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You can't see it and you certainly can't play it just yet, but Total War: Medieval 3 is real. If you're wondering why that alone is such a big deal: Total War celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, and for nearly 20 of those years, fans have been waiting for a follow-up to 2006's Medieval 2: Total War. Now, it's in early pre-production. During a visit to Creative Assembly's Horsham studio, disbelieving developers are still getting used to calling the project Medieval 3 instead of its secretive codename. Vice president of Total War, Roger Collum, contextualizes it best: "Medieval 3 is, in some sense, our Half-Life 3."
Total War: Medieval 3 is one of very few upcoming games that can be fairly compared to the wait for Valve's notoriously absent threequel. But with that comes the weight of staggering expectations, especially when you look at what Creative Assembly has achieved in the time since Medieval 2. That's partly why Medieval 3 is being unveiled so early: the developer is working with its community to shape the upcoming sandbox strategy. "The idea is that people will be really excited by it and super stoked," says Collum, "but they'll also understand what it is when it goes out – rather than everything in their brain that it's not."
While we're still a long way off getting our grubby mitts on Total War: Medieval 3, I caught up with creative director Leif Walter and game director Pawel Wojs to get an early sense of the direction it's marching in.
Marching orders
For Creative Assembly as well as fans, the legacy of Medieval 2 is tremendous. It was the first game Wojs ever worked on at the studio, while Walter, who joined Creative Assembly in 2016, still remembers crossing his fingers and hoping for Medieval 3 whilst waiting to be told which game he'd be working on first. "I think we've all had that dream in us for a long time," says Walter.
"We've been saying 'Med 3 when?' internally as well," jokes Wojs, referencing the now-infamous rallying cry plastered in the comments of every Total War social media post. "We're always reading them, and trying to make it happen. Now's the time."
In truth, this isn't Creative Assembly's first stab at making Medieval 3. Collum admits the studio has tried on three separate occasions to get the sequel off the ground, and for Wojs, one in particular sticks out. "After [Total War] Atilla we had a proper go at some early concepting of Medieval 3, and we actually went off on a research trip – a reenactment of the Battle of Grunwald in Poland," says Wojs. "I took a small team, taking photos and doing research."
"We came back and decided to do Three Kingdoms," he continues, bursting into laughter. "It's that balance of [finding] the right time, the right team, the right ambition. And it just felt like what we wanted to do with Medieval 3, it just wasn't the right time. We wouldn't be able to do it justice."
So: why now? There are a few reasons. Chief among them is Creative Assembly's new Warcore engine, which from a technical standpoint allows the studio to achieve things it's never done before. But the "right people" are also in place thanks to shared development across future titles, and crucially, its creators have confidence in being able to pull Medieval 3 off.
"It's been a few years since the last major historical title," adds Walter. "It felt like the right moment to do a bit of a reboot, almost a reimagining of what any historical Total War should look like. So it was a great combination of [being a] new step for that part of the franchise, and what better title, what better setting to choose for that step, than Medieval?"
Yet even by today's standards, Medieval 2 remains a high bar for Creative Assembly to clear. The 19-year-old title is still one of the series' most moddable, with fans creating everything from a Lord of the Rings conversion mod to entirely different historical settings. There's also a nebulous sense of depth, at times feeling like a sandbox-style strategic RPG where the goal is to navigate medieval Europe the best you can. Creative Assembly knows all of this: "We see it as our magnum opus," Wojs surmises.
"What's really interesting about that generation of Total War games, and Medieval 2 specifically, is how the gameplay was fairly limited in comparison to modern Total War titles," says Walter. "But there's something about the world that really comes to life. The little things: the population [...] the trade ships moving across the map. There's something about how the world felt real, authentic, and almost simulated in a way. It was really inspiring to go back to these roots [and say] 'the gameplay, of course, is really important but let's really make sure the world is coming alive in a way that's really special.'"
Living in the moment
While the team is locked into recreating this feeling, Wojs points out one key difference. While Medieval 2's liveliness required some "suspension of disbelief" – imagining details and events that weren't necessarily shown explicitly in-game – Medieval 3 will show, not tell. "You fill in those gaps [in Medieval 2]," he explains. "Whereas what we're looking to do now is actually bring those things to life, and have them present within the world."
"Medieval 2 has a lot of these elements where you build your realm across Europe, going on crusades and whatnot, but a lot of it almost felt like it was in your head," agrees Walter. "If you made a lot of notes while you played, you could come up with a compelling story. But the game didn't always help you to connect the dots, or show you all the facets of how you're reshaping and rewriting history. That was a big starting point for Medieval 3: we really wanted to show more layers of how you impact the world, more layers of how you can rewrite history, and how the world responds to your actions as well."
While that feeling is harder to implement than, say, tangible mechanics, I find it incredibly promising to hear Medieval 3's team has honed into it so early in development. The pair are on the money: I've internally narrated more Total War: Rome campaigns than I'd care to admit, and although I couldn't have put my finger on it before chatting to Walter and Wojs, that absorption is something I've deeply missed in more modern games.
With the level of color we're discussing, Medieval 3 sounds more akin to the likes of grand strategies Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. That's because its developers are working to craft that depth and sim-feel before layering the traditional Total War experience over it. "What we have is more layers of that simulation that the player can interact with, if they choose to," says Wojs. "It's peeling back those layers of engagement depending on the way the player wants to play and experience the game. On the face of it, yes, they can treat it like a Total War game and paint the map red. Or they can engage with all of these systems, all of these layers that make it so much more meaningful."
"When we talk about fostering the rebirth of historical Total War, we need to take the best of the best and try to build Medieval 3 with all of that in mind"
Pawel Wojs, game director on Total War: Medieval 3
It's too early to hone in on those systems just yet, but Walter emphasizes "specifically" looking at the connection between the campaign map and battles – pointing to the way that equipment upgrades selected in Medieval 2's campaign would be reflected in what units wore in battle. Thanks to Warcore, mod support – at a campaign level – will be restored to pre-Empire days. Elsewhere, Wojs recognizes "a whole list of features fans talk about in relation to Medieval 2, from the slotless buildings and the multi-layered sieges," but notes that Creative Assembly has learned a lot in the near-20 years since Medieval 2. "When we talk about fostering the rebirth of historical Total War, we need to take the best of the best and try to build Medieval 3 with all of that in mind," he says, "not just Medieval 2."
Perfecting that formula is the reason Medieval 3 has been revealed so early in pre-production. Creative Assembly has never unveiled a game at this stage (Wojs points out that interviews like this are usually held in the six-month window before launch), nor has it made a comparable effort to involve the community in a Total War title's development like this. Some elements of Medieval 3 will even be decided by players, says Wojs, with polls and iterative feedback sessions designed to foster that collaboration.
"I'm sure we'll make mistakes along the way," says Wojs. "This is the first time we're talking about a game so early because this is the game our community wants the most. So this is why we want to talk about it: we'll be showing things we've never shown before, and talking about things we've never really engaged with before. It's super exciting."
It's fascinating to see Creative Assembly approaching Medieval 2's legacy not as an insurmountable challenge, but as a peak it wants to reach once more. Involving the community not only helps the studio climb those heights, but shows that it's learned from fans who have asked for more transparency across the last decade of Total War: Warhammer. It will presumably be a long time before any of us get to play Medieval 3, but hey – at least it's real.
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