Total War: Warhammer's ambitious Mortal Empires arrives this month
Here's what we know.
We really enjoyed Total War: Warhammer 2 at launch, but we're still waiting on arguably its most exciting feature: the 'Mortal Empires' campaign.
This new mode, which combines the maps of both Total War: Warhammer and Total War: Warhammer 2, arrives on the 26th October. Better still, it's free if you already own both titles.
"We're happy for this to be for a more hardcore fan," said game director Ian Roxburgh, when I spoke to him this week, "with more factions included and a longer end turn. There is a limit, it's about finding that balance. but we've erred more towards keeping more content in because we think that for most fans, that's what they want."
With 295 settlements on the map and 117 starting factions, the team at Creative Assembly may have achieved this goal. The maps have needed to be rejigged and some minor factions removed, but by the sounds of it, the Mortal Empires campaign is going to be a monster. This will undoubtedly mean a much longer campaign with much more significant waiting times between turns, but as a Total War sandbox experience goes, this could be the franchise at its most ambitious yet.
I spoke to the Total War team earlier this week to get a better idea of what we can expect here. For the full details, join me in the video below.
We're yet to see the new campaign in action, although we're hoping to do so ahead of its launch towards the end of the month. Here's hoping it works as well as we're told, because this has the potential to be very, very special. And it's only set to get bigger, with the eventual release of Warhammer 3. Bloody hell.
Total War, indeed.