Total War: Warhammer 40,000 has already become a permanent fixture in my subconscious, its trailer nestled somewhere between the bassline to 'Is She Weird' and an upsetting childhood memory involving The Jungle Book 2. I've already rewatched the upcoming strategy game's scant footage more than I'd care to admit, and if there is a limit to the amount of times you can watch the same poor orc get liquefied by plasma, I have not found it yet.
There's good reason to be excited. The Total War: Warhammer trilogy has long established itself as the seminal adaptation of Games Workshop's high fantasy setting, and the 40K universe offers an even vaster sandbox to play with. Creative Assembly isn't shying away from that scope, instead aiming to capture a galaxy-wide conflict in a way that no Warhammer video game has achieved before.
Painting the map
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It's a fascinating level of ambition, but there are still many unanswered questions. To learn more about how Total War: Warhammer 40,000 intends to do so much, I caught up with Creative Assembly's Simon Mann (product owner – campaign design) and Andy Hall (principal narrative designer).
"You can even just play battles if you wish," adds Mann. "Even in that area there are these strike battles – very vital conflicts you need to win where you can just send in your customized troops to fight a battle. If you're the sort of person who's only got a short amount of time, we're here for you, we've got something that you can do."
"Every campaign you play, there is meaning to it," he explains. "It's not just 'I've won that campaign, that was fun'. It's 'I've won the campaign. We have this territory. We've conquered this location, we are now able to push further into this area of the galaxy and play through that way. We really think it adds an awful lot of extra feeling, and kind of internal narrative for you as a player to try these things out."
Here you can see Creative Assembly killing two birds with one stone. Total War: Warhammer 40,000's galactic layer is an effective way of capturing the vastness of its setting, but it's also a smart way to make the later stages of a campaign more important – one of the biggest challenges in strategy games.
As someone with too many stalled Total War: Warhammer 3 campaigns to count, that overarching narrative promises to be the most exciting part of Total War: Warhammer 40,000. Everything else, from tabletop-inspired customization to blowing up planets, is icing on the massive cake – I just hope we don't have to wait long to stuff our faces.
