Total War: Warhammer In-game Footage Released

If you’re like me and you’ve been itching to get an actual look at Total War: Warhammer in action, then today’s your lucky day. Creative Assembly has released in-game footage of The Battle of Black Fire Pass, a Quest battle that will become available to Karl Franz in the game’s campaign. It was shown off at E3, but now it’s available to everyone. The gameplay is highly scripted, and in pre-alpha, but it serves to provide a good idea of what the final product may look like.

The Battle of Black Fire Pass has the men of the Empire led by Karl Franz battling against a horde of Greenskins. Take a peak at the game demo below.

The game is obviously still in it’s early stages; and you can probably pick out a few in-progress quirks on your own. The developer commentary mentions that they are still working on things like cavalry charges. Those charges shown in the video looked notably weightless, with the exception of perhaps the arachnarok spider, and hopefully that will change. After all, it would have been much more satisfying to see the demigryph charge punch through the Orc’s ranks.

It would also be good to see some improvements to the unit mechanics. There were several instances in the demo where I spotted single units standing about, and occasionally facing the wrong direction, while the rest of their unit was engaged in combat. But again, this is pre-alpha footage.

The game’s visuals look great, and the animations, backgrounds, and units all look wonderful. However, I’m a little skeptical that they will look that good upon release. Looking back at Rome 2 and Attila, many were unable to play the game’s on their higher settings. Attila was even designed for it’s higher graphics tiers to make use of future tech to further the game’s longevity. Hopefully that isn’t the case with Total War: Warhammer, and the game performs relatively well on the average PC. But in any case, many are just excited to see the Warhammer series and Total War come together; when given the chance to lead an Orc Waaagh against the Empire, or vice-versa, I’m sure many will be satisfied with the experience regardless.

Overall, I’m a little tentative about the Total War franchise after pre-ordering Rome 2 and being unable to play the game for a few months. But, it is refreshing to see the developers being so upfront about Total War: Warhammer thus far. If anything the fact that we can see a few flaws in the game demo, that weren’t covered up, speaks volumes about their transparency. So far Total War: Warhammer is looking to be on a good start.

What are you’re thoughts on the trailer? Does it leave you more, or less, excited for the game’s eventual release sometime next year?