The latest in a now popular series that originally started as a spin-off, Total War: Warhammer 3 is the penultimate installment of Creative Assembly's hugely successful Total War series. Set in the medieval Warhammer universe, it's finally giving players what they always wanted, an in-depth look at the forces of Chaos.

Total War: Warhammer 3 is a brilliant way to send off a dense and entertaining franchise of strategy games. Featuring a brand new cinematic Tutorial Campaign and surprisingly long and detailed cutscenes for its faction Lords, TW3 is filled to the brim with everyone's favorite grim dark fantasy world. Though the new campaign can take several hours to beat for each of the eight factions (including the Ogre pre-order), similar to the previous games Vortex Campaign, you're left scratching your head after hitting that end screen. There are a lot of lingering questions left off after you're done, so here are a few things that still need to be answered by Creative Assembly for Total War: Warhammer 3's future development.

10/10 Now What?

Total War: Warhammer 3 Lord And Their Army On The Campaign Map

After beating the campaign of Total Warhammer 3 you'll usually get an ending cinematic and option to keep playing to "paint the map". It's similar to what you could expect after finishing the Vortex Campaign and Mortal Empires' mode of the previous games, and it's a decent reward for your efforts if a little underwhelming.

After everything you've gone through to get the Demon souls, you would expect some massive reward or game-changing ability for attaining a god's powers and or flesh, yet you're plopped back to the main map and things continue on as before. Your Lord, sitting there with no real plan after the adrenaline-filled fight that is the final confrontation, and it can feel a little anticlimactic which is disappointing. Leaving many to either start a new campaign with someone else or just ask their screen: "Well, now what?".

9/10 Will There Be A Follow-Up?

Total War: Warhammer 3 Ursun Restrained Within The Soul Forge

The way Total War: Warhammer 3's campaign ends is just begging for a follow-up. There's a lot you could explore with how universe-altering the results of the quest for the bear are. It's the first time the series has had this much work put into the Campaign mode and the way it falls kind of flat at the end feels like there should be more

For example, with Katarina, Boris and Kostaltyn, Ursun the God Bear is resurrected and Kislev is returned to green, pastured-filled land, then the credits roll. That's it. Then there's the fate of the adviser character, who after being by your side for three games, just wanders off into the wilds, ominously saying how he and the Book of Fate are free. It feels like Creative Assembly has more they could elaborate on with him, and hopefully they will.

8/10 Is This All Canon?

Total War: Warhammer 3 The Forces Of Chaos During The End Times From The Books

So, for those that aren't aware the Total War: Warhammer series has been roughly following the End Times plot of medieval Warhammer, albeit from a distance. Which for those that don't know is when the forces of Chaos Undivided, led by Archaon the Everchosen invade the lands of men, and it culminates in the destruction of the entire planet. And with the way the previous games have alluded to this all going on in the background, it begs the question, is the campaign of Total War: Warhammer 3 canon?

Much like how the Vortex Gumball Rally doesn't seem to impact the vague narrative Mortal Empires provides about Chaos Invading, it's probably likely the Quest For The Bear campaign of TW3 is kind of doing its own thing as well. Though the amount of work that's gone into it with all the cutscenes and VA work, perhaps the new Mortal Empires' mode might finally provide a way to follow the End Times to their conclusion. Instead of being just a vague and tedious victory condition for Archaons lads in the last game.

7/10 Is Age Of Sigmar Next?

Total War: Warhammer 3 Age Of Sigmar Stormcast Eternal Fighting Chaos

Is Age of Sigmar Next? Is a question that gets thrown around a lot in the Warhammer Community forums and on Creative Assembly dev streams. Whilst the developers haven't concretely said they are working on it, there have been some allusions to it in streams and offhand comments that you could piece together as them at least giving old Sigmar the side-eye. Plus, AOS being the next installment would make sense if you know your Warhammer lore.

For those that don't, after the End Times, the planet is completely destroyed and from those remains, a new realm is born where notable survivors and heroes of the old world, such as Karl Franz and Nagash are given godhood and rule over kingdoms of their own. It's high fantasy at its best and though dense, is the next logical conclusion to this side of the Warhammer universe without just jumping straight to 40K.

6/10 When Is Mortal Empires Coming?

Total War: Warhammer 3 Fanmade Mortal Empires Map Layout

Though Total Warhammer 3 sold like absolute gangbusters at launch, there are still a lot of people holding off until Mortal Empires finally drops. Which is basically a big sandbox mode using all the factions and maps from the first two games combined into one. Now with the third game that sandbox is going to get a lot more crowded.

