It's rare for us Warhammer fans to have a really big 40k game on the horizon, so having two inbound at the same time, and both strategy games at that, is a pretty notable occurrence. Both Dawn of War 4 and Total War: Warhammer 40k are set to drop in the not too distant future—but is King Art Games worried about sharing the 40k strategy spotlight with Creative Assembly?
Late last month I sat down with two of Dawn of War 4's developers, Senior Game Designer, Elliot Verbiest, and Game Director, Jan Theysen, and as a curious fan of both series, I brought up the topic of Total War: Warhammer 40k:
"I have a couple of friends who worked on that project at Creative Assembly, so it was super great to get in touch and congratulate them for the announcement," says Elliot Verbiest. "I have seen a couple of comments online being like 'Oh that doesn't make any sense, wouldn't they eat into each other's market?' But I think it's comparing apples and oranges. They're both real-time strategy games, but they're very different types of RTS."
As a long-time Total War fan I'm inclined to agree. Even when Dawn of War was at its most similar in Dark Crusade, which featured a turn-based overworld campaign map, Total War has always been a bit of an outlier. While you can describe it as an RTS based on its battles, it doesn't really account for a lot of the game, or most of its campaign play.
"It's the same as how Dawn of War isn't Starcraft, and Starcraft isn't Total War, and so on and so forth," explains Verbiest. "So yeah, this is definitely a case of 'Holy shit, it's two cakes!' I'm super thrilled for Creative Assembly that they've got this going on right now. It's a good time to be a Warhammer fan."
While Dawn of War 4 is set to launch in 2026, it will likely be a couple of years at least before Total War: Warhammer 40k releases. As mentioned in their developer roundtable, we'll be getting a bigger info dump in late 2026, meaning 2027 onwards is the very earliest we might see it. That said, Mechanicus 2 is also launching this year, making it an extremely auspicious time to be a 40k fan, especially if you love cogboys and their binaric banter like I do.
If you'd like to read more of my interview with Elliot Verbiest and Jan Theysen, as well as my impressions of Dawn of War 4's Ork campaign, they'll both be featured in PC Gamer magazine's 420 UK/408 US issues in late February and late March respectively.
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