Total War: Warhammer 40k’s map reveals fill me with faith that Creative Assembly can handle the setting’s absurd scale

If someone told me two years back that Creative Assembly was actually going to make Total War: Warhammer 40k, I wouldn’t have believed them. It’s not that the studio isn’t a natural fit after all its work on Total War: Warhammer, it’s more that the universe of 40k is both absurdly massive and ill-defined—a big challenge to overcome for any would-be grand strategy game.

You’ve got the broad strokes of Holy Terra and the Segmentums that the galaxy is carved into, but 40k’s universe is a haphazard amalgamation of games, Black Library books, and codices, not all of which are necessarily considered canon. It’s like trying to create a strategy game that encompasses the entire Star Wars’ galaxy.

Despite being a lifelong Total War and 40k fan, I must admit that I’ve been worried as to whether Creative Assembly can adequately recreate the setting’s scale, but the recent Show and Tell livestream has gone a long way to soothing my worries.

Though the 40k section was relatively slim alongside reveals for Total War: Warhammer’s Lord of the End Times expansion and upcoming legendary tiger lord, Bhashiva, we did get to see a full planet and a variety of battle maps, all of which point to one thing—Total War: Warhammer 40k is going to be huge.

Each planet looks pretty big in its own right (Image credit: Creative Assembly)

Thankfully, though, Creative Assembly is clearly putting a lot of work into the fundamentals, into replayability, particularly in terms of the game’s planets and battle maps. Each system will consist of a few planets of varying biomes and civilisation types (An arid hive-world, say) that you fight across the surface of, rotating 360 degrees around them. I was expecting each planet to be the equivalent of a couple of provinces in Total War: Warhammer, but conquering one looks more like a mini-campaign itself.

This is going to mean fighting a lot more battles, but the maps look well set up for it. Not only are they absolutely massive—one of them had a giant crashed ship at its center—but the ones they showed off look super dense as well, with lots of buildings and scenery to work around, plus more flavorful touches, like anti-air fire in the background and aircraft swooping by.

We already knew that the maps were going to have destructible elements, such as buildings and forests, but with so many structures per map, it’s really going to change the way we fight battles and chokepoint enemy armies. Not to mention the confirmation that we can collapse buildings on top of units.

Each map has different versions depending on the planet’s biome, and more deployment options than previous Total Wars. You can fight maps north-to-south or east-to-west, and also attack or defend more entrenched positions in special assault or defence battles. Presumably these will tie into the cover zones they revealed which units can shelter in, including what looked like a squad of Imperial Guardsmen occupying a building almost Company of Heroes style, standing on the upper floors.

We don’t know much about what Total War: Warhammer 40k’s map looks like beyond the system level, but what I’ve seen reassures me that Creative Assembly is addressing the practical realities of a 40k Total War campaign, working to provide the replayability we’re going to need to fight our way across the expanse of the stars without it growing stale.

As for the even bigger stuff, we’ll have to wait until June when we’re slated to see more of the game.

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