Classic Warhammer PC Games: Shadow of the Horned Rat and Dark Omen
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- Опубліковано 8 лис 2024
- I recently had a chat with Richard Leinfellner, who was development manager on Shadow of the Horned Rat and Dark Omen. Two classic Warhammer Fantasy games that for a while were the benchmark of playing a tabletop game on PC. Great to hear his memories from working on the projects, and how if Dark Omen hadn't been made then we wouldn't have Theme Park World!
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That was wonderfully nostalgic 🥳🥳
This is incredible to get to hear from these often forgotten people behind these iconic, if cult, games. You are doing incredible work with these.
Richard Leinfellner!!!
I just loves his work, such intelligent man.
o7, Herr Leinfeller!
Man these take me back to the summer holidays of 98 & 99, me and my brother and our friends spent all day painting and battling Warhammer in our garden shed, then in the evening be playing Shadow of the Horned Rat on PC and Dark Omen on PS1. Good times.
Just discovered your channel and I know I'm late to the party but the depth of interview and insight from these often forgotten people that make up the real history of GW is incredible. This is the first video I've watched where I have nostalgia as I played Shadow of the Horned Rat to death through my childhood. I love the format and it's so interesting to see insights about games such as Bloodbowl, et al, regardless of wether I actually played them at the time!
Warhammer - Dark Omen got a great modding scene!
"Welcome to Bogenhafen... At last..."
we need a remake of these two games now!! will pay any price for them...im so surprised they didn't milk this franchise
I love(d) Dark Omen - many many hours of fun. I so wished for an expansion!!!
An interview I didn't even know I needed. Dark Omen was my first foray in to Warhammer and RTS. Such a good game
Shadow of the Horned Rat was very beatable once you learned to cheese cannons. Especially the final level.
Knocking it out of the park with the interviews once again. I still find myself mumbling Dark Omen quotes from time to time. My first foray into modding too. Good Times.
Probably the reason Dogs of War are so dear to my heart.
"It's like hackin' mush!" Lives rent free in my head.
Oh this is a nostalgia hit. These were very different times.
Many thanks for yet another brillant video! =D
Shadow of the Horned Rat remains my favourite WFB game to this day! Such an incredible atmosphere and plot!!
My psx died when i was trying to finish Shadow of the Horned Rat without memory card :D Both games were great. And soundtracks were amazing, i often use them on WFRPG sessions
Believe it or not, I have managed to beat Shadow of the Horned Rat, though I would say it was largely down to luck than any sort of skill. A lot of battles came down to whether or not your artillery blew itself to pieces or hoping goblin fanatics would turn in the direction of their allies and flatten several squads for you.
I didn't actually know Dark Omen was even a thing, it's a shame that the game doesn't seem to be available anywhere.
It is available from abandonware 🙂 works great on my Win10 pc
Great interview. Loved Dark Omen & still do! Never actually knew there was a game before that.
Sounds like the opposite of how GW sells off it's IP now. I loved both of these games back in the day. Those tunnel missions vs Skaven were so fun.
Wow okay this video needs way more recognition!
As a kid I wanted to love Shadow of the Horned Rat, but its maddening difficulty made that impossible. I tried it a few years back, just to check if its difficulty was a result of childhood innocence but sadly I confirmed that this was not the case.
Posting here as its your most recent video. I wanted to say a massive thank you for all these amazing vids, 3rd edition Warhammer was my jumping on point and I didn't know that much beyond recognising names like Blanche, Johnson and Preistley from seeing them on the back of codexes way back then. All of these have been genuinely fascinating and nostalgic as well as informative.
Thanks :)
Welcome to Bogenhafen. At last.
This is the one I’ve been waiting for
I remember ending one of them, by driving a Steam Tank over the Tomb King general. I can't recall which one it was.
His remark about how GW were more focused in the game being good over money... how things have changed.
That was dark omen and the tomb king is called Nagash.
