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https://www.pcgamer.com/focus-teases-12-new-games-including-three-warhammer-titles/

Focus Home Interactive has announced partnerships with 12 game studios at the company’s annual press event, What’s Next. Three of the games also involve partnerships with Games Workshop and are set in the Warhammer universes.

Focus did not reveal the titles for the Warhammer games it has in development, but there are a few hints to go on. Vancouver-based Gasket Games is working on an Age of Sigmar title, and the studio includes developers who previously worked on real-time strategy games like Dawn of War and Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. It seems likely they're working on another strategy title, and the artwork features a golden-armored member of the Stormcast Eternals.

Streum On Studio is working on a shooter, set “in one of the most popular Games Workshop IPs,” Focus said in its announcement. The teaser art features the words “Descend, assassinate, collect” over an image of a man who may or may not be a member of the Inquisition in Warhammer 40,000.

Finally, Spintires developer Saber Interactive is creating a Warhammer 40,000 game as well, indicated by the twin-headed Imperial Aquilia symbol in the teaser artwork. It’s accompanied by the words “Protect, redeem, purge,” which sounds appropriately Warhammer.

Actual Focus announcement with images:
https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/37406/focus-home-interactive-reveals-12-new-partnerships-at-what-s-next-2019


So... possibly an RTS Age of Sigmar game. This is interesting primarily for pointing away from a CA-made Total Age of Sigmar game after Total Warhammer 3. In fact, they may end up competing titles, given that both seem to be in pre- or early production.

The second says inquisitor to the PCGamer writer but I'm not convinced. The guy does have an Aquila tattooed on his forehead (and a sword), but no noticeable inquisition symbols that I could see. I'm thinking more a 40k version of Hitman. (Which makes me a little sad, because before seeing the picture and just descend, assassinate collect, I was thinking a stealth/fps game focused on Necromunda spyrers, which would have been thematically amazing.

The last could be almost anything, Imperial align and 40k. Likely SM, but who knows what genre.

I can very well see CA making Warhammer 3 the End Times of their own and ending the Old World and leading right into a future TW Age of Sigmar game. That said the description of the other RTS team sounds more like they'd either make a Company of Heroes or Warcraft 3 or Starcraft style game - so your traditional base building RTS.

In that market they can appear alongside a TW game because they are offering something different to the rank and file experience. That said the TW game is utterly fantastic so they are going to have some pretty big boots to fill to impress us with an AoS title.

I don't think CA's style of strategy is a good fit for AoS, any more than it would be for 40K. If they intend to keep going with Total Warhammer after the third game in the planned trilogy, they'd be better sticking with WHF and doing "historicals", maybe one of their newer "small scale" titles focused on the Three Emperors conflict, or do a real "deep dive" for something like the pre-Nagash Nehekaran conquests. Jumping right to their own "End Times" would be making exactly the same mistake GW did - unnecessarily discarding an IP with plenty of life left in it.

As for Focus, the stuff they publish tends to fall squarely in the middle of the pack in terms of GW licensed games - neither on par with your Dawns of War, nor as abysmal as some of the cheaper cashins. I can live with middling, so I'm interested to see what the 40K ones are, unless they're tied heavily into the modern fluff.

I don't see why CA's style wouldn't work for AoS. Age of Sigmar arguably has more vast scale battles than the Old World ever had - heck within the first few years of the AoS setting the Stormcast go to full rank and file open war against Chaos on multiple fronts.

The tabletop game might not have rank and file any more, but that doesn't mean that rank and file mass infantry isn't part of the games lore nor setting. Heck Old World fantasy hardly got even close to what CA can achieve with their engine in terms of how many troops you put on the table.

 Overread wrote:
I don't see why CA's style wouldn't work for AoS. Age of Sigmar arguably has more vast scale battles than the Old World ever had - heck within the first few years of the AoS setting the Stormcast go to full rank and file open war against Chaos on multiple fronts.

