Wartales, the next game from Northgard developer Shiro Games, will get early access on December 3. It’s an open-world RPG set in a plague-ravaged medieval world where you’ll lead a group of mercenaries. hire when all are trying to survive. I played the demo this summer, and it’s great! It’s a simple classic yours setting, with no magic or sorcery, but also no main quest to bog you down. You can freely follow the mini-story topics as you like, or just survive in the harsh world with your dear friends.
There’s a bit of a plague and amazing weirdness going on somewhere in Wartales, but you don’t have to mess with it if you don’t want to. One of your jobs is to lead a group of mercenaries, pay them, feed them and turn them into whatever kind of detachment you like (be the good guy and get bounties for the bandits, or become the bandit everyone advertises bounty).
“With Wartales, you’re free to do what you want,” game director Nicolas Cannasse told me. in an interview in September. “We have the content and the story going, and you can interfere, you can fight and kill some guys, but the rest of the world is still waiting for you. It’s less epic but delivers. more freedom for players.
“The game won’t tell you that you need to complete certain quests to do something. You have to accept or choose every quest you get, you have to decide,” he added.
You can lead your band through a vast underworld, passing through settlements, forests, camps and the like. The combat is turn-based and you can collect different companions with various uses in battle, such as rangers, rogues, or more boys and roughs.
In Nate’s Wartales Preview from August, he praises its low-fantasy setting and describes – in detail – his difficulties fighting the game’s surprisingly difficult wolves. Don’t be fooled, those fluffy beasts are not the kind of tutorial level battles you might see in other medieval games.
Wartales Early Access On steam on December 1. It will be in early access for about a year, while the developers add new regions, enemies, battle rules, modes, and more. If you’d prefer to try it out first, you can still play the free demo on Steam.
