How ‘Warhammer Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin’ brought its story to life

nme.com:

NME, Warhammer Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin game designer Daniel Saunders has discussed the effort that goes into turning a Warhammer story into a real-time strategy (RTS) campaign.Set in the savage realm of Ghur, Realms Of Ruin‘s campaign takes place as a band of Stormcast Eternals – some of humanity’s strongest warriors – fight to secure a foothold against Orruk tribes, undead Nighthaunt, and Chaos-touched Disciples Of Tzeentch.“Getting to a campaign to operate where you’re playing from multiple perspectives is quite tricky,” shared Saunders.

He says more of that challenge lay with principle designer Sandy Sammarco and veteran Games Workshop author Gav Thorpe, who worked with Frontier Developments on the plot.“They had to weave together a story where each of these factions having something to do with each other, whatever that may be, had to make sense,” said Saunders. “We just had to plot gameplay around what they’d created.”As for how that process worked, Saunders explained that most narrative games typically go through a “story treatment,” which breaks down everything that will happen in the story.

During Realms Of Ruin‘s treatment, the team was given narrative beats that needed to be hit in the campaign’s missions.As an example, Saunders pointed to the introduction of Sigmar’s Stormcast warriors and the realm of Ghur, two story beats that Frontier covered in the first mission.