War of the Roses: Kingmaker trailer features Brian Blessed by the bucketload

"What makes up a king?" asks the Earl of Warwick in this War of the Roses: Kingmaker trailer, before quickly answering it with "IT'S ME, BRIAN BLESSED, I DO." The booming British actor plays the part of the Kingmaker himself in this imminent special edition of Paradox Interactive's historical multiplayer battler - imminent as in tomorrow, March 21st. As previously revealed , his thunderous voice will shake the battlefield by announcing in-game events and warnings, and if this video is any indication, we're all going to have tinnitus by the end of the round 1.

As well as including content from previous updates, this special edition of War of the Roses features a new game mode: Assault. This has you attempting to either breach a stronghold, or defend it from oncoming invaders. The game was recently updated to support controllers and Steam's Big Picture mode, both of which have obviously made it into this new version.

If you already own War of the Roses, you'll get all that lovely new stuff for free. Otherwise, the Kingmaker edition will set you back $19.99, from "digital distributors everywhere". Additionally, Paradox are hosting a Twitch.tv livestream at 7pm GMT/12pm PDT tomorrow, where they'll be showing off the game's new content - that is, if you can hear them over Brian Blessed's DULCET TONES.

You might want to have a pair of earplugs handy for the following video.

[VAMS id="2jFLJ6o0mP8aI"]

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.