We’re incredibly close to the release of Total War Warhammer III – and SEGA have chosen now to unveil that Chaos Undivided will be joining the game as its final new faction before launch.

For those just joining us, the world of Warhammer features four distinct Chaos Gods- the pestilent Nurgle, the bloodthirsty Khorne, the manipulative Tzeentch and the hedonistic Slaanesh. Their devotees make up the four playable Chaos-aligned races in Total War Warhammer III, letting field armies of the gods daemons, all made in their image.

However, their exists now a fifth Chaos faction- these are the forces of Chaos Undivided, who instead of worshipping any one Chaos god worship Chaos as a whole. Like their counterparts in the tabletop, this allows them to field units from all four Gods- creating a best-of-all-worlds force.

“We were looking through that and we could see that for each of the Chaos Gods represented in that book, there’s sufficient content to warrant a standalone playable race for each of those”, says James Whitston, Lead Battle Designer.

“The good side of that is that it allows us to go into depth and really give players a chance to understand what makes those Gods tick, to produce unique creatures for each of those factions both on the campaign side of the game and the battle and really gives you an understanding of those gods. The drawback with that is it doesn’t allow players to do what you can do with that army book in the tabletop game which is field an army that includes troops from each of those 4 Chaos Gods in one army”, he continues.

“With the previous 2 games you’ve had 4 races on launch that will provide a different experience, now we’ve got even more than that. On top of that this one particular race is so diverse you can go in one game towards Khorne and specialize that way or start again and go down the Slaanesh route or maybe mix and match the two with so many different combinations, its such an exciting prospect for our players”, says Mark Sinclair, Lead Campaign Designer.

The Legendary Lord Formerly Known As Daemonic Prince

Every faction has its own Legendary Lord at the helm, and the Daemons of Chaos are no different. In Total War Warhammer III, you’ll be able to play the campaign as the Daemon Prince, a mortal who’s courted the four Chaos Gods enough to be blessed with a new form in their image to serve Chaos Undivided.

While there’s some popular hallmarks of the Daemon Prince, in truth the creatures have malleable forms- and Total War Warhammer III respects this with its own in-game customization for your Champion of Chaos.

“This is reflective of what players of the tabletop game do with the Daemon Prince miniatures”, James says. “There’s a lot of kit-bashing there where people modify them to make them unique. This offers us an opportunity to make a more role-playing game element to our game where you can uniquely modify your Daemon Prince with all the parts that you unlocked to really make them what you desire, to act out your ultimate power fantasy and also includes kind of unlocking the various features for all of the Chaos Gods and I’ve had a lot of fun playing them. I’ve played about 5 or 6 Daemon Prince campaigns now and every time I end up going down a different path with all the options available”.

But how exactly do you unlock these chaotic parts? I’m glad you asked:

For The Daemonic Glory

Like all the other races in Total War Warhammer III, Chaos Undivided sports its own deep mechanics, making sure your campaign really tells the story of you becoming the chosen warrior of Chaos.

You do this with the game’s Daemonic Glory mechanic. Whenever the forces of Chaos capture a settlement, you can devote it to one of four Chaos gods. This in turn provides you with Glory for that particular god, which can be used to get upgrades, new units as well as parts for your Daemon Prince.

Investing enough into any god will eventually lock you into their service, getting you their highest tier of upgrades but locking you out of other gods.

For those playing the long game, there’s also a fifth branch of the chaos tree- Chaos Undivided, which gives you gifts from all the gods if you’re brave enough to commit to it.

“As well as having an army thats controlled by that Daemon Prince who’s very malleable in terms of what you turn him into, the other Lords that you can recruit within your faction are drawn from each of those Chaos Gods so you can have a completely Khorne themed army led by an Exalted Bloodthirster”, James says. “So you can really follow multiple paths throughout the course of that campaign not just with the Daemon Prince but with your faction as a whole and the choices you make about which god to dedicate each settlement to can accelerate your progress towards unlocking features and units and all that good stuff of each of those gods. Its kind of a constantly changing tapestry.”

Of course, you can only court all four Chaos Gods for so long before they start asking you to put a ring on it. James explains that while you may lose out on the perks of other gods, there’s definitely benefits to Daemonic Monogamy.

“As you work your way down each gods Daemonic Glory path, you’ll reach a point where you’ve accrued so much Daemonic Glory with a specific god you’ll have an opportunity to dedicate yourself to that specific God. At that point you’re kinda locked in to using only body parts from that God. You do unlock the elite top level units from that God”, he says.

“Or you can decide to play a longer game and go for the Chaos Undivided route and as you head towards that track you will reach a point where you can dedicate to Undivided and beyond that point you can unlock all the elite units for all of the Gods”, he continues. “So it’s a longer game but potentially you’re unlocking far more of the high level units so its really for players to decide as they go along which path appeals to them if there’s a choice of 5 routes”.

Mark also reassured that players won’t have to worry about being overwhelmed by all the choices, since Total War campaigns are all about starting small and working your way up to juggling all those ruinous powers at once.

