Creative Assembly signs on for Warhammer games!
by David Hollingworth | Friday 7 December 2012 | Comment now
Games Workshop has handed over its Warhammer Fantasy license to the makers of the Total War series.
Wow, I did not see this coming. There I was, browsing through some game news sites, and bam - the Creative Assembly, the guys behind the epic Total War series, have just gotten one of the most challenging game licenses in the industry.
Games Workshop's Warhammer. And The Creative Assembly's launching a whole new dev team to work on the first game!
Historically, Warhammer games (THQ's Relic still has the license to Warhammer 40,000) have not worked as computer games. A number of countries have tried to bring the fantastically grim Old World to life, but it's never quite taken off.
“We have enormous respect for SEGA and Creative Assembly and have felt for a long time that the combination of the enormously rich setting of the Warhammer world, and their stunning development talent is a match with huge potential,” said Jon Gillard, Games Workshop’s Head of Licensing, in todaqy's announcement. “Now that we’ve managed to bring these two giants of gaming together it is safe to say that some truly amazing products are going to be unleashed as a result. We are excited at the possibilities, and are enthusiastically working with the team at Creative Assembly already.”
The setting is packed with the usual fantasy tropes - elves, dwarves, orcs and so on - but with a particularly baroque angle, swapping a classic medieval setting for a more conflicted faux-rennaisance level of technology. Magic is utilised alongside black-powder, insidious mutants haunt massive and primeval forests, and all live in fear of the encroaching hordes of Chaos.
Games Workshop and Fantasy Flight Games publish a range of Warhammer titles, from miniature wargames to more personal RPGs. With the Creative Assembly's background in strategy games, and proven skill at building detailed strategic and tactical simulations, we can only imagine with glee what a Total Warhammer game would look like...
We'll find out some time after 2013.
