Total War has dominated the strategy genre for 25 years, but its palace in the real-world is deceptively modest. Creative Assembly's UK studio has spent the last quarter-century perfecting its blend of real-time and turn-based strategy from an unassuming office block in Horsham, Sussex, its run of historical titles beginning with Shogun: Total War in 2000 before branching into fantasy with the Total War: Warhammer trilogy.
In that time, no developer has made a serious run at Total War's crown. Yet, peering toward the series' future – a deeply ambitious vision which includes the long-awaited Total War: Medieval 3, a bespoke new engine which will bring the series to consoles, and an apocalyptic End Times-themed DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3 – Creative Assembly paints the picture of an underdog fighting from the backfoot.
"We're definitely not sitting on our hands," says Roger Collum, vice president of Total War. Chatting to me alongside studio veteran Kevin McDowell (franchise content director – art) in one of the Horsham studio's many meeting rooms, almost all of them named after past Total War games, Collum points to record-breaking JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as an example of an entire genre being blindsided.
Next turn
Total War: Medieval 3, revealed during Total War's 25th anniversary celebrations, is that next step to greatness. Fans have waited nearly 20 years for a follow-up to 2006's Medieval 2: Total War – a cursory glance at the series' social media channels turns up thousands of 'Medieval 3 when?' posts – but Creative Assembly has been waiting for just as long to get it right. The studio knows what's at stake: in the words of Medieval 3 game director Pawel Wojs, its creators aim for nothing less than "fostering the rebirth of historical Total War".
That's a high mantle to reach, but the vision is in place. Medieval 2 felt closer to a historical strategy sim than any Total War game since, leaning on RPG-like features to emphasize immersion whilst giving players a sense of agency within a living world. When it comes to Medieval 3, those facets – letting players "write [their] own history book" and feel like a part of the setting, as Wojs puts it – are front-and-center, alongside the likes of improved modding support and significant work on city-sieging mechanics.
"Medieval 3 is in some sense our Half-Life 3"
Roger Collum, vice president of Total War
"We've probably started this project three times now because the scope – everything we need it to be – all of those things were just very overwhelming. The technology had to be where it's at [now]," says Collum. With those pieces in place, the confidence is palpable. The studio is even announcing Medieval 3 while it's still early in development (this is the earliest Creative Assembly has ever announced a project), with plans to give fans a degree of authorship through polls and feedback sessions.
"Medieval 3 is in some sense our Half-Life 3," explains Collum, touching on the decision to unveil the game so early. "I think [Half-Life 3 is] one of those things in which Valve will struggle to release and hit all of player expectations, so I figure [we'll] just show it and then get people's feedback, and build upon that so when we do release it, the idea is that people will be really excited by it and be super stoked, but they'll also understand what it is when it goes out – rather than everything in their brain that it's not."
It's an approach that extends beyond Total War: Medieval 3. Amongst fans, there is a sentiment that Creative Assembly has been poor at communicating plans and schedules around the Total War: Warhammer trilogy – something it has improved on in 2025 with more frequent patches and blogs, but there is still area for improvement. Building a more transparent relationship with fans is one of the highest priorities for Collum, who surmises bluntly: "We are learning how to be good at it. We are not good at it yet."
When Collum joined the studio right after the launch of Total War: Warhammer 3, he recalls feeling a "cultural shyness of how we interact with our audience". McDowell, who has been at Creative Assembly "just shy" of 26 years, puts it drily: "[We're] British". "It's been a huge cultural undertaking internally to recognize that we've got a community of really passionate people," says Collum. "We have to learn how to speak with them. In fact, it's more than that: I want us to be a part of the community. I don't want us to be apart from the community, which I think is where CA stood for a while."
