With Total War: Warhammer 40,000, Creative Assembly Is Resurrecting...

In 2009, I was an office drone pretending I gave a toss about insurance premiums, at least by day. By night I was carving up the world, fiddling with firing lines and worrying about getting hundreds of men blown up by cannons. At least when I wasn't dealing with bugs. I was playing Empire: Total War, now known as Total War: Empire.

Empire was Creative Assembly's most audacious strategy game, working at a scale the studio had never attempted before. A world at war, split into different theatres, separated by oceans that were just as full of conflict. It also flipped Total War on its head, where the emphasis was on firearms and gunpowder, not swords and spears.

That ambition was to be its downfall. Empire was notoriously buggy, saddled with ineffectual AI, had the series' worst siege battles, and in attempting to simulate the whole world, a lot of sacrifices had to be made.

Before launch, however, I was stunned by its scope and all the promise hidden inside it. This was going to be the ultimate Total War.

Last week, Creative Assembly announced Total War: Warhammer 40,000, a game with an audacious scope, doing things Creative Assembly has never done before, with a greater focus on ranged battles full of devastating firearms. I am stunned by its apparent scope and all the promise hidden inside it. I'm also reeling from deja vu.

While Creative Assembly hasn't revealed too much, we do know that planet-destroying fleets will be a part of it; we might even be getting some space combat for the first time, just as Empire gave us our first proper sea battles.

It's surreal seeing how many of the same boxes it's attempting to tick.

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Now, if this was the early 2010s, I'd be extremely worried. Creative Assembly simply didn't have the tech or experience to match its ridiculous ambitions. The Creative Assembly of today, however, just might.

Years of advances and a company that's so much larger, with multiple studios now working away on Total War, puts it in a much stronger position. It's also important to look at what Creative Assembly has been working on for almost a decade: The epic strategy series Total War: Warhammer.

Source: PC Gamer