Total War: Warhammer represents a new tangent for The Creative Assembly's 15-year series of war games, but it won't slow down production of the next historic Total War. In fact, creative director Mike Simpson tells PC Gamer that CA first spoke to Games Workshop ten years ago about the idea, but held off to make sure that both series could be developed in parallel.

PC Gamer: Is Total Warhammer a turning point for the Total War series, or will you continue the historic war games?

Mike Simpson: No, we're absolutely going to make historic war games. That's still the core of what we do. No only reason we haven't done a fantasy game earlier is because we couldn't do it earlier without slowing down or impacting in some way on the historic stuff. We've finally gotten to the point where there are enough of us to do that. That's why we're doing it now and not ten years ago when we first talked to Workshop about it.

PC Gamer: You're developing historical Total War in parallel with Total War: Warhammer, with separate teams?

Mike Simpson: Yes. It's a completely separate team. The historic thread goes on uninterrupted.

Good news for fans of trad TW. Unsurprisingly, CA isn't ready to talk about the next historic game yet. "I'll say what I usually say," says Mike Simpson. "We do have a list which has pretty much everything that everyone could imagine from a historic point of view on it. Eventually we will get to everything on the list, we just argue about the order in which we're going to do things. Until we actually announce what we're doing next then you won't find out what it is. Hopefully!"

For more, check out the Total War: Warhammer announcement trailer and our subsequent analysis.