Total War: Warhammer is coming. Confirmation comes in the form of a single line in the upcoming Art of Total War book. Mike Simpson, the creative director of the series, is discussing the future of Total War and after writing about Total War: Arena’s exploration of multiplayer, he lands the hammer blow.

“…taking the series to a fantasy setting with Total War: Warhammer.”

It might not be called Total Warhammer but at least it has a name. The artbook is officially released on 23rd Jan but the quote was plucked out by StormOfRazors, a TWCenter poster who received an early copy. Thoughts below.

I love historical strategy dearly but ever since the Total War series arrived on the scene, I’ve been unable to squash the visions of enormous fantastical armies clashing on those wonderful maps that Creative Assembly have been adding bells and whistles to for the last fifteen years. When the studio signed a deal with Games Workshop back in 2012, we learned that they’d be concentrating on the Fantasy side of Warhammer rather than the grimdarkness of 40K, and the license seemed a natural fit with Total War. But everything went quiet. Well, apart from the Romans and the very audible sound of screaming in space.

Whether it’ll be relevant to this project or not, Alien shows that at least one team in Creative Assembly knows how to treat a license. Even the game’s harshest critics must find something to admire in the art design and recreation of the film’s aesthetic.

It seems likely that we’ll find out more either when the artbook is released and the name is officially out in the wild, or even beforehand now that the news is spreading. Of course, we already sort of definitely knew this would be happening because Creative Assembly + Warhammer = Total Warhammer, but knowing that the next in the series after Attila is likely to contain skellingtons, necromancers and Chaos Magic is quite the thing.