When Total War: Warhammer 3 game director Ian Roxburgh first joined Creative Assembly as a marketing manager around two decades ago, he had a problem to solve: how to explain to an audience what Total War is all about. “You play this giant sandbox, and as you’re playing it, it’s all very generic. But if you keep proper notes on it, some of the most incredible storylines develop. That’s one thing we’re going to want to do more and more of in the future. The storytelling thing is something we’re going to keep on developing – massively. But – and I’m saying this to the fans – don’t worry! There will always be sandbox gameplay in a Total War game. That’s absolutely sacrosanct.”

It’s hard to argue with that. A few months back, Creative Assembly released the first iteration of Immortal Empires, the most content-rich strategy sandbox in gaming. The combination of three ‘tentpole’ releases – as the team calls them – alongside numerous pieces of DLC and free updates, it’s been a long time in the making. Continued inspiration for such a wide-reaching project might be hard to come by in any other setting, but when Roxburgh and the team first sat down to put their newly acquired Warhammer licence to good use, they had the opposite problem: How do you fit such an expansive world into the traditional Total War format?

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