The Mortal Empires mode is arguably what brought the last game from the brink and radically re-invented a stalled-out series. Though the timeline for release is projected at a few months, given that it took around five months for the last game to get it, we could be waiting a while. Plus, considering how much stuff they'll have to pack in, not to mention balance properly and polish up with the new games' graphics engine, the devs have a lot of work ahead of them to get Mortal Empires up and running.

5/10 What Are The DLC's Going To Be?

Total War: Warhammer 3 Demon Prince Of Chaos Undivided In Slanesh Styled Outfit

One of the best and worst parts of the Total Warhammer series is the DLC. Whilst it pulls in a wide and incredibly rich variety of characters and creatures from the lore, packaging them up with unique campaign mechanics and presenting them as downloadable content. There's a lot of it to get through, and it's a pretty rough way to nickel and dime the audience with things to play with.

Including the DLC, and the new game, there are 77 Lords in total for Total War: Warhammer now, that's a lot. There are still plenty of bizarre, wonderful or extremely brutal Warhammer creatures they can pull from, and considering this is supposedly the last game and how many TW2 is loaded with, there could be close to 100. Hopefully, the long-awaited Chaos Dwarves or Glotkin Brothers make an appearance at least.

4/10 How Will This Impact Balancing?

Total War: Warhammer 3 Grand Cathay Defends Against The Hordes Of Chaos

One of the biggest concerns in the Total Warhammer Community is how the new factions are going to impact the balancing. As a series, the franchise has been prone to balancing problems, in fact TW2 is still getting regular tweaks and changes to finally grind off some of its broken and easily overpowered builds and Lords.

At launch, all those previous problems were incredibly obvious with TW3. Certain basic magic attacks for example could wipe most units to half their health bar, charging still doesn't work and that's something they struggled with for months on TW2. Plus with how extremely strong some Total War: Warhammer Lords are, you're left wondering how much of a mess the balancing is going to be when they finally throw the big switch.

3/10 Is There Going To Be Blood DLC?

Total War: Warhammer 2 Lizardmen Brutally Tearing Apart High Elves

On the topic of DLC, there's one particular thorn in the paw that the Total Warhammer Community has with Creative Assembly, and that's the way they've approached something key to a Warhammer game, the gore. In Total War: Warhammer 3 at launch (like previous games), there is no blood or body explosions, units just fall over or drop dead.

In order to avoid putting an adult rating on the game, Creative Assembly decided to lock gore off behind a paywall, which though small, was still a shady thing to do instead of making it a toggle option. Seeing them back to their old tricks is disappointing. But in a game with literal fountains of blood and an entire faction of nudists, they should just make it a toggle with an update and not try to charge a new audience for a solution to something that should never have been a problem.

2/10 What Happened To All The UI Art?

Total War: Warhammer 2 Example Of Orc Faction UI Art For Settlement Capture

The UI of Total War: Warhammer 2 was amazingly designed and had a lot of great artwork put into simple things in typical Warhammer fashion. For example, after conquering a settlement the choices for what you do afterward either, sacking, razing, or colonizing, all have little art pieces displaying this action. It was faction-specific, and it added a nice little touch to the immersion.

Compare that with Warhammer 3 where everything is just coated in red and slimmed down, and you have to ask where the art went, and if it's coming back. Slimline Warhammer is weird and doesn't work on a series that's all about fitting as much fancy artisanal stuff in as possible. Hopefully, this changes with an update or when Mortal Empires drops otherwise there's a lot of great art that's going to go to waste.

1/10 Does This Finally Solve The Order Tide Problem?

Total War: Warhammer 3 Kislev Bear Riders Versus Khorne Chaos Cavalry

Total War: Warhammer 3 brings a lot of new fun stuff to the table, and one mechanic, the Chaos Portals, could potentially fix two of the series biggest problems, Corruption and the Order Tide. These rifts appear randomly and dump a ton of Chaos corruption onto the map, eventually spawning incredibly hard armies.

Why this is game changing is that in previous Total Warhammer games corruption was easy to deal with and the armies of Chaos appeared as a wandering force after around 100 turns and was always easily beaten by the friendly factions. Then they would form what's known in the Community as the "Order Tide", a gigantic alliance of non-evil groups, mostly Humans and Dwarves, that would always purge the entire map. Fighting this regularly quickly got repetitive for Veterans as campaign variety only tended to occur after wiping out one of the big Order Tide members super early, like Karl Franz. But now with Chaos playing a more randomized role across a gigantic map, could the days of the Order Tide be over?

NEXT: The Biggest Differences Between Total War: Warhammer 3 And Its Predecessors