Creative Assembly has closed the year off strongly. Total War: Warhammer 40K is the most exciting TW title in a while, Medieval 3 was confirmed, and Warhammer 3 had its affairs sorted. But 2026 is going to be even better, as CA pledged to do a lot more side quests again.
Having promised similar side quests in 2024, Creative Assembly actually delivered on them. While the Total War launcher is still there, unfortunately, the company did do what it said it would otherwise: blood packs for upcoming Total Wars have been done away with, pre-order-exclusive factions won’t be in TW: 40K, and individual bits and pieces of DLCs can now be purchased if you do not want the whole thing.
All of this was outlined in the company’s 2024 end-of-year blog, and based on this year’s edition, there’s a lot more it’s aiming to do in the future.
Completely removing the launcher remains on the agenda. A new, experimental mod manager was released this year, but that’s just one step. More interestingly, CA wants to go back in ots catalog, too, revisiting old titles and brushing the dust off them, introducing small-scale bug fixes but also robust updates that’ll make these (g)old games deeper and more accessible.
It’ll also apparently make Total War: Warhammer 40,000 into the “ultimate [40K] game” that will ditch its predecessor’s sequel model, instead being the only game of its kind but (probably) packed full of DLCs and updates over 10 years (CA’s words, not mine).
These are bold new missions, which would only benefit us, the players, if they were to come true. As I’ve said before, TW: 40K is the most exciting Total War game in a long time (at least for me), and I cannot wait to see what CA has been cooking with it. And yeah, I do pray it’ll come out by the end of 2026, but CA didn’t mention this as its goal, unfortunately.