“The great thing about Total War is you always start small and slowly build out. It might sound overwhelming on paper that you’ve got this Daemon Prince who has all these customizable parts and you have 4 rosters worth of units at your disposal but actually when you start you’re very small and you’ve only got a very small set of Daemonic gifts that you can customize your daemonic prince from”, he says. “So as you play through the game you slowly unlock different units and new gifts so you’re really growing slowly, and its easy to understand and get on board with what you’re unlocking. I think it works really well”.

James also chimed in, saying that this progression of your Daemon Prince getting more powerful was important for giving your campaign a more narrative feel:

“I think it slots really nicely within the context of an open world sandbox campaign. You might start the campaign with a very set idea of what you’re going to do in terms of unlocking units or whatever but circumstances might unfold in the campaign where you come up against a faction and think ‘maybe a Khorne army might do better against that one’ and with this faction you have the opportunity to absolutely tailor making an army to deal with a specific challenge you come across with an organic campaign experience”.

Holding The Line with Grand Cathay

Of course, it’s not just Chaos that got the spotlight. We’ve known that Grand Cathay was joining the playable roster since the start of Total War Warhammer III’s marketing cycle, but today Sega’s shown us more about the new faction that’s never been in the tabletop before.

Grand Cathay’s main feature is its Great Bastion- this Great Wall is what the Grand Cathay empire uses to keep the forces of Chaos out of their domain. Of course, you won’t have to build this wall in the campaign- Rome wasn’t built in a turn, as you know. Instead though, you’ll want to maintain the already-built wall, keeping watch for the Threat Level before the hordes of Chaos come for your realm.

On top of that, you’ll also want to make use of the Wu Xing Compass – this item lets you channel the winds of Magic into one of four buffs, enhancing certain playstyles as you need them. Situational awareness will be key for harnessing this tool, so you wanna make sure the parts of your empire are being held supported appropriately as you choose between the four buffs.

Balance Is Key

Grand Cathay also sports a Harmony mechanic, rewarding you for balancing all your resources in the game. Buildings will have Yin or Yang alignments- with amazing buffs waiting for you if you can keep them in balance.

Similarly, this will also extend to the forces of Grand Cathay- you’ll want to plan your formations to have units positioned next to each other- lest you suffer debuffs for not maintaining the Harmony right.

These are further enhanced by Lords- rather than pushing the scales either way, they enhance the rewards given for maintaining harmony.

The Grand Campaign

So why is everyone going to war this time? We got a taste of the campaign for Total War Warhammer III, which sees a plot around Ursun, the Bear god of Kislev. A rogue prince was corrupted by Chaos, mortally wounding the god, and having him trapped in the Forge of Souls by the campaign’s main antagonist, Be’Lakor, the first Daemon Prince.

As Ursun roars in agony, every faction has the same realization: there’s a lot of power to be had in a dying Bear God. As such, your factions will all be playing through the game’s campaign trying to get to defeat Be’Lakor and do with Ursun what you will.

Of course, one doesn’t simply walk into the Forge of Souls. Every time Ursun roars, he’ll open a rift into a Daemonic realm, based off of one of the Chaos gods. By surviving waves of Daemons and defeating their champion, you’ll claim their soul- once you have all four, you can take the fight to Be’Lakor.

Personally, I absolutely adore the concept of the game’s campaign. Aside from your usual shenanigans of diplomacy and warfare, this quest-like narrative really gives the campaign a more flavorful feel since your faction is driven by goals- getting to Ursun. Be’Lakor is also a great choice for a big bad, since the unaligned nature of Chaos means no one would have any reservations about putting the Daemon Prince’s head on a pike.

With Be’Lakor in the game though, we just had to ask a question about the other eight pointed superstar of Chaos Undivided, Archaon the Everchosen and whether or not we’d see him come to Total War Warhammer III.

“We’re not going into that today, obviously we’ve got a very strong narrative which is something we’ve been developing throughout the series adding an extra layer of narrative to the campaign so Be’Lakors pretty much folded in with this being the third game of the series. He’s a great character to be able to call on, he’s absolutely perfect in that respect”, James says. “That’s something we’re looking to double down on”.

“We are looking at supporting the game as we stated right from the beginning, it was too much content to do justice to in the context of one game so we split it into 3 stand alone games and that’s fully supported throughout the course of that with DLC and Free-LC releases. We’ve definitely got a roadmap for that after this third and final game in the series”, he adds.

While the story may be the end of a trilogy though, James and Mark were totally inviting of players who wanted to jump straight into Warhammer III as their first game in the series.

“This really is the best time to jump in and think even if you’re not familiar with the races, its definitely the most accessible total war game and I know a lot of people aren’t so familiar with Kislev and Cathay for example, Games Workshop obviously never released an army book for them in the past, so this is all fresh content that they’ve created. If you’re on the fence now is a really good time to check it out.”, says Mark.

“Into the main game itself we’ve added a whole host of QoL features to make it easier to pick the game up and get playing and access the fun stuff so yeah, thats very much something we’ve been focusing on”, James adds.

If you’ve any love for epic fantasy, you’ll definitely want to add Total War Warhammer III to your radar before it comes out on the 17th of February to fully experience Chaos Undivided and more. Our thanks to James and Mark for answering our questions, and showing us the epic battles of Total War Warhammer III.