Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer fantasy series is in rude health, however there's much to come from its historically-inspired games in the not too distant future. Talking on the Total War official site, game directors and project leads Maya Georgieva, Jack Lusted, and Janos Gaspar chat about their respective projects—which include Total War Saga, a new historical era, and a forthcoming campaign expansion.
Speaking to the latter, Georgieva says her project marks the first time CA has gone back to a game so long after release.
"That in itself is very new territory and something we’re keen to explore as a studio, because it opens up lots of exciting future projects if it’s successful," she says. "We’re working on a campaign expansion for one of our older games, probably the biggest historical one CA’s done we think. We’ve been working on our project for the best part of a year, and with not long to go we’re well into testing now with nearly all the content in. And yes, it’s going to be the next Total War announcement, which is exciting for us."
Lusted continues, noting that Saga is due after Georgieva's project and that it's to be a spinoff of a previous game. He points out that he and his team's last venture was the Age of Charlemagne expansion for Attila, and that they are enjoying the challenge of working on something so self-contained.
"It’s a period and place I’ve wanted to make a game about for years, so yes I’m excited," admits Lusted. "As I came from the community as a modder originally, I know there’s going to be some hardcore fans out there who will like what we’re doing. And then enjoy pulling it apart and modding it… Oh, and beware the crow."
Lastly, Gaspar talks about what we might expect from Total War's brand new era. "Expectation is high, but so is the excitement amongst the team here," he says. A brand new era brings a completely different look and feel to this Total War game. We’ve ramped up to the final team size in the past few months, so things are moving along steadily with daily visible progress. For example, it’s nice to see, after having researched historical city-layouts for months, it all coming together in the game. There are still placeholder grey boxes here and there, but the atmosphere is already outstanding and gameplay feels strong."
Gaspar adds: "There are plenty of eras Total War’s not been to yet, so I wouldn’t say that. But sure there’s some more obvious ones we see people excited about, and we’re going to be excited too. We have a big list, it’s easy to come up with a big list. We have our favourites, some of them are relatively obscure. And we have eras on that list we’ve already been to, that we want to go to again.
"But this one, will be brand new, and that means we can explore interesting new concepts while still bringing what makes it ‘Total War’ to the game."
If you love big trucks, establishing trade routes, and the phrase 'post-apocalyptic survival business simulator' then I've got just the strategy RPG for you
Blizzard veteran David Kim's strategy comeback with Battle Aces is 'very personal:' 'I just can't accept... the end-all peak of RTS is StarCraft 2 and nothing can ever be better'
