Wartales, the medieval open world tactical RPG from Bordeaux-based studio Shiro Games, is getting its next expansion. Contract: Fires in the Capital launches on PC via Steam on April 30, 2026, priced at $12.99. The DLC sends players into Isandrin, the imperial capital of Edoran, where conflict between the Legion and the Empire has boiled over into large-scale unrest.
Wartales has always been a game about surviving on the margins. You lead a band of mercenaries through a world still reeling from a plague that collapsed the Edoran Empire a century ago. There are no chosen ones here, no grand destiny. The goal is money, reputation, and keeping your people fed. Combat runs on a tactical turn-based system where party composition, equipment, and positioning matter, and the open world between fights is filled with bounties to collect, contracts to fulfill, and ruins to pick through. Companions come with their own specializations, weapon preferences, and personalities, and the camp you build between jobs serves as a mobile base where crafting, recovery, and morale all need managing. Progression works through an RPG system that lets you customize skills and equipment across your roster while developing your camp with better tools and provisions. Up to four players can traverse the world together in co-op, sharing loot and planning tactics before engagements.
What makes Fires in the Capital interesting is the shift in environment. Wartales has historically kept players on the fringes, moving through villages, abandoned mines, and frontier wilderness. Isandrin is a city, and a politically volatile one. The DLC introduces urban battle scenarios that reflect the capital's deteriorating state: chasing down fleeing criminals before they destabilize things further, escorting supply convoys through waves of reinforcements, fighting through burning streets while pulling civilians out of danger. The city evolves around you.
Combat is only one approach. Tracking down brigands, destroying propaganda, building support for civic institutions, even performing as a bard all carry consequences that ripple outward, influencing provision prices and public mood across the city. A new Chaos system ties your decisions to the capital's stability. Every choice you make could help pull Isandrin back from collapse or push it over the edge.
The narrative hook here is access to something Wartales players have wanted for a while. "Players have always been interested in learning more about the Legion and the inner workings of the Empire," said Quentin Lapeyre, Game Director at Shiro Games. Isandrin puts you at the center of that power structure rather than observing it from the road. The tension between the Legion and the Empire gives the DLC its stakes, and the urban setting gives it a different texture from anything the base game offers.
Shiro Games was founded by Sebastien Vidal and Nicolas Cannasse, and the studio has built a track record across several genres. Northgard, their Viking strategy game, has sold more than five million units across platforms. Dune: Spice Wars blended 4X and RTS design. Wartales itself has moved more than a million units since its release in April 2023 and has received several major DLC additions since then. Wartales found its angle in the mercenary fantasy, the idea that survival and profit are the only virtues left in a world where honor has been forgotten.
Fires in the Capital takes that mercenary identity and drops it into a pressure cooker. Where the base game lets you roam and pick your fights, the capital is a place where neutrality has consequences and the city itself is the thing at stake.