@grlmgor it has been so long sinc3 I played rhag game that I forgot it was THE Nagash. Still, the supreme Lord of The Undead made a satisfying sound as he was crushed under the weight of a Steam Tank 😀
@@grlmgor Actually it´s not Nagash himself, it's the dread king & the following is known about him: One of the original Dark Lords of Nagash, the Dread King was a mighty Undead Liche of Nehekhara. A powerful warrior and practitioner of necromancy, he would become one of the most feared and mysterious beings to have ever existed. The being known as the Dread King was known to have been one of Nagash's most powerful followers, aiding him in his early attempts to bring undeath to the world. He served Nagash well and was rewarded with an aura of dread and a mighty Undead Dragon. At some point after the fall of Nagash, he was killed and entombed within a pyramid in Nehekhara.
@@snyggejygge aghh my bad long time since I played it.
I couldn't even count the hours required to work out how to complete SOTHR. Good times.
Apparently you are a liar 😅
@@selby2180 :D
shadow of the horned rat was my first introduction to the warhammer world. i did beat the game. super hard took alot of reloads. would love this game remade today
Shadow of the Horned Rat was my favourite back in the day. Absolutely never completed it (although I got close(ish)) but spent many a fun hour battling orcs, gobbos and skaven.
I completed shadow of the horned rat , but that route mission into the troll country nah impossible
I've completed SOTHR but only by power leveling the amber wizard and saving before every battle and repeating until I survived with enough to continue. Incredibly hard and that was on playstation back in the day. I still play Dark Omen to this day, completing my latest run about 4 months ago, absolutely fantastic and I preferred it because undead were so cool. It's also considerably easier. None of the later games truely lived up to these originals, Mark of Chaos -> Battle March, and the Total War games just didnt deliver on the strategic, table top like, gameplay of SOTHR and DO
We FEAR the enemy!!!
They're ALL AROUND uz!
That's 'orrid!
These games were brilliant to play when I was younger!. I miss the Steam Tank 😁
I completed SotHR a couple of times - both times with the Magic cheat activated. I tried it again a couple of years ago and couldn't even get half way. So hard. Brilliant though.
Loved dark oman.
My key memory was killing the final boss with my steamtank. He must gave been coded as infantry since its ram attack woked on him but he was so big it looked like he just tripped over it😂
I would like to ask about the characters - the Grudgebringers and what was the decision to go with an invented faction. Who wrote these characters, who wrote the plot. My theory is that a mercenary army allowed for the race restrictions on 'normal' armies to be removed and allow for a credible exploration of different parts of the setting.
Apart from the noticeable easing of yhe difficulty between games 1&2, Dark Omen had fantastic maps which are a joy to look at to this day. Those flowing waterfalls and cliff faces. Beautiful.
I played a ton of Dark Omen on the Playstation...fun game
The art in these games rule
I played and beat both as a teenager when they came out. Shadow was hard as hell, but I recall more fondly as the better game. Getting your army into the gate with the dwarfs was especially tricky and I never did manage to beat the last empire level with the orc horde and the trolls.
Completed it, including the awful Bugmans pub mission. Less skill and more perseverence aka reloading for an entire summer :)
Those games were soooo hard
Loved Shadow, was less keen on Dark Omen personally but man was Shadow hard especially for a the 9 yr old. The number of campaigns I got really far through only to end up at a deadend with no money or not enough units left to defeat the challenges...but i did beat the game once, just once, in got knows how many dozens of concerted playthroughs.
Completed Shadow of the Horned Rat. ONLY because I had a programmer friend who helped me cheat and get a huge amount of resources. Even the last battle was no joke.
Anyone that completed SotHR is a liar, nah, I finished that game, as a kid, and it was HAARRRDDD!!! I remember constantly struggling to get to Zhufbar, got abit easier going to Nuln, before getting hard again trying to get to Loren, the last set of reinforcements before the 2x final battles against the hordes of Orcs and Skaven, but as I finally made all the Skaven run in that final mission, managing somehow to keep Commander Bernhardt alive, to watch the final cut scene, was a crowning achievement
Loved these games, building up armies for pvp was so much fun!
I did play through and complete Shadow of the Horned Rat again last year, after not doing so since 1997. Interestingly, the better i got at Warhammer, the better i got at SotHR too! But mindscape definitely undertuned the amount of reinforcements you get.
Shadow of the Horned Rat was a great game (yes completed) the cannons were a little OP though. Playing it on the playstation though was the hardest part about it😅
I finished it, accidently crashed the gyro into the waystone, and found my first alternate ending.
