With the long-awaited reveal of the Skaven Creative Assembly have revealed the full map for Total War: Warhammer, which you can see above. This map, along with details we gleamed from the Total War event we attended to get a hands-on with the Skaven Campaign as well as an interview with the developers, leads us to the conclusion that the in-production Total War: Warhammer 3 will be set in the East of the Warhammer world. Details are below.
In the event we attended a presentation on the complete Mega-Campaign for Total War: Warhammer, the name for when you combine both the first game and the second game together so to play the entire series as any race from either game. The whole Total War: Warhammer map so far was shown… which showed a blank area to the East of the mountains that run alongside the Badlands and the Empire. We were asked to draw our own conclusions about where the third game would be set.
Most importantly, this also makes sense too. The combined map of Total War: Warhammer 1 and 2 covers the entire Western side of the Warhammer map, leaves only the Eastern areas for Creative Assembly to use for the next game. Let’s have a look at the world map:
The Red area in the middle is the map of the first game, including DLC. The Blue area. which is mostly water and so is why it’s so large, is the campaign map of Total War: Warhammer II which you can see in more detail in the map at the top of this page.
The Purple area can only be the setting of Total War: Warhammer III. This area comprises the Dark Lands, the Ogre Kingdoms, Nippon, the Kingdoms of Ind, Grand Cathay, and the Hinterlands of Khuresh. We could imagine the Dragon Isles or the Lost Isles of Elithis being either DLC or part of the main campaign too. If you can see the analogy in the map, these are places based on India, China, Japan, Russia and more.
So if that’s the map, what races can we expect?
The Ogres: The most obvious, from the Ogre Kingdoms, massive barbarians riding mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers into battle and resembling an army of cavemen.
Daemons of Chaos: Not specifically aligned with any land, with everything going on in the world the Daemons would make perfect enemies to finish the trilogy. They’re made of pure energy and only emerge once Chaos in the world is strong. Sound like a good ultimate threat to us.
Celestial Dragon Empire of Cathay: The largest human empire in the Warhammer world, ruled by the Celestial Dragon Emperor, who is either an immortal or a dragon in the form of a man. Units can include the Celestial Dragon Monks, Shugengan wizards, Jade Lions and lightning-spewing flying unicorns called Ki-rin. It’s also as close as we’re going to get to Total War: China anytime soon.
Hobgoblin Empire: The Hobgoblin Empire rules the Eastern Steppes above Cathay, and are comprised of greenskin tribes all pledging allegiance to the mighty Hobgobla-Khan.
Snake Men: The Serpent-Naga of Khuresh are dark legends of the Warhammer-verse, with an appetite for blood and who hunt mortal men as prey. They have the power to cause madness and death, and worship Chaos.
We spoke to Scott Pitkethly, Lead Programmer on the Warhammer series and he told us why and how the Total War: Warhammer Trilogy was conceived:
“We’ve certainly said from the beginning that we wanted to do Warhammer as a trilogy, and that’s because we looked at the content and said that you can’t do justice to the license in just one game. There’s no way we could’ve done that with all factions in one game, so we knew we’d want to break it up into three games so we can do proper justice to all factions. Personally I’m a Daemon Chaos player!”
Total War: Warhammer II is out September 28. If Creative Assembly follow the same plan, Total War: Warhammer III will be out next year, although it was suggested in our interview with Scott and Matt Davisthat it might take longer than the second game to come out.
