Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is a sandbox that Creative Assembly will keep adding to rather than making sequels: 'The true experience is the sandbox'

With Total War: Warhammer, Creative Assembly designed a trio of games, each with their own bespoke campaigns, but the core of the series quickly became the mode now known as Immortal Empires—every single faction and lord in one massive sandbox. And that's been a big inspiration for Total War: Warhammer 40,000.

At Gamescom 2026, battle product owner Dave Petry told me that the plan was to make the initial release of Total War 40k the "bedrock" upon which Creative Assembly will continue to build, rather than splitting it up into a trilogy.

"We're going to have major releases," he told me, "we're going to update this game with some significant stuff in varying sizes, but we're looking at what Total War is and looking at things like Immortal Empires. Like the true experience is the sandbox. That's what we want to build, and that's what we want to continue building on, and bringing that into one place so that there are so many different ways that players could enter and still get to experience the whole thing without being siphone...