Why Creative Assembly Chose the Vampire Coast for Their Next Faction
Creative Assembly recently released an announcement trailer for Curse of the Vampire Coast; the next upcoming DLC for Total War: Warhammer 2. For weeks leading up to the announcement, fans had been speculating about which faction would be next. The leading theories were either Halflings, Sartosa, or the Dogs of War. In the end, the studio surprised many by revealing the Vampire Coast. In a recent blog post, the studio explains why they chose a faction which is so little-known.
Why Creative Assembly Chose to Design the Vampire Coast
The Vampire Coast is not strictly speaking a wholly original creation; the faction does exist in the lore of the Warhammer tabletop war-game. However, what lore that does exist is brief and lacking in details. Indeed, there have never been official miniatures to represent the faction or its characters. To an extent, their introduction mirrors the Norsca DLC for Total War: Warhammer; that DLC introduced the Norsca faction, which had also not ever been fully represented with miniatures. Given the rich lore behind the Warhammer setting, why would Creative Assembly choose this faction over another fully-fleshed out race which is already well known. While most factions have already been featured in the game now, there are still a few notable exceptions; the Ogre Kingdoms, for instance, or the Daemons of Chaos.
According to Creative Assembly, their interest in the Vampire Coast started a long time ago. The faction first came to their attention when the developers were researching the continent of Lustria for the game’s Eye of the Vortex campaign. “As with all the Races from the Warhammer Fantasy Battles world that we translate into digital form for Total War: Warhammer,” explains the studio; “we start off by constructing what the unit roster should look like and how they will play differently to others in the game. For this we used those original references, along with some exciting creatures from the Monstrous Arcanum book and Dreadfleet game, to create the core building blocks. Working closely with Games Workshop, we fleshed out the roster to include a host of ghoulish creatures and monsters that we would be reanimating from the depths of the Warhammer Fantasy seas.”
Certainly, the Vampire Coast is unlike any faction which appears in Total War: Warhammer. The DLC will be releasing later this month.