DEI mod I'm hooked on Rome 2! a reply to: Moresby