Warhammer is one of the biggest franchises all over the world. It started as a world class tabletop game filled with an enormous amount of Lore including different races all with their own set of skills and weapons of destruction. Warhammer’s Universe can be split into two universes: Warhammer and Warhammer 40K.
The original Warhammer delivers everything when it comes to a real fantasy RPG tabletop game. Different races such as the Humans ( The Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev), Elves (Dark Elves, Wood Elves and High Elves), Dwarfs, Undead, Orcs, Lizardmen, Skaven, Chaos and Goblins fight over world domination. They all have their strengths and flaws. For example,the Wood Elves have powerful archers but have a poor overall defence while High Elves can be very powerful in close combat but they have to be deployed in smaller groups in order for them to be effective. The races have different armies with their own little strategy and tactical plan. The Warhammer setting has been used several times to create games with this fantasy tabletop in mind, think about “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning”, Warhammer The End Times – Vermintide and only recently there was Total War: Warhammer. Not every game about this popular franchise has been well received by the community, but it seems like they’re getting better and better.
Warhammer 40K is also a tabletop warfare game with miniatures and developed by the same organisation Games Workshop. This game is about the same original fantasy setting as the original Warhammer but it’s set in a fictional universe in the forty-first millennium. The game also has (similar) races than the original Warhammer but their origin of existence is very slightly : Human, Eldar, Orks, Tau, Necrons, Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and Daemons. All of the races also have their own armies with different tactics, abilities, and vehicles. This part of the franchises also had its fair share of game adaptions like Dawn of War, Space Marine and Space Hulk, etc. and it doesn’t stop there. This franchise has an ever-changing franchise and the developers love to make this franchise come to live with the help of different game projects.
One of these projects is the highly anticipated game “Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor Martyr” and it takes the game to a whole new level. The developers challenged themselves to create the first open world sandbox action RPG game set in the Warhammer 40K Universe. You take on the role as one of the inquisitors, a special agent with a lot of skills and gruesome firepower who’ll do anything to purge the unclean and defend the human imperium from corruption. You’ll have to battle against different unique and interesting enemies that are actually known to the lore of the Warhammer 40K setting such as mutants, Xenos and even the demons of the Chaos Gods.
I went to a presentation of Games Workshop about the game and it was all about explaining what goals they’re actually aiming for. First of all, the game is set entirely in the Warhammer 40K Universe. This means that every weapon, environment, obstacles and even enemies are directly created with the Warhammer lore in mind. You won’t see anything, you’ve never seen before, especially when you’re familiar with the whole Universe. The game itself is set in the Caligari Sector which is one of the Imperium’s region with a lot of star systems and thousands of planets. This sector will offer different missions ( randomized mission types and objectives) along with randomly generated maps. They promise to have a persistent universe based on player’s choice along with some story campaigns on the side.
Second, of all, the developers made it very clear that they aren’t trying to create this dull short game with a lot of answers unquestioned. The game is based on this fantastic Sci-Fi lore, so they’ll have a lot of DLC plans in the making to support this game for as long as they can. Think about different weapons, enemies, races and key environments. The DLC will come in different seasons and they won’t charge anything for these expansion packs. First, they’ll release the game on PC and after this initial release, they will focus on releasing the game on both the Xbox One as well as the PS4.
“Carry the emperor’s will as your torch. With it destroy the shadows!”
Last but not least, the game will have some amazing features like “environmental destruction” and “blood and gore” which includes shooting of body parts and special execution modes to finish off bosses or even low-grade minions. A Warhammer game is nothing when it doesn’t include any kind of blood and gore. However, you might think that shooting off body parts is just a part of the presentation but it has a lot more to it than you might think. This dismembering feature has a tactical layer to it. For example: if you shoot off a grunts arm that holds the gun, he won’t be able to use that gun anymore. In other words, shooting off body parts will help you survive these dangerous beings. The environmental destruction can also help when it’s used correctly. If a grunt takes cover behind one of those immense stone pillars, you can actually break it down piece by piece so it will eventually fall down onto the enemy. In other words, you can actually bury them under a lot of debris.
After the presentation, we’ve had the chance to play an alpha build of the game to try some of these features out. We could only play 2 missions with both a different class to play and objective. In this build, we got to play the assassin and the tank kind of inquisitor. The assassin is a lot agiler than the tank character but it has a lot more defense and health while the tank is slow and robust, it can take up a lot more damage than the assassin class. Even though you have these different classes, you’ll still have the ability to play it the way you want it. For example, the assassin can get up close to an enemy and use her melee attacks to clear the battlefield but you can also equip a sniper rifle and attack those enemies from afar. The tank class also had the ability to switch between a plasma rifle and a loadout where you can wield a sword and a bolt rifle. On top of these awesome load outs, you also have access to a simple set of abilities. These abilities are linked with the weapons of your choosing.
From what we’ve seen so far, the environments stay true to the Warhammer lore and they use different set pieces from different races and planets to optimize their randomly generated world. The way the game works is you move around with your cursor keys and you use your mouse to aim and shoot/ slash different enemies. You can activate skills by using the default action buttons. They take some time to research but they don’t really use any form of resource but they do need some time to recharge. The destructive environment works very well but I didn’t see any dismembered body parts maybe it wasn’t available yet in this specific build. However, I did finish my boss off with an execution move which is always satisfying. The boss uses smart patterns to be challenging and it was cool to see that the grunt didn’t pay any attention to his surroundings. He was actually doing a lot of “Collateral damage” which sped up the process of completing my objective. Looking forward playing some more!
Check out for some raw footage of this demo that we’ve played. Don’t forget that this alpha build doesn’t resemble the final product. The release date should be somewhere in 2017, so they still have a lot of time to perfect their game and add a lot more content. Either way, it’s looking promising so far!
Off-screen footage of the Alpha build:
