Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin takes a DirectStep into the refreshed fantasy setting

thesixthaxis.com:

What’s this? Another Warhammer game? Ah, but this one’s different from the last dozen or so. With an open beta for Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin kicking off this weekend, Games Workshop’s renewed fantasy universe is being thrown into the spotlight. We’ve had an early hands-on, throwing our Stormcast Eternals and Orruk Kruleboyz into the fray.

One of the biggest hurdles for Realms of Ruin is simply telling people what the heck Warhammer Age of Sigmar actually is. Games Workshop completely rebooted their fantasy wargame back in 2015, and while some at the time might have hoped this was a momentary blip that would soon be reset like, I dunno, that time that Doctor Octopus became Spider-Man for 18 months, the company stuck with it. We’re eight years into this era, and onto the second edition of the tabletop game, but to me it still feels that this new setting will be largely unfamiliar to people. Realms of Ruin gets to be a grand video game introduction to this new world order.

As complete an overhaul of the Warhammer mythos as Age of Sigmar is, it’s immediately clear how it takes inspiration from Norse and Greek mythology and shifts towards the style of Warhammer 40,000. Sigmar has been elevated to the position of God-King through the downfall of the World-That-Was, creating a pantheon of gods around himself and bringing back mortal civilisations that initially dwelled across eight distinct realms. Of course, Chaos still existed, and repeated incursions forced the Pantheon of Order back into their shell and predominantly the Realm of Azyr.

But there’s still hope, thanks to the Stormcast Eternals, an army of the resurrected souls of fallen heroes, reforged into… well, they’re fantasy Space Marines. As they venture