Only a year and a half went by between Total War: Warhammers 1 and 2, but it’ll be roughly four years between 2 and 3 when the final release in the trilogy launches later this year.

The first game in the series broke new ground for developer Creative Assembly, and the second was another significant escalation, with the Total War studio offering its biggest map, most divergent faction design, and deepest storytelling yet, as well as its richest DLC support schedule. What, then, can we possibly expect from the trilogy’s conclusion, a game four years in the making, with Total War: Three Kingdoms having arrived in the interim and made its own, no less ambitious, contributions to the series?

We spoke with game director Ian Roxburgh and senior designer Oscar Andersson about the scale of CA’s ambition for the final game in the trilogy, and how its relationship with Warhammer publisher Games Workshop has evolved now that GW is working within this universe once again. Precedent, talk of doubling the map size, and our hands-on session with the epic new survival battles had already indicated that Warhammer III would be another leap in ambition. But the devs promise that much more is yet to come.

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