On Wednesday, the Creative Assembly team unveiled Total War: Warhammer 3, what the publisher Sega calls the ‘epic culmination of the Total War: Warhammer trilogy’. No release date or price was mentioned in the press release, but we do know a bit about the factions and the setting. Fans of the old-school tabletop game will be excited to hear that developers are returning to the classic Old World setting – much like the tabletop game itself, after a five-year dalliance with the Age of Sigmar.
Total War: Warhammer is a comprehensive turn-based strategy series featuring intimate, real-time combat. It builds on Creative Assembly’s own style of pausable real-time combat, dating back more than 20 years to the release of Shogun: Total War. And the series is based on the rich history of Games Workshop’s wildly popular table miniatures game, first released in 1983.
The first item in the series, Total War: Warhammer, was released in 2016. The sequel, Total War: Warhammer 2, was released just a year later. The two games combined both narrative and literal to tell a sprawling story from multiple perspectives across a massive world map. Developers say that this time around, players will be fighting in truly uncharted territory – the nightmarish Chaos Realm.
In Warhammer lore, the Realm of Chaos – also known as The Aethyr – is a dimension of pure magic. The cinematic trailer features Kislev warriors, a fictional human faction drawing on Polish and Russian military history and fighting against the demonic forces of Khorne. The battlefield itself is an impassable frozen landscape with tooth-like mountains rising in the distance. The images are reminiscent of some of the more fantastic battle scenes from previous entries in the series, including huge underground caverns and other unearthly environments.
Today’s press release confirms that both the Kislev and Cathay armies are playable factions alongside the agents of Chaos – Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Tzeentch. Fans of the Warhammer 40,000 setting will recognize those gods, which are shared by both gameplay systems. Today’s press release also refers to ‘iconic new races of the World of Warhammer Fantasy Battles system’. Expect more information on those factions in the coming months, along with details on a release window.