The expression, “War is Hell,” is pretty self-explanatory. However, Creative Assembly - the team behind Total War: Three Kingdoms - is about to put an exclamation mark on that statement with their upcoming DLC pack for the game, fittingly titled, Reign of Blood. Feel free to pause reading to queue up some Slayer.
The Reign of Blood DLC comes less than a month after Total War: Three Kingdoms was released, featuring gory and graphic effects and animations that will be applied to the massive battles taking place throughout ancient China.
One of the more notable additions that the DLC pack brings is the fact that horses are just as likely to meet a gory, limbless end as their human counterparts. “Equine dismemberment” will allow for horses to have their legs chopped right off of their torso, which will no doubt make animal lovers cringe in disgust.
Other Battle Effects will include:
- Human dismemberment: limb-lops and beheadings
- Equine dismemberment: leg lops
- Charred bodies
- Blood sprays on weapon impacts
- New death animations for characters vs infantry
- Dead bodies as battlefield set-dressing
- Blood scaler: increase or decrease the level of gore to your tastes
Sounds intense, right? You would be correct in thinking that the gore factor sounds a bit over the top, but that’s really how Creative Assembly does things. The studio has developed “blood packs” for other titles, including Total War: Warhammer II - Blood for the Blood God II and Total War: ROME II - Blood & Gore, ultimately showcasing amounts of blood and gore that toes the line of comical, more so than meaningful to the game itself.
It does make sense, however, to include this kind of thing to a game that depicts the battlefield savagery of war, with the Reign of Blood pack bringing with it campaign event pictures depicting the blood and gore, as well as “new blood effects for battle-resolution combat animations between characters.”
Total War: Three Kingdoms - Reign of Blood does not yet list a purchase price on Steam, but is slated to release on June 27th. BoJack Horseman might want to sit this one out.