The Chaos hordes will finally arrive on the battlefield this year with Total War: Warhammer 3, announced today by Creative Assembly and Sega. Along with Chaos’ four main flavors (Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Tzeentch), the third game in the strategy series will add Kislev mounted on the polar bear and the Chinese analog Cathay. Here, come watch an ice witch Kislev kick a demon in the movie trailer.
The series has so far been one of the best strategy games, so yes, more please. For the third, the big campaign revolves around “saving or exploiting the power of a dying god”. Today’s announcement says, “Each race offers a unique journey through the nightmare Chaos Realm, culminating in a game ending that will determine the fate of the world.” It seems irresponsible to put this in my hands.
Creative Assembly is still planning to release a huge map that brings all three games together in one campaign, for people who own all three, although they note in a FAQ that “currently our focus is on Total War: Warhammer III.” The Mortal Empires campaign ended up hitting Twarhammer 2 a month after launch, and it sounds like the Twarhammer 3 campaign could come later.
Total Warhammer 3 will come to Epic as well as Steam, and they plan to bring the first two as well. If you already have one on Steam, it is probably best to stick with Steam, as you will not have access to the others or their DLCs on Epic. Therefore, you would need all three in the same store to play the combined map and so on. Although they “hope” to implement a way for people to link Steam and Epic accounts, don’t count on it. “We cannot guarantee this functionality at any time,” they say, “but we will continue to work on it in cooperation with store operators.”
Total War: Warhammer 3 is due to be released later this year on Steam and the Epic Games Store. It will be at least on Windows at launch, with Mac and Linux versions of Feral Interactive coming “as close to launch day as possible”. They are planning to offer a Race Park as a “bonus for initial users” to those who pre-order or purchase in the first week.
Disclosure: Oh, hey, our co-founder Alec Meer (RPS in peace) has written for Total Warhammer 3.