World Wide

Canada

United States

United Kingdom

France

Germany

Russia

Sweden

Norway

Denmark

Daemon-strewn strategy smash, Total War: WARHAMMER III launched itself into the hands of eager gamers in February, garnering widespread acclaim in the process. The game marks the last chapter in the WARHAMMER series of Total War games nearly six years after the launch of Total War: WARHAMMER. To find out more about the series’ fantastical journey and what went into making Total War: WARHAMMER III a worthy final entry, Intel Gaming Access overcame its daemons to parley with Ian Roxburgh, game director at Creative Assembly in the UK.
The Total War series blends turn-based campaigns with epic real-time battles between thousands of troops to deliver spectacle on a massive scale. Traditionally the franchise has focused on turbulent events from human history, but the Total War: WARHAMMER series embraces the epic fantasy of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles universe, Games Workshop’s most popular and long-running tabletop wargame. Total War: WARHAMMER III is the cataclysmic conclusion to the series and throws players into a war between mortals and daemons striving to either save or kill Ursun, the Bear-god of Kislev. 
<img src="https://fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/2085555/GAP%20Newsletter%203.10/gap_newsletter_warhammer_article-16-9_1.jpg" alt="" />
Demonic Ambition
“This is our most ambitious title to date and players will have access to an unprecedented level of features and game modes to play when they first start the game,” said Ian. There are two campaigns to choose from in Total War: WARHAMMER III: The Lost God Prologue campaign, which delivers the optimal onboarding and narrative experience for series newcomers, and the Realm of Chaos campaign. “The Realm of Chaos is the game’s signature campaign experience that will see players conquer the far east of the Warhammer world and eventually invade the otherworldly Realms of Chaos,” Ian continued.
“But the thing I’d particularly like to bring to the attention of the Intel community is the new prologue campaign,” said Ian. “If you’re a newcomer to the series or have struggled to pick up Total War in the past, this is the experience for you.” The prologue campaign teaches players everything they need to know about Total War within the context of its own unique narrative. “This prologue also leads directly into our main campaign,” continued Ian, “so you can take what you’ve learnt to the next stage and conquer the world!”
<img src="https://fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/2085555/GAP%20Newsletter%203.10/gap_newsletter_warhammer_article-16-9_2_1.png" alt="" />
Beyond the main campaigns, Total War: WARHAMMER III features several multiplayer modes including three campaign scenarios to beat alongside — or against — friends. The new Domination competitive battle mode pits players against each other for control of areas of a battlefield whilst calling in dynamic reinforcements. “We also have custom battles where players can test their might vs AI-opponents in any of the multitude of battle options that we offer including sieges, minor settlements, and land battles,” said Ian. “There really is something for everyone.” 
Inspiring Legacy
Working on anything in the WARHAMMER universe means being able to call on the rich decades-spanning history of the Games Workshop franchise. “The biggest inspiration for the game is, of course, the amazing Warhammer Fantasy Battles world that’s been expertly crafted by Games Workshop since the 1980s,” said Ian. “Games Workshop have released a litany of awe-inspiring material that has given life to this world, and we used a lot of it as reference points for all three games.”
<img src="https://fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/2085555/GAP%20Newsletter%203.10/gap_newsletter_warhammer_article-16-9_3.jpg" alt="" />
In WARHAMMER III, players venture into the nightmarish Realms of Chaos, an incomprehensible plain ruled over by four malevolent Gods of Chaos – Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle. “Given this sinister realm was unlike anything we’d ever done before, we relied heavily on the artwork found within the Daemons of Chaos army book and the artwork by Games Workshop Art Director John Blanche to help steer its design direction,” said Ian. 
Nailing Khorne
The game relies heavily on the armies that Games Workshop created for Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and transposing each of their asymmetric identities into the game in a fun and authentic way is always an interesting challenge for the team at Creative Assembly. “You’d think that the more complex the army, the harder they would be to include in the game, but for Khorne — the Chaos God of blood and skulls — we found the opposite to be the case,” said Ian. 
Unlike his brethren, Khorne is relatively one-dimensional in that his modus operandi is to get into battles as quickly as possible, forgoing diplomacy and magic in favor of good-old close-quarters combat and maximum bloodletting. “This nature of his meant that we had some difficulty in fine tuning his experience so that it was always fun,” explained Ian. “In the end, I think we really nailed his flavor, and his fast-tempo design direction has really struck a chord with our community.” 
<img src="https://fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/2085555/GAP%20Newsletter%203.10/gap_newsletter_warhammer_article-16-9_4.jpg" alt="" />
Peak Performance
When it comes to optimizing PC performance, Total War in general is something of a unique proposition. Between the campaign map and the real-time battles, there are essentially two computationally complex games in one, each with a different focus in terms of gameplay and hardware resources. “Players can of course scale down the visuals to match their system’s capabilities and find a happy medium between performance and visual quality,” said Ian, “but as with all PC games, powerful components are always desirable if you want to get the best of both.”
Players will get the most out of Total War: WARHAMMER III with a decent quality up-to-date multicore processor and GPU, and 8GB of RAM or more. “Our engine also shuffles a lot of data and assets around during loading, so a fast SSD or M.2 NVMe drive is also highly desirable,” added Ian. 
<img src="https://fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/2085555/GAP%20Newsletter%203.10/gap_newsletter_warhammer_article-16-9_5_1.png" alt="" />
Intel Muscle
Creative Assembly and Intel have a long and fruitful history of collaboration across the Total War series, with the goal of ensuring PC players have the best experience possible. “Many discussions take place between Intel’s engineers and our programmers throughout the course of each development cycle,” said Ian. “The results of these collaborations have come in many forms — such as optimizations to CPU usage across multiple cores, task-parallelization, and expanding the limits of what our engine is capable of.” 
One concrete example of what the ongoing collaboration has delivered is the Skaven Laboratory, an experimental sandbox Creative Assembly released as a free update for Total War: WARHAMMER II. “This exposed many controls to the player which aren’t normally accessible, such as unit mass and size, gravity, projectile penetration, explosion radii, and loads more,” said Ian. “Intel were instrumental in helping us realize and craft this playground.”
<img src="https://fs.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/2085555/GAP%20Newsletter%203.10/gap_newsletter_warhammer_article-16-9_6_1.png" alt="" />
During development of Total War: WARHAMMER III, the team at Creative Assembly used Intel’s VTune™ tool to identify processing bottlenecks, but Ian says the most important benefit of the relationship is simply the access to valuable information. “What’s been super-useful is the insights Intel can bring to our programmers with their deep knowledge of chip architecture and functionality, and the way in which modern operating systems schedule threads to make use of multiple CPU cores,” said Ian.
More War
This might be the final game in the Total War: WARHAMMER series, but it’s only the beginning of the WARHAMMER III journey. The extensive roadmap of upcoming additional content and updates includes the successor to the Mortal Empires campaign mode that was released after Total War: WARHAMMER II. “Within this mode we will combine the campaign maps of all three games in the series to create one of the biggest strategy game maps ever made,” said Ian. “It was always our ambition to recreate the entire Warhammer fantasy world, and this mode really is the culmination of that vision. Watch this space.”
<a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1142710/Total_War_WARHAMMER_III/">Buy Total War: WARHAMMER III on Steam</a>

Get the Tour of Total War: WARHAMMER III with Creative Assembly

Total War: WARHAMMER III - The Glorious End of an Era