Warhammer: Chaosbane, the fantasy Warhammer action-RPG, was announced back in June, but only now are we getting to see it in action. Developer Eko Software posted a ‘first look’ video, showing off two characters and an appropriately gloomy, chaos-infested dungeon.
The video boasts that Chaosbane is the first action RPG set in Games Workshop’s fantasy universe, which is a bit of a surprise. There are so many Warhammer games and this seems like a really good fit, so it’s strange that it hasn’t been tried before. I’d argue that Vermintide almost counts, however; it’s basically a first-person action-RPG.
It all looks pretty familiar. Obviously Diablo provides plenty of inspiration, but what’s not really clear from the video is how it’s been inspired by Warhammer. Sure, the enemies we see are all followers of the Chaos god Nurgle, while the warrior is dressed like you might expect him to dress as someone from the Empire, but otherwise it plays out as you might expect, right down to the heroes’ abilities. Mostly.
There’s drop-in co-op, which is always welcome, and while showing that off, the video introduces another character, a High Elf wizard. This fella just hangs back and spams lightning attacks, but apparently he has a handy unique ability that allows him to manually place any of his spells and redirect them. Pretty helpful when you’re dealing with an army of Nurglings and Abominations.
While the video doesn’t offer up many surprises, it looks a lot prettier (and slicker) than its 40,000 counterpart, the mouthful that is Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr.
There’s no release date yet.
