Confession: I'm not a consistent person. My colleagues regularly have to remind me to update our schedule – refusing to simply read my mind – and I am notoriously hard to align plans with. But across years-worth of interviews with Total War developer Creative Assembly, I've asked the same question for years: Nagash when?
The legendary necromancer holds a special place in Warhammer's Old World, partly thanks to all the times he's tried to end it, and his omission from the Total War: Warhammer trilogy has been notable. Creative Assembly's hesitation to add Nagash has always been a matter of power: how do you introduce one of the strongest entities in the universe and not break… everything?
Bone Daddy blues
As the first necromancer, Nagash will hold sway over all undead factions in Warhammer 3. Playing Nagash will involve drawing his unliving mortarch lieutenants – many of them already powerful in-game Legendary Lords in their own right – under one banner, with a roster that combines all Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, and Vampire Pirates' units with Nagash's own unique forces. Yet Nagash is freshly-revived at the beginning of his campaign, and will need to gain strength (some mortarchs take more convincing than others) to succeed in his ultimate goal of exterminating all life.
Importantly, both Aldridge and MacDonald are keen to stress that Nagash is much more than the factions he brings together. Rather than being designed as, say, a riff on how Vampire Counts or Tomb Kings work, Nagash's faction has been created from scratch – focused entirely on the necromancer and his journey, with his united roster of undead units complementing that rather than establishing its boundaries.
"For me, it feels like going back to some of the really old army books when [all undead factions] were just 'The Undead,'" says Aldridge. "That's very much where we start his faction. We're not looking to take elements from the other three and splice them together, we're going to start fresh and clean and give him the podium that he deserves."
However, Nagash poses an interesting design question: how strong is too strong? Lords of the End Times draws inspiration from Games Workshop's own End Times narrative, which canonically brought about the end of Warhammer Fantasy's original realm. As Macdonald points out, Nagash has reached the apex of his "uber-powerfulness" by then.
"We're not saying that he's necessarily going to come in at that full level," he adds. "Part of that is from a game design perspective. You want the sense of progression – if you come in at 100, then there's nowhere to go. So we want to make sure there is room for him to grow, and obviously his fantasy is that he will be incredibly powerful himself. But how his faction plays, balanced by what his campaign mechanics require him to do [...] It's early to say where exactly he'll land in the power streak, but we'll make sure he feels like Nagash."
The end is always near
Whether Nagash starts all-powerful or has to recover his strength post-resurrection, his reveal trailer paints an inevitable conclusion: the end of the world. That comes with the territory when you're drawing on the End Times, but Aldridge is keen to point out that it's not going to be an exact re-enactment of Games Workshop's apocalypse. "We're not trying to tell the definitive narrative that setting had," he explains. "We're just taking the great moments and paying homage to the characters and what makes them special in this setting – so Nagash's principle is trying to kill the world."
As with the original End Times, there will be multiple powers competing to save the world or condemn it. But this will extend beyond the stories of individual campaigns. Other characters will have "equally appropriate motivations" to Nagash, says MacDonald, and the effects of the End Times are prominent for all factions. Some will need to fight against a grand ritual by Nagash, for example, while others may have to try and stop the moon itself being pulled down – and if that last bit's not a teaser for Skaven's ultimate middle-manager mage Thanquol, I don't know what is. While all of this is customizable, the effects of the End Times will also see entire provinces destroyed, chunks of warpstone leaving craters in continents, and lands visibly wither and die in Nagash's territory.
It's reminiscent of the first Total War: Warhammer game, in which Archeon the Everchosen – AKA the Lord of the End Times – would appear towards the end of campaigns with vast legions of Chaos troops, all intent on burning the world down. I still remember my initial experiences with Archeon, as he brought my first-ever campaign in Warhammer to a desperately apocalyptic close. Nothing has come close to that feeling since – even Warhammer 3's scenarios, which are often even more powerful than Archeon's crusade but lack the same high-stakes atmosphere.
"Scenarios today don't have that same gravitas," explains MacDonald. "That's our inspiration – to make sure the conclusion, the climax of your campaign, feels like a climax. That's the fantasy we've got here. That's kind of what we're building around. The current scenarios we have don't necessarily capture that. Some of them have strong thematics, but even the delivery, we think we can improve it."
Similarly to how Warhammer's older factions are reworked to be on par with newer additions, existing scenarios may be revisited and changed to deliver that End Times feel. "Everything is back on the table," says Aldridge. It's all to make sure Total War: Warhammer 3 is "the best possible version of itself," he adds. "It doesn't matter what it was two years ago, three years ago. As we look at all these endgame climaxes, we're going: 'Is this current representation the best representation? If it isn't, how can we make it better?"
It's a philosophy that has directed the Warhammer trilogy for the last decade: a rising tide lifts all boats, and as Creative Assembly has become more ambitious with the series' depth, the community has come to expect more. Lords of the End Times will determine whether Creative Assembly can deliver upon that. I may be biased – no, you read Nagash's Black Library omnibus because the Tomb Kings were added to Warhammer 2 – but with Creative Assembly focusing so heavily on the feel of Nagash and realizing the End Times with a sandbox twist, it's hard not to already feel confident. Nagash when? Nagash forever.
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