You can't see it and you certainly can't play it just yet, but Total War: Medieval 3 is real. If you're wondering why that alone is such a big deal: Total War celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, and for nearly 20 of those years, fans have been waiting for a follow-up to 2006's Medieval 2: Total War. Now, it's in early pre-production. During a visit to Creative Assembly's Horsham studio, disbelieving developers are still getting used to calling the project Medieval 3 instead of its secretive codename. Vice president of Total War, Roger Collum, contextualizes it best: "Medieval 3 is, in some sense, our Half-Life 3."
Total War: Medieval 3 is one of very few upcoming games that can be fairly compared to the wait for Valve's notoriously absent threequel. But with that comes the weight of staggering expectations, especially when you look at what Creative Assembly has achieved in the time since Medieval 2. That's partly why Medieval 3 is being unveiled so early: the developer is working with its community to shape the upcoming sandbox strategy. "The idea is that people will be really excited by it and super stoked," says Collum, "but they'll also understand what it is when it goes out – rather than everything in their brain that it's not."
