Total War: Warhammer 40,000 Dev Wants ‘All Your Favorites’ From the Setting to Eventually Coexist in ‘A Vast Galactic Sandbox’ — and It Might Take a Decade to Get There

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 will launch with four factions: Space Marines; Orks; Astra Militarum; and the Aeldari. But based on comments from developer Creative Assembly, it will eventually come to include pretty much every faction in the setting, added over the course of years.

Creative Assembly announced Total War: Warhammer 40,000 at The Game Awards with a flashy trailer that combined CG and in-engine gameplay, showing off the scale of the hotly anticipated strategy game. We saw the Space Marines faction fighting against the Orks in a classic boots on the ground matchup, before the camera pulled back to reveal the galactic strategy layer you’ll be able to manage campaigns on.

But the Sega-owned developer, which is based in Horsham in the UK, has a grand plan to add many more factions to Total War: Warhammer 40,000 as part of a vision that may take a decade to realize.

In a year-ending thank you post to the developer’s fans, Roger Collum, VP of Total War, said Creative Assembly’s goal is to create “the ultimate game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe,” one that will see “all your favorites from the setting eventually coexist with a vast galactic sandbox.”

“Some of you have already pointed out that this is what the next 10 years looks like for CA,” Collum continued. “It’s going to take quite a bit of time to get everything in the massive 40k catalogue that deserves a place in the galaxy.”

That’s an exciting proposition of fans of Warhammer 40,000, which is packed with factions to choose from. Some of the more high-profile factions currently not announced to be in Total War: Warhammer 40,000 include the Necrons, the Tyranids, the Adeptus Mechanicus (tech-priests of Mars), and Chaos Space Marines (come on Death Guard!). But there are many more on top of those to consider, such as the Tau, Genestealer Cults, the Drukhari (Dark Eldar), and Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle). The list goes on.

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 doesn’t yet have a release date, so putting a year on when these factions may turn up in-game is impossible. But it sounds like Creative Assembly is here for the long run, as it has been with its Total War: Warhammer games, which began in 2016 and is still seeing updates for Total War: Warhammer 3. It stands to reason that Creative Assembly will look to employ a similar model for Total War: Warhammer 40,000, which means fans can reasonably expect most of the setting’s factions to get some time in the sun, perhaps via the release of Total War: Warhammer 40,000 2 and 3 (that’s a lot of numbers, though!).

There are few Total War: Warhammer 40,000 details that have emerged in the wake of the game’s announcement worth pointing out here. In a follow-up developer roundtable video, Creative Assembly confirmed you’ll be able to blow up a planet in the game, although described this as a last resort. In-universe, this is called Exterminatus, and can only be done with the go-ahead from the highest authorities within the Imperium of Man. Sometimes, there really isn’t any other option in the grim darkness of the far future.

And the level of faction customization really does look impressive. Clearly, this isn’t a game about forcing players down the Ultramarines route, or any other Space Marine chapter for that matter. The hope is you’ll be able to not only realize that faction you’ve always dreamt about in aesthetic terms, but gameplay terms.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.