The first trailer for Necromunda: Underhive Wars has just dropped. It’s just a teaser, so no gameplay yet, but it does a great job of capturing the grimy tone of the niche Games Workshop tabletop game upon which it is based.
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The trailer opens with shots of the rusted, smog-choked warrens of the underhive of the planet Necromunda.There are plenty of catwalks, gantries, and oily barrels, which can only be a good sign if you’re looking forward to optimising your sightlines and opportunities for environmental destruction.
The narrator speaks of “territory” and the worthlessness of life in the cutthroat underhive. To judge from her livery and the women backing her up, this is probably Jelena, the leader of the all-female (and notoriously vicious) House Escher. The gang they’re facing off against look like arch-rivals House Goliath – tank-bred bruisers who are genetically altered for maximum muscle mass.
In Warhammer: 40,000 lore, Necromunda was an industrial powerhouse, churning out billions of tons of manufactured goods every single day to feed the human Imperium’s insatiable war machine. Its population of trillions lived in vast hive cities, and the Necromunda tabletop game focused on the internecine wars between their ruthless gangs.
Though we know precious little about the videogame adaptation so far, it’s a safe bet that it will follow the tabletop game in focusing on small-team tactics. The fact that it’s made by Rogue Factor, developers of Mordheim – which is based on a similar game from Warhammer’s fantasy universe – makes this all the more likely.
Think XCOM, except with fewer aliens and everyone’s a bastard.