Warhammer has had a couple of cool games released on the market and all have been fairly appreciated. Vermintide and the Dawn of War series will probably be the most popular Warhammer games out there. Warhammer just has a lot of lore to fool around with and most of these projects turn out very well. With Warhammer: Martyr coming out for the PS4 in the near future, there’s another one coming and it’s called “Warhammer: Chaosbane”.
Warhammer: Chaosbane is a hack-and-slash Diablo type of game that’s set in the Warhammer universe. The build we’ve seen at Gamescom is still an early build ( Pre-Alpha), so all of these features aren’t final and will probably change over the months but from what we’ve seen this might be yet another successful title within the Warhammer universe.
One of the features that were talked about during the presentation was the fact that every single character will have a different gameplay mechanic. The presentation showed us 4 different classes to choose from: High Wood Waywatcher, High Elf Mage, Empire Soldier and the Dwarf Slayer. We’ve only got the chance to see the Empire Soldier and High Elf Mage in action. Talking about these “different mechanics”, we could see that the Empire soldier is built around close combat action, using his shield to block. Each block he makes will give him a certain amount of energy that he eventually can use to power his abilities. The High Elf Maga is all about AOE damage and crowd control abilities. Most of the time, you would see the Mage using an ability and the player would then control this magic attack with his right joystick on the controller. For example: Using a lightning strike, gave the player the ability to target the strikes. Firing a light orb, allowed the player to move the orb around.
Warhammer has a great lore that developers can use, to create amazing projects but this isn’t an easy-grab kind of task. The developers are working very closely with the people of Warhammer to create a setting and of course characters that are “real” to the Warhammer universe. The developers are making sure that they’re doing everything they can to make a “great” Warhammer experience. This is why the different characters will also react differently to one another because the lore says so. Each class will have a different approach to the story’s plots because of the characters background as a race and confliction between them and another race.
Each class will have over 40 skills to use during their playthrough but they have to unlock them first. There will be class abilities, racial abilities and also God tree abilities. These God abilities are far more powerful than the basic skills they have. Each race will have a different God, so each God will give different abilities. Each character will also use the “bloodlust” system. Each time, a player kills a bunch of enemies, the bloodlust meter will fill up. You have 3 different stages. When you activate this “bloodlust” mode, you’ll be boosted to a more powerful being. However, each stage will give you access to a number of skills and a certain amount of time before the bloodlust mode stops. The first stage will give you access to only one ability, the second bloodlust stage will give you 2 abilities and of course, the third one will give you 3 abilities. Each stage gives a longer duration of the bloodlust mode.
The game will also be optimized for the PS4 and they did this in a certain of ways. Normally, these kinds of games offer a pick-up and drop system when it comes to the equipment tab. On PS4, this is a bit more difficult to realize and that’s why they’ve chosen to rework this system well. On the PS4, the equipment tab will be a lot more “expanded” than the PC version. It will be more like this: Choose an equipment slot and everything from your inventory that can be equipped into this slot will be shown. So it’s just more of “making a selection and equip it”. The game also features co-op which allows a second, third or even a fourth player to drop-in and joins the fray. How they’ll manage to get 4 people on a small screen, is still a riddle but they did manage to make the equipment tabs smaller, so it won’t be a bore to the other players.
My take on Warhammer Chaosbane
After the presentation, we got the opportunity to play a couple of levels with the High Elf Mage and Empire Soldier. We had access to a couple of strong abilities and we were also equipped with the best armor in the game. Even though we had great armor and were strong as hell, the game still felt challenging. We both took upon a role that suited our class best. I was the Empire Soldier, so my job was tanking the mobs to make sure the High Elf Mage could take out most of the mobs. Even though we were a great team, if we weren’t careful the mobs could easily flank us because they were coming from everywhere. In the end, there was a boss fight with a couple of cool boss mechanics. You couldn’t just stand there spamming all of your abilities, you had to move around and wait for an opening.
A lot of our abilities felt useful and powerful to use on any kind of mob. You could easily survive each attack but you just had to be smart enough. It’s all about finding the right combination and each class you pick will have its combo, it’s up to you to find the perfect build that’ll suit your playstyle perfectly. Just like any top down view kind of game, the mobs dropped loot. You could pick it all up and swap equipment on the fly. However, we were equipped with the best there was, so it wasn’t necessary to equip most of the found loot.
All by all, for a pre-alpha build, the game ran smoothly without any kind of hiccups. It’s interesting to see how the game will progress any further. From what I’ve seen, it’ll definitely be something to keep our eyes on because who doesn’t want a Diablo game in the Warhammer universe!
