STACK #139 May 2016

GAMES FEATURE

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Mark Ankucic gets his hands on the best franchise collision since Scooby Doo met Superman, and speaks to campaign designer JohnWinston about how Creative Assembly captured theWarhammer magic. Total Warhammer

where we just read up about that historical period, the units, the political set up and political factions. It was the same this time around, except this time we were researching the history of the Old World, which is equally as deep as the world’s history. That’s thousands of years, fifteen different army books, a massive main manual. We spent a couple of weeks going through those, and all the factions.”

T otal War: Warhammer (which we will be calling Total Warhammer because it’s obviously the better name) has been begging to exist for years. Developers tried and tried again to make a RTS Warhammer game work, and time and time again, they failed. They lacked finesse. Passion. Understanding. Warhammer isn’t a title you can slap on a can of beans – it’s a world, a universe that you have to understand in order to recreate the magic. It was a task perfectly suited for Creative Assembly. The famed UK developers aren’t just game- makers – they’re hardcore researchers. People who want to understand the real world to the point where they can craft a digital one that’s just as meaningful. It turns out their skill isn’t just useful for capturing the world of Samurai and Knights – they used it to perfectly craft the Old World. “We started off with a very similar process to the historical games,” said James Winston, Total Warhammer campaign designer, “so when we do those we have a long pre-production period

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GAMES

geography of the world. The level of minutiae would make someone with OCD a little uncomfortable. It goes further than the names of places and legendary lords – clans and rivals that may have only graced a byline at the bottom of an army book can be found in the game. It’s almost counterintuitive to have added the kind of depth only the biggest of tabletop nerds will be able to gawp at, as according to Winston, they’re just one- third of the market they’re trying to target. “We wanted to make it very accessible to new players. We’re aware there are going to be Warhammer players who have never played a Total War before who will be joining, but we don’t want to alienate our existing players in any way. It is a total war game at its core, it just has Warhammer content, so it’s a complete sandbox environment with that juicy layer sitting on top. Then there’s that third group who might be into fantasy, or are attracted to the sheer spectacle. It’s about making it appeal to all groups and making it accessible to all the newcomers who are going to be coming in to this sort of thing. “ On the campaign map, Winston is absolutely right – it is accessible. Anyone can jump in and

It’s about making it appeal to all groups and making it accessible to all the newcomers...

Their dedication and research is immediately apparent. There isn’t a Warhammer fan breathing (breathing pretty heavily, too heavily) that can’t appreciate the immense of amount of detail and effort CA has brought to play. Looking down on the map of the Old World, a map that eclipses every previous TW release in terms of detail, structure, and beauty, it is painfully obvious that the team understands more than just ‘where the factions are’. They’ve taken the time to craft the actual

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