The tabletop game might not have rank and file any more, but that doesn't mean that rank and file mass infantry isn't part of the games lore nor setting. Heck Old World fantasy hardly got even close to what CA can achieve with their engine in terms of how many troops you put on the table.

Because CA's games - while still feeling like you're playing a CA game - can only just get up to the level of high fantasy heroics required for their 8th Ed WHFB-styled WHF setting, a setting that is at least partly still based in a world that is somewhat analogous to ours and so functions in a somewhat analogous way to reality, on a somewhat comprehensible scale. AoS is nigh-mythological ultra-high fantasy in worlds that functionally can't really work anything like reality, on what is as you point out an often ridiculous scale, meaning an AoS Total War game can only be one of two things; bad Total War(because in order to adequately represent a world where gods aren't just real but extant beings who actively interfere and cities can be the size of continents, you'd have to warp the core concept of a Total War game so much it would no longer be recognisable as such), or bad AoS(because in order to hammer the AoS setting into a shape that would fit the Total War template, you'd have to get rid of or radically minimise all the things that make it different to WHF/historicals).

AoS might feature XBOXHEUG armies clashing in serried ranks, but it's about heroes and gods, the basic actual war bit is just the backdrop for the important people. A game format that revolves around fighting those wars over fixed and meaningful territory doesn't suit the world.

My only hope is that Streum On does a better job of the shooting mechanics and balance than they did with Deathwing. The game looked good, but had poor shooting and gameplay mechanics.

 Yodhrin wrote:

AoS might feature XBOXHEUG armies clashing in serried ranks, but it's about heroes and gods, the basic actual war bit is just the backdrop for the important people. A game format that revolves around fighting those wars over fixed and meaningful territory doesn't suit the world.

And yet the bulk of battles in the lore and on the tabletop don't feature gods. Heck Sigmar doesn't even leave his kingdom for most of the Realmwars that I've read - its regular foot soldier Stormcast who are doing all the actual fighting. The Gods do appear, but they are not appearing in every single battle; in fact of all the god/demigod characters Morathi is possibly the one that makes the most appearances united fighting with her forces. The actual god characters tend to be more in the background. Their days of fighting were the Mythic Age when, I agree, it was about titanic battles of the gods against godbeasts.


AoS has given way to huge rank and file armies battling over the realms. Of mortal men and dwarf, near immortal aelf; brutal ork and belly gurgling ogres. And CA has proven that they can do dragons and heroes fighting it out in their games, we've got that right now. AoS might push them to make larger rank and file units, to improve the engine to the more extreme end of some of the things you can do in their Lab mode. The rest is just epic terrain features - huge rusted plains; lakes of silver and the like. So basically terrain of an epic nature, but which doesn't actually stop the mechanics of large scale war.You still get sieges, battering rams, war engines, human generals and the like. The only reason we've had less human influence is, I think, because GW hasn't yet focused on them model wise.


Even if the Gods are doing things there's more than enough room with the insanely vast realms to ahve many many wars between the nations and peoples without the gods ever having to come to the battlefield. Heck I think the only thing CA might have to turn their eyes too is the sky. Sigmar certainly causes storms and raging lightning in the skies so weather magic and spells and visual effects that are more global to the whole battle map (rts map that is) not just localised as they are now.

Let's see... Focus Home Interactive are... the publishers behind Blood Bowl (all three versions of the game), BFG: Armada, the Call of C'thulu game released last year, Divinity: Original Sin enhanced edition and number two, a bunch of odd sports/athletics games, Mordheim, the Deathwing variant of Space Hulk, a lot of Sherlock Holmes games, and the publisher behind Eugen which made the various Wargame series plus Act of Aggression.

Well, there's some quality games in tehre. Some bad ones too. So here's hoping these are more the hit than the miss.

I really wish we could get a KOTOR style single player game set in the 40k universe. A story campaign with your character as a member of the Inquisition, given choices to either stay pure or fall to chaos.

The closest thing to that we got right now Is called Inquisitor - Martyr and it's not good.