"I've been releasing an annual blog to our audience to show that from the very top of the organization down, we really care about our players," he continues. "This is received with various mixes of skepticism – they see my title like 'Who's this loser?' – but I do it very well-meaning and authentically. I genuinely want to connect and interact. We work really hard at stripping out corporate speak, because it's just so easy to default to that because it's safe. I don't want to be safe! I want us to be out there, and less risk averse. We won't always get it right. It's been a journey [...] But I think we're starting to really hit those strides, which I'm really proud of."
War machine
Many of Creative Assembly's current problems stem from the same problem: Warhammer 3's engine. The trilogy's foundations are now a decade old, and wrangling the Warscape engine is now so difficult that it takes developers much longer than it should to create new content – thereby causing delays, which in turn create many of the studio's communication issues. That's not counting the bugs and quirks known to sneak into live builds, as Warscape is now so creaky that it's near-impossible to change something without it breaking something seemingly-unrelated.
Warcore – which is a new engine, at risk of oversimplifying things – is Creative Assembly's saving grace. Warcore is already being used to develop multiple Total War games behind the scenes, cutting down development times while broadly offering a far more stable foundation for those games to come. It will also pave the way for Total War to come to PlayStation and Xbox consoles, a huge leap forward in itself.
"It's very difficult for games to be good if people don't also care about them"
Roger Collum, vice president of Total War
"Doing engine rewrites, as it were, [is] very tough. I don't care what company you are, what studio – you see examples of games all over the industry in which they do an engine transition and it comes with a lot of challenges," says Collum. "But the fact is, Warhammer 3, being a 10-year-old game, had become untenable in terms of its ability to do anything. You can update one thing, then you have to test everything, and then things will fall apart once live. It's just a total mess."
One of Warcore's primary goals is to "reset us to a state where we can release things much more quickly and often," adds Collum, pointing to the delays around Warhammer 3. "My read of our fans is that the deep part of the frustration is the cadence in which we release stuff. We don't release stuff fast enough for them. We've been releasing patches once a month [or] every two weeks, for a while. But people want new, they want novelty. They want brand new toys to play with. And we've got to get far faster at being able to deliver that."
As one of those players (with frankly too many hours in Total War), there's a lot to look forward to. Finally getting Nagash in Warhammer 3's Lords of the End Times DLC – which is aiming to launch next summer – is cause enough for celebration. But to look beyond that, to see Total War: Medieval 3, a new engine, and even more yet to be announced, feels like wish fulfillment not just for fans but for Creative Assembly itself. No matter who I speak to at the studio, there's confidence – a tangible buzz – in everything they're working on.
"We've got some of the most stunning games in the pipeline [...] In my 25 years at CA, we've not had a better roadmap," says McDowell. "We've not had better opportunities than right now. The new engine, new technology, is going to really pay off for us."
The faith is bracing. Creative Assembly has taken punches over the last two years, namely the cancellation of extraction shooter Hyenas and two waves of layoffs. Within the context of Warhammer 3, which has suffered from its own DLC controversies, the studio has reeled from one crisis to another. The wider games industry continues to struggle, but for Creative Assembly, it finally seems like there is light at the end of the tunnel.
"It's hard not to look at our brothers and sisters out in the industry, and see the tumultuous nature of the studios that they're working with. Every other day you see shutdowns, you see mass firings. We see all these things, it's really tough," says Collum. "So we have to make really smart decisions internally about how to make our games [...] We work every day to try to make sure that morale on-team stays high, and that they believe in the vision. Like everything, it's nuanced. And we don't win in every corner, but we try as hard as we can in order to keep the energy up. If you see any materials for Medieval 3, it shows."
That passion radiates throughout Creative Assembly's Horsham studio, where the meeting rooms are named after Total War games and even its concrete stairwells are decorated with framed artwork from the series. "It's very difficult for games to be good if people don't also care about them," says Collum. Whether that's Total War: Medieval 3, or the number of other super secret projects in the works, for Collum it's about putting that studio DNA front and center so that hard work and care is impossible to miss: "You can see the blood, sweat, and tears."
Stick around with GamesRadar+, as our Big Preview for Total War will dive into everything you still want to know about the series' future.
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