Creative Assembly Announces 'Total War: Warhammer II'

Creative Assembly is back with another game in its trademark Total War series. However, it’s not a real-world historical setting. Instead, the studio opted to return to the mythical world of Warhammer with a debut trailer for Total War: Warhammer II.

In this second game, you’ll have new races to choose from such as High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, and an unnamed fourth group. You can wage war and conquer the known world, which includes the continents of Ulthuan, Naggaroth, The Southlands, and Lustria. However, the main objective of the game isn’t to conquer the entire world. This time around, a looming Giant Vortex, which was initially meant to destroy a demonic invasion and suppress the Winds of Magic throughout the world, is up for grabs. You have to be the first race to reach it and destroy it to prevent further damage or use it as a weapon against opposing races. In addition to that, you still have to play the game like previous installments in the franchise, so you’ll need to conquer cities, build armies, and manage your empire.

This is the second game in a planned trilogy from Creative Assembly, and while you don’t need to play the original Total War: Warhammer, those who own it will have some new content to use in the second game. In the weeks following the release of Total War: Warhammer II, the studio will add new content in the form of a massive campaign map, which is a combination of the Old World (the map of Total War: Warhammer) and the New World (from Total War: Warhammer II). You can also choose to play the new campaign on the Old World or New World separately. To top it all off, any race you own from the first game, including those from downloadable content, will be playable in the sequel’s campaign.

As far as naval battles are concerned, it will only happen in the game as an autoresolve feature, so you can’t control your forces while they’re fighting at sea. For multiplayer, you can play as any race you own from the first and second game, and you can participate in a two-player cooperative campaign because each race features two Legendary Lords. Once again, you’ll be able to use the Assembly Kit to create your own mods for the new game, which will also support the Steam Workshop. A specific release date for the game wasn’t provided, but it’s slated to come out sometime this year.