'Total War: Pharaoh' Announced By Creative Assembly, Set To Release In October

Video Games

May 24

The developers at Creative Assembly have been a dominating force in the real-time strategy genre for a couple of decades now. They came roaring onto the scene in 1999 with a new approach to RTS games; combining turn-based strategy 4X grand campaign gameplay with the in-the-dirt style command of RTS, but this time with massive armies. Since Total War: Shogun they’ve turned out numerous iterations of their revolutionary take, having players command empires from Japan to the New World.

Now, Creative Assembly is going back in time, this go-round they are taking players to the fertile strip of land in the middle of a desert: Egypt. Total War: Pharaoh will take players to the New Kingdom, which lasted from the 16th to 11th centuries, B.C.E. It’s being described as placing you in command of saving Egypt from succumbing to the Bronze Age Collapse.

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It was announced with a cinematic trailer that portrays the Great Pyramids in the background when a dung beetle emerges from the ground and begins to roll its namesake across numerous types of terrain. This was likely an allusion to the types of weather that battles will take place under. The beetle is then confronted by another beetle, and a fight commences between them, all to epic music. As the original beetle emerges triumphant, its victory is short-lived when an arrow decimates its prize. The beetle lands near the hand of an Egyptian commander, and the camera pans out to show two armies coming to blows and then fades to the title.

This is perhaps the oldest period that the series has explored. It examined the Greek era, the Romans, Medieval Europe and North Africa, Imperial Age Europe and North America, China, and Japan. It’s also gone into the realm of the fantastical with the Warhammer franchise.

New Kingdom Egypt stretched from modern-day Egypt, up the Nile, and along the Red Sea into what is currently Ethiopia, and also stretching up along the Mediterranean coast of what are today Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and to the southern edge of modern Turkey. This suggests that the map will concern ancient empires like the Hittites, Assyrians, Babylon, and perhaps even the Mycenaeans. It could also include African empires from the south of the Nile.

With showcase season approaching, more information is sure to come. The game is set to release this October.