Last month at the PC Gaming Show we got to bring you a behind-the-scenes look at Total War: Warhammer 40,000 including glimpses of a battle between the Astra Militarum and orks. The video above, revealed at BiliBili World, is a more detailed look at the same battle in the Armageddon Theatre campaign, and looks sick as hell.
Though I’m not convinced my PC will be able to run it. Seeing the framerate drop when the explosions go off and limbs start flying through the air has me looking at my wallet in concern.
While the spectacle looks neat, once again the part I’m most interested in is the cover system. A couple of minutes into that video, you can see the player send infantry into barricades and it looks like they dynamically split into smaller squads to suit the cover available, and to take advantage of cover provided on the upper storey of a ruined building.
Then the ogryns come along and stomp through a bunch of it. Like the sentinel walkers in an earlier part of the footage, the hefty lads trash barricades they pass through while the regular infantry are animated vaulting over them. Looks like we’ll have to be careful to maneuver around any protection we want to preserve for the sake of keeping the little guys alive.
Though maybe that’s not in character. As the narrator says watching a barrage rain destruction on one and all, “These men did their duty.” The average Imperial Guardsmen has an estimated life expectancy of 15 hours in combat, and once you’ve done your duty tying down enemies with jump-packs long enough for the artillery to load, well, both you and your cover are expendable.
