The Total War: Warhammer 40,000 team at Creative Assembly has an interesting challenge on its hands. How do you create a game that lives up to the series’ reputation as a deep tactical adventure while building a strong enough on-ramp for those new to the Total War series and to Warhammer as a whole?
The answer, says Creative Assembly, is Total War: Warhammer 40,000 – what it’s calling both the most complex and most accessible game it’s ever made. How could both possibly be true? To find out, I spoke with Joy Dey, design lead on Total War: Warhammer 40,000’s tutorial campaigns and the designer of Total War: Warhammer 3’s well-received tutorial, at this year’s Gamescom. She was accompanied by battle product owner Dave Petry, responsible for shaping the galaxy-spanning clashes players can expect in the upcoming release.
And there’s a lot going on this time around, according to Dey. Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is “the biggest and most complex game we’ve ever made”, she tells me, and it’s easy to see why. Total War: Warhammer 40,000 lathers the series’ usual tactics with a generous spread of new systems and mechanics. On a micro scale, for instance, battles are a deluge of bullets that make use of new line-of-sight and cover systems. Tactical abilities such as aerial bombardments and powerful unit buffs can be called upon in a moment’s notice, and a unit’s weaponry must be matched against a complementary enemy if you hope for success.
Petr y says the need for these kinds of tools and toys became “blindingly obvious” as the team started thinking about how to get its depiction of Warhammer 40,000 right. And many of the game’s biggest swings have roots in the studio’s desire to accurately represent the series’ horrific sci-fi setting.
Petry explains: “You quickly look at it and go, ‘There are a lot of guns here, there are a lot more weapons than we’re used to with Total War’. Everything has a lot more ranged firepower – though there’s still a lot of melee fighting […] We’ve had to re-engineer a lot of stuff to support the combat we need. The systems have been changed fundamentally so we can support the volume of fire: we simulate every bullet, bolt round, and laser beam. So we had to do a great deal well to be able to pull that off.”
Dey also highlights Total War: Warhammer 40,000’s new Warcore engine, saying it was needed to “make the campaign feel as big as it should be.” This is, afterall, a far larger game than previous series entries, playing out across a galaxy rather than a single planet, and featuring multiple battlefields on multiple worlds that must be simulated at once.
But the team also faced challenges on a smaller scale as it sought to meet the expectations of the Warhammer 40,000 community. It’s not just major factions like the series’ iconic Space Marines that have loyal fans; subfactions have their own followings too. Each subfaction has its specialties – one chapter may love bikes while another leans more towards hit-and-run tactics – and the team felt it was crucial to capture each one’s distinct flavour
The solution? An emphasis on unit specialisation, which Petry calls a series first. Units can be leveled up and specialised, given different weapons of your choosing such as bolt rifles or stalker rifles. Your sergeants too will feature some degree of customisation to fit your chosen fantasy.
“We’re capturing something there that’s so inherent to the universe and what Warhammer 40,000 is as a fan,” Petry continues”To be able to engage with it in your way, to insert your fantasy into it and share it, is what it’s all about. To create your own chapter or clan is super important. It’s something we knew we had to do.”
So, there’s a lot going on. But what about that “most accessible part”? According to Dey, the studio is anticipating a lot of new players who’ve never touched a Total War game before, which is why it’s developed what it’s calling the “most approachable” tutorial it’s ever made.
“There’s no denying [Warhammer 40,000]] has become increasingly popular,” says Petry, “That’s been incredible to see … and this game coming out within this period of popularity, there’s a huge chance we’ll be seeing a huge wave of new players coming to Total War.
“We want to make [Total War: Warhammer 40,000] as approachable and accessible as possible. But this is still Total war – we don’t want to fundamentally change what Total War is. We want to invite people into this big tent with this grimdark setting. So, if there are going to be a lot of new players coming, let’s show them why Total War is awesome.”
To that end, the tutorial includes UI gating; the gradual introduction of individual systems through a dedicated campaign to slowly ease players in. Two tutorial campaigns are present in Total War: Warhammer 40,000 according to Dey, both designed to make the leap into the full campaign and other modes less daunting. These, I’m told, were planned from the start of development; an evolution of Total War: Warhammer 3’s tutorial campaign, which while a much-appreciated introduction to the game’s many systems was still a relatively simple venture compared to the complexity of the outstandingly large Immortal Empires campaign.
But the tutorial serves a dual purpose. As Dey notes, it also acts as an introduction to Warhammer 40,000 itself, hopefully allowing strategy fans to quickly acclimate with its setting and grimdark tone. It is, after all, a bit of a larger leap to put yourself in the shoes of galactic super soldiers than it is Three Kingdom’s Cao Cao.
All this makes for what Total War: Warhammer 40,000 brand director Rob Bartholomew is calling the “start of a new era” for Creative Assembly, and it’s abundantly clear the team is excited by the prospect.
“It’s the start of a new and frankly wild crazy adventure,” Petry tells me. “We’re going to take this starting release like we did with Total War: Warhammer back in the day. We’re going to start relatively small and we’re … going to fill it up, until someone drags us away, with more and more of this stuff. With enthusiasm and a new arsenal of tools … It’s version 1.0, there are going to be some bumps, but we’re going to sincerely do our best to make something fantastic.”
