Total War: Warhammer 40k feels like the grimdark strategy sandbox we’ve been hoping for, and it’s the series' most accessible game to date.
Total War: Warhammer 40k has, in many ways, an impossible job. How exactly do you reimagine a full-blown galactic conflict spanning millions of years in videogame form? How do you include all of these factions - whether it be the Imperium's myriad Space Marine chapters, or the Xeno tides of Tyrannids and Necrons - in a single game? How do you capture the sheer brutality of war on a granular scale, while simultaneously showcasing its wider effects? I was hoping Creative Assembly's latest would answer that question, and in many ways, I think it has.
It's worth noting straight off the bat that Total War: Warhammer 40k, on release, does have its limits. "The scale [of 40k] is bananas," Battle Product Owner David Petry tells me at Gamescom. "It [wasn't] going to feel right to approach [TWW40K] as 'this is the galaxy.' This is a segmentum that's fighting a segmentum. We need to find the right sort of feeling that makes [you feel] close to the world so that it's immersive, without creating too much of an abstract sense of like, 'we're too far away.' We want you to be able to feel connected to the battles and everything that's happening.
"Where we've kind of settled is to treat each campaign kind of like a solar system," he continues. "You are within a single campaign, moving between a number of planets in a single solar system, and that can be a single-campaign experience. But that's then part of a bigger, crusader theater. At the moment we're focusing on Armageddon, which is going to be the grimdark cherry at the end of this terrifying cake of death - I haven't said that out loud, ever. It's a terrible, terrible cake." We all burst into a fit of giggles.
The focus, then, is to take a "known chapter" and "go on these amazing adventures in single campaigns, attached to bigger campaign theaters." It helps keep expectations manageable, while simultaneously making you feel like you're part of a wider world. In some ways, this approach feels vaguely reminiscent of Helldivers 2, where your actions have a wider impact on the theater of war around you. I'd argue that this is the best approach Creative Assembly could have taken; it gives you the perfect blend of granular, nitty gritty action and overarching, meaningful stakes.
The instance that I played was the game's tutorial, followed by a little bit of free gameplay. In true eleventh edition style, it's Space Marines versus the Orks, where the player takes charge of the Emperor's finest. Your job is pretty simple: destroy the Orks, plain and simple.
The gameplay will feel immediately familiar to anyone who's played a Total War title - move your army here, attack this thing, do this other thing - and the scale is impressive. My crew emerges from the Warp in their cathedral-esque ship, bound for Umbra Prime. I'm greeted by a zoomed-out view of the planet, which highlights the location of the shipment I need to procure with a huge Space Marine. You can spin the planet around to get a good look at it, and I'm immediately struck by not only the terrain detail, but by the fact it's already been carved up into various faction-owned territories. It's genuinely impressive.
I send my Space Marines off to deal with the Snaz Braggerz, who appear to have illegally acquired my cargo. I choose to attack, triggering that signature Total War attack screen, but the UI has got an upgrade to show off more of both armies' troops. It gives me a bit more info at a glance, while not being overwhelming.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/total-war-warhammer-40k/gamescom-preview-2026
