Variety has always been an important part of Total War. Leading one of the great Roman families in a Rome: Total War campaign was meant to feel like a very different experience to the one you'd encounter as a Gallic chieftain. One promised discipline and infrastructure, the other was all about numbers and brute strength. More recently, with Total War: Attila, we've played as nomadic tribes, with no cities to call their own, or fallen empires, holding onto what remains of their power. This is a series that's always encouraged multiple playthroughs from different perspectives - but I don't think it's ever looked as varied as it does in Total War: Warhammer.
The hands-off demo I watched was from the perspective of a Greenskins campaign, and it was absolutely full of ideas and challenges that seemed so specific to that race. In Warhammer lore, the Greenskins (a mix of Orcs, Goblins and other like-minded creatures) are driven by a desire to fight: warfare and violence are almost always their primary motivations. This is represented on the campaign map by a 'fightiness' rating that each army must contend with: simply put, the more fights a force is involved with, the happier they'll be. A few quiet turns could see this rating plummet, and you'll soon start losing troops as they tear each other apart. But if you can instead ensure that an army sees plenty of action, they can eventually trigger a 'WAAAGH!', which summons a full force of AI-controlled Greenskins to follow you around and join any battles that take place for as long as you can keep those battles coming.
"They're all about building up momentum," says Games Designer, Rich Aldridge, which sounds perfect to me. The Greenskins are not supposed to be great builders or diplomats; they live to sweep across the land as one unstoppable green tide, and I'm okay with the game forcing my hand a little to make sure that happens.
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