Total War devs claim Warhammer 3 is the most noob-friendly entry yet

If you’ve been considering jumping into the Total War: Warhammer series, then 2022 may be the year to do it, as the Creative Assembly developers are claiming that this is the “very best game to learn naturally”.

The Warhammer franchise is not something that you can learn in an afternoon. With a Wiki boasting nearly 8,000 pages, there are piles of lore, storylines and gameplay tactics that you can dive into.

The breadth of Warhammer could also be considered its downside, as new fans might feel a little daunted by everything there is to learn.

As a complete Warhammer noob myself, I was very lucky to get the chance to chat with both the Game Director and Principle Writer of Total War: Warhammer 3.

Thankfully, the new consensus is that the latest Warhammer game is actually the most newbie-friendly version to date, and the perfect place to start if you want to get into the franchise.

“Warhammer 3, more than any other Total War game before, we’ve really concerned ourselves with that onboarding of new players,” Ian Roxburgh, Game Director, revealed to Trusted Reviews.

“There are so many aspects to it that all fit together to create the gameplay experience. It’s a relatively steep learning curve for someone coming in from scratch and learning from the beginning.

“So with Warhammer 3, we actually went to great lengths on the project to create what we call the prologue, which is kind of like a mini-campaign as soon as you load up the game that is very heavy on story and narrative that kind of talk you through this great emerging story.

“At the same time, we’re subtly bringing in some of the basic features bit by bit to enable you to, at the right pace, learn all those subtleties of how the game works eventually.

“So we’ve spent a lot of effort and resources, compared to normal, going through that process of understanding and doing playtests with people from all walks of life in the outside world, to fine-tune the way in which we can onboard people to understand the basic Total War mechanics and also give them a grounding in the story, in the world that they’re going to start playing the main campaign game in,” Roxburgh went on to say.

In general, you don’t need to understand the Warhammer storyline to play and enjoy the game, but the game mechanics themselves can be complicated to someone new, as I experienced during my hands-on with the upcoming game.

“We’re aware that any strategy game, particularly one as evolved and complex as a Total War game, needs people to get through that learning curve as smoothly and as entertained as possible.

“The success of the previous two games has enabled us to have that bigger budget, and we’ve spent a lot of time and effort getting it to be the game that if you’re new to Total War, and you want to try it, this is the one to buy.

“So as a noob, rest assured that if you were to buy and play Warhammer 3 to start with, that’s the very best game to learn naturally and with a lot of fun,” Roxburgh concluded.

Andy Hall, the Principle Writer, also mentioned that Warhammer 3 is introducing a lot of new gameplay elements that they hope will encourage more people to play. There will also be new multiplayer features, so less experienced players can rely on friends to get them through the onboarding process easier.

“I think another aspect that we’ve introduced with this game is the multiplayer aspect, we’ve now got simultaneous terms,” Hall told Trusted Reviews.

“And even when you go into battles, your friends can join you. And you can give them units to fight. So you can have one mate on two units of cavalry to micro and give the other mate artillery while you try and take a city from a chaos force.

“Or alternatively, one of the other ones is more of an adversarial campaign where you can have a few more mates, up to eight players.

“And again, when you go into that battle mode, some of them can take the opposing army, and you can fight it out. And lots of banter ensues. And it’s just so much fun,” Hall went on to say.

But while Creative Assembly is making a big effort to appeal to newcomers, it has emphasised that it hasn’t forgotten about the more experienced Total War players.

“At any point in time, people can just up the difficulty level as and when they get more experienced with the game,” Roxburgh explains. “It is a difficult balance between established fans and newbies, but we’ve got the prologue there and we’ve got the difficulty levels and we try and funnel people by asking the right questions at the beginning to put them in the right place to get the experience that will be right for them.”

For more coverage on Total War: Warhammer 3, check out our hands-on review and keep an eye on Trusted Reviews for more updates.