"Hove...Brighton actually", he got the whole thing backwards. That being said I remember that it was pushed before release in The Brighton Games Workshop heavily, I dare say we got it before most, maybe thats why. The shop is still going, one of the best "Warhammer shops" in the UK atleast in the south and the 90s staff were legends. When i got back into the hobby a few years ago It has lost its vibe. No more blasting music and lockin' Necromunda games.
I completed SOTHR!! Just, not as a young un. I think I barely made it out of the Borders as a nipper. Only many, many replays got me through as a 30-something veteran
Great insight into the process
Now they'll literally let *ANYONE* license Warhammer for a video game.
Hey! I resent that! 😉 I finished SotHR several times, both routes. Found the best cheese. I still could probably finish the game fairly efficiently as I remember most of the maps by heart.
I have completed shadow of the horned rat - for reals 😂
Really wish Dark Omen would appear on GoG!
Tom said in a comment below it is available via abandonware and it works fine under Windows 10! =]
Any chance Richard can help finally get Dark Omen onto GoG?
So much this.
The game is available via abandonware. Works perfect on my Win10 machine.
'Not pretty, not pretty at all'! Loved them both on the ps1
I did end them both, great games for multiple playthrough's.
Shadow of the Horned Rat was bastard hard. There are some options in the game that will just ruin your entire run.
more video s with Richard Leinfellner and Dark Omen content maybe some war hammer 40 000 content and if you do anthoter video with Richard Leinfellner please ask if there is any chance of of dark omen 2 game i bet there's a lot of us how want a Dark omen 2 Great video
Amazing games, thank you!
I completed Shadow of The Horned Rat. Secret was to let the wood elves massacre everyone with their machine gun archery. And the bloody doom wheel in the last mission... Let the celestial wizard deal w that one
Excellent interview and amazing history.
amazing stuff
Its a long time ago but think got as far as the third Battle in "Shadow of the Horned Rat" and invariably got mangled. Was a good game but couldn't figure out how to play it.
Shadow of the Horned Rat was hard to beat even with cheats. I basically had to edit the game files to give myself an army of invincible warriors that would work for free.
I wonder whether would be interview with Jay 'Shade' Wilson. His 40k enthusiasm (played a lot at lunch and at home) inspired Relic devs to make Dawn of War game.
Could have been done better. Please ask design questions like why units worked the way they did or how the story came about. I bet some of those tabletop players self inserted bits of their armies. Huge chance to learn hidden lore but all we know is the company level details from this. Always include 2 or 3 design or lore questions in interviews like this. It's interesting for viewers and wakes up the guest who will always remember stories and go on tangents far more interesting than you expect. Give the guest a reason to talk about day to day work and they'll find a way to tell you funny stories they remember fondly.
That’s great, but I’ll just keep doing my own thing cheers 👌
@@Filmdegminiatures That's what you usually do. All your best interviews are with people telling their own stories because you poke at the lore or a specific model and it brings back a lot of memories.
Interesting how Shadow of the Horned Rat survived on GOG but Warhammer Dark Omen became abandonware and cannot be found on any of the 'pay for' big retro platforms.
I'd guess that it's likely due to licensing issues rather than any technical limitations, that tends to be the case with titles that are conspicuously missing from GoG. I highly doubt that it's so simple as missing source code as they've gotten VERY good at reverse engineering titles with missing source code over at GoG at this point
@@Sevarrius Working at GoG must be interesting. It's almost like being Sherlock Holmes in some instances. Trying to get some old ancient code running again and working on new hardware and to piece together some missing chunks of software or fixing software that no longer works even the video playback for old FMV cut scenes. Although I dunno if it's Gog themselves who do it or private enthusiasts who somehow get the rights.
Great video! any idear how to install the CD version of Shadow of the Horned Rat on PC under Windows 10?
Ambush
Finished Shadow of the Horned Rat a couple of times, quite easy once you know the paths you should take.
People say Shadow of the Horned rat was hard but to be honest as a kid back when it came out, I understood it and finished it was pretty straight forward: Complete your missions, don't lose men. WH Total War on the other hand is way too complicated to get into, and I have tried over 15 hours before giving up (not in a single session, but uninstalling and reinstalling each time), and this was after watching online tutorials and all that.
If you can't say innovative, use a different word.
When Warhammer was good and not pseudo-propaganda/tool of demoralization.