Creative Assembly
The next Total War game is on the way, and Creative Assembly is going back to its historical roots – all the way to the Bronze Age, in fact.
Total War: Pharaoh gives you the chance to steer Egypt through a tumultuous era, fighting battles and using diplomacy in classic Total War style. Here are all the details you need to know.
Total War: Pharaoh release date
Creative Assembly says that its next Total War game will be coming in October 2023, without putting a more precise date on it than that for now.
This means we still don’t know exactly in that month when Pharaoh will come out, but we’d expect this to firm up at some point fairly soon.
Total War: Pharaoh platforms
As always, Pharaoh is exclusive to PC – it’s quite simply too complex a game in terms of management and menus to envision it coming to consoles with any real success.
If its developers could crack that code, it could open up a whole tonne of new players to the world of Total War, but we don’t have any evidence that this is likely for Pharaoh.
Total War: Pharaoh trailer
The first trailer for Pharaoh is a CGI one, showing us a dung beetle’s view of ancient Egypt, before it stumbles into the sort of epic battle that will define the game’s real-time strategy segments.
It’s a nice way to establish the foreboding mood of the game’s rush to shore up your empire before disasters overwhelm it, but doesn’t give us any gameplay to chew on – we’ll have to wait until early June for this to be revealed in a developer stream, so stay tuned!
Total War: Pharaoh gameplay
Pharaoh: Total War looks like it’ll take on a familiar cadence to fans of the series, unsurprisingly. The game will see you take control of one of three factions duking it out for supremacy in the wider Egyptian region.
These are Egyptians, Canaanites and Hittites, and each has a few commanders to pick from with unique traits and abilities to exploit, each leaning toward slightly different playstyles.
Those three factions also cover the game’s three main regions, varying between arid desert and isolated oases, and the luscious and green banks of the Nile itself.
Creative Assembly
Your job will be to juggle expansion and your controller territories in a campaign map, maintaining armies and growing your settlements while keeping the citizens content.
Meanwhile, frequent battles will offer you the chance to jump in and command huge armies as you like, laying siege to towns and meeting in battle on open ground.
New weather effects will see thunderstorms and rain, or baking heat, alter your tactics by encouraging or stopping the spread of fire, or putting the fear of the gods into your fighters.
Creative Assembly
You’ll also be able to earn and equip a range of crowns for your ruler, each offering a different ability that could sway things in your favour in battle or on the campaign map.
It doesn’t look like a massive new leap for the Total War franchise, but from what we’ve seen and played there’s nothing wrong with a long-awaited setting paired with the same systems you know and love.