You most likely don’t get how huge a deal Royal Hippogryph Knights are. Not solely are they paragons of chivalry who gained superhuman powers after consuming from a magic cup after which tamed a savage flying monster, however – in contrast to the overwhelming majority of models in Total War: Warhammer – they by no means existed within the tabletop game. Until the Royal Hippogryph Knights arrived within the Bretonnia replace, Creative Assembly had solely ever tailored models from the tabletop game’s official rule books.
That wouldn’t suffice to make a playable faction of Bretonnia, who hadn’t had a tabletop replace since Warhammer’s sixth version again in 2004. That specific guide didn’t include almost sufficient models to stretch throughout Total War’s many expertise tiers – there was no such factor as ‘elite’ infantry, nor a flashy endgame centrepiece, like a Hell Pit Abomination or Steam Tank. Creative Assembly needed to get artistic.
But given Warhammer writer Games Workshop is famously protecting of its IP – an method which has served properly, as a result of can you bear in mind a licensed Warhammer product that screwed up on lore element? – you may think these conversations are tough. Apparently not.
“Sometimes it’s us presenting our ideas to them and going, ‘we think this is needed to fit this faction, and give it this particular tool to work with’, and they’re quite happy that we present that and go forward with that,” Richard Aldridge, head of the brand new content material workforce, explains. “There’s definitely interplay between us at times. Certain factions might get that more than others, but we like to lead with what we feel is appropriate for good gameplay. They are very receptive, in that we’ll say: ‘we need this, for this reason’, and they’ll go ‘no, that’s not quite [right], but we understand you have a problem here, so let’s try and solve it collaboratively’.”
Extrapolation
It helps that, in accordance with lead character artist Baj Singh, “we look at units that already exist. Although not every unit is in the army book, or might not actually exist as a miniature, you have some units that are described in the lore. So we’ll speak to Games Workshop and go, ‘hey, we can do this, are you ok with that?’.”
With respect to Royal Hippogryph Knights, I quote from web page 191 of my eighth version BRB (Big Red ruleBook): “the Bretonnian cavalry is unstoppable upon the open field, but it is also invariably in control of the skies above. Formations of knights mounted upon pegasi and hippogriffs will challenge and engage the skyborne lords of the enemy force before diving down to impale the rank and file of the foe.”
On the tabletop, Hippogryphs have been a uniquely Bretonnian mount ever since Games Workshop put King Louen Leoncoeur on one within the game’s fifth version. In the lore, enterprising (or foolhardy) peasants courageous Hippogryph nests within the Grey Mountains to convey again an egg so their Lord can rear and tame its occupant.
So “from a visual standpoint, it’s iconic,” challenge artwork director Greg Alston says. “The Bretonnians have always had their own version of a really nice mount for their Lords to ride, so it’s a nice differentiator, especially with the Empire’s [mount]. They’ve got something slightly different, which gives a bit of flavour. It’s also interesting to animate.”
Bretonnian Air Power
After their replace, Bretonnia turned considered one of Total War: Warhammer’s strongest aerial armies. Despite its justification within the lore, this raised a number of eyebrows, partly as a result of it was achieved by making a complete unit out of what had beforehand been a Lord mount.
“We did want to give them some air superiority, because of the Pegasus Knights they already had,” Aldridge says. “We knew that the Hippogryph, as a mount option for their lords, was pretty strong, so we were very conscious that this was going to sway that. Of course, this was before High Elves” – one other airborne military – “but yes, it was a conscious decision to give them that boost.”
When it got here to truly creating the Hippogryph Knights, “anything with more than two arms or two legs” was laborious to make, in accordance with Singh, as a result of from an anatomical perspective, you’ve acquired to contemplate “where’s it’s second set of shoulder bones? Where’s it’s second set of clavicles?”
This spills over into animation, Alston says. “With the Hippogryph – what is it? Half of it’s a bird and half of it’s a horse, so when it came to animating creatures like that, you’ve got to make sure it doesn’t become schizophrenic: like it’s a bird in this animation, now it’s a horse in this one. You’ve got to be consistent, especially if you’ve got multiple animators working on it – someone might be doing a run, another’s doing some idles.”
Fighting from flying horseback
From Hogwarts to the Old World
Games Workshop has by no means had to determine how its creatures transfer. This gave Creative Assembly licence to get artistic, and dialogue on the topic went pretty easily, particularly as Creative Assembly may take inspiration from different fictions. “We will reference films,” Alston says, “and Harry Potter’s got Hippogryphs in there. So if it relates to something like that, so people think: ‘oh, that’s how a Hippogryph moves’, [Games Workshop] is like, ‘yeah, that’s fine’.”
In the tabletop game, the stats of the character using the mount are utilized in fight, which means they’re making an equal contribution to the battle. This at all times bothered me: given most of those monsters tower properly above head top – hippogryphs, griffins, dragons – can the character even attain?
“Yeah, we’ve made the call that it’s the mount that does the attacking,” Alston says. The rider’s weapon “is form of a prop – it offers a sign that they can use it, however actually it’s the hippogryph that assaults, with its talons and claws.”
I actually hope there’s a scrapped animation of a knight leaning down from a hippogryph’s neck to poke at one thing with a lance, however Alston says it was apparent from the start that it was a non-starter, “just because of the size of it. Maybe a lance is fine, but riders with swords can’t physically reach other characters. So mounts above a certain size have to do the attacking.”
“If I was riding a hippogryph, I wouldn’t want to poke someone with a lance, I’d want to set the hippogryph on them,” provides lead technical animator Lee Dunham.
“We also consider what looks most impressive,” Singh says. “Where do you wish to focus your time? Do you deal with one thing that’s going to be seen at this scale, or that’s going to be seen at this scale? You can zoom out up to now your characters get small in a short time, so let’s go for probably the most exaggerated animations we are able to. If they’ve the identical influence by way of design specs, however you can also make it look extra visually spectacular for a similar period of time, why not go for probably the most impressive-looking factor?”
Dogfighting
This ethos most likely explains why Creative Assembly has added considered one of Warhammer II’s new matched-combat animations “against the new infantry where [Hippogryphs] will fly through and pick someone up and then drop them on the ground.”
Knights upon pegasi and hippogriffs problem the skyborne lords of the enemy earlier than diving to impale the rank and file
But such air-to-surface interactions – not to mention the air-to-air ones – prompted a whole lot of complications. Total War: Warhammer noticed CA make flying models – equivalent to gyrocopters – for the primary time ever, and it posed a bunch of brand name new challenges. Some of the thorniest occurred round animations similar to this, during which flying models should work together with the bottom.
“Flying was completely brand new to the game’s mechanics,” Alston says. “From an animation point of view, we had to deal with different heights, which adds so many complexities. We’ve got to think of attack animations when they’re flying against other flying units, and then how they deal with ground units. We had to do a completely new system to deal with those behaviours. That was quite a big challenge.”
It raises questions like: “Do we want things to collide differently in the air? And then, how do we go about that?” Dunham provides. “Then you go through the iterative process of testing: you get animators to test that process, try animations, go to programmers try and fix the bugs.”
Watching the outcomes of this work in-game is stirring. The defining picture of Bretonnia is one with a common skill to quicken pulses: a thunderous cavalry cost. In the best way they fly, dive, and assault, Hippogryph Knights are regal, disciplined, and but fierce, including an appropriately fantastical (and lore-sensitive) aerial dimension to this picture. They’re a superb centrepiece unit for a faction that by no means truly acquired one on the tabletop – talking as a Bretonnia participant, it’s significantly better late than by no means.
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