Total War: Warhammer 40,000 shows off massive battles — and breaks a franchise tradition
Creative Assembly has released an extended gameplay video for Total War: Warhammer 40,000, giving the clearest look yet at a strategy game that could reshape the franchise. Announced at The Game Awards in December 2025, it is the first Total War title to launch on consoles — PS5 and Xbox Series X|S — alongside PC from day one. For anyone who burned out on the Warhammer Fantasy trilogy or simply wants 40K's grimdark future rendered at army scale, this is worth paying attention to.
The scale
The new footage makes the ambition plain. Battles pit tens of thousands of units against each other across four launch factions: Space Marines, Orks, Aeldari, and Astra Militarum. Each plays differently — faction mechanics are built around lore rather than reskinned from a shared template, so an Ork horde behaves nothing like an Astra Militarum infantry line. The campaign map steps up from provinces to entire solar systems, with planets that can change hands — or be destroyed — depending on who holds dominance.
That galactic scope is both the headline feature and the main reason for caution. PC Gamer has drawn a direct line to Empire: Total War (2009), where Creative Assembly's reach exceeded its grasp on a similarly oversized map. The studio says it has studied Warhammer 40,000 books, tabletop rulebooks, and supplementary material in detail to keep the game canon-accurate — a claim that sounds better when there's a shipped product to back it up.
The console bet
Launching on consoles day one is the genuinely new move here. Every previous Total War has been PC-first or PC-only, and strategy games with deep campaign layers have a patchy history on gamepads. Creative Assembly built the game on its new Warcore engine, designed with console hardware in mind from the start, though specifics on the UI and control scheme adaptation haven't been detailed yet.
On the monetisation side, AllThings.how confirms there is no pre-order DLC planned — a deliberate contrast to the Warhammer 1 Chaos Warriors controversy — and gore is included in the base game rather than sold as a separate pack.
What's next
No release date has been set. Current expectations point to late 2026 at the earliest, with 2027 also realistic. A closed beta is planned for later in 2026, and Creative Assembly has flagged deeper campaign reveals for Spring 2026. The studio is also simultaneously developing Alien: Isolation 2, so the production slate is full.
The gameplay reveal sets real expectations rather than launch hype. Enough to be interesting — not yet enough to know whether the scale works in practice.
