Total War: Pharoah has been officially announced by developer Creative Assembly, with the Ancient Egypt-set RTS set to launch in October 2023.
Total War: Pharaoh has been announced by Sega-owned studio Creative Assembly, as the much-loved Total War real-time tactics series nears its 23rd anniversary. The new game is set in the Egyptian New Kingdom period after the death of the Pharaoh, as the people of Egypt, Canaan, and the Hittite empire battle it out to crown a new leader.
Players will be able to choose between eight faction leaders from three cultures, and the game will see you attempting to stave off societal collapse as well as defending against natural disasters. There’s no confirmation of what these natural disasters might be, although we’ll take a guess that one of them might be a plague of locusts. In addition, sandstorms and thunderstorms can strike in the middle of battles, dramatically altering the tide of combat. Fires can also spread across the battlefield.
“There are few periods more iconic than Ancient Egypt; fraught with political intrigue, cataclysmic events and grand war campaigns, it’s the perfect setting for a Total War title,” said game director Todor Nikolov in a press release. “As Pharaoh, you must save Egypt from the cusp of destruction and guide your people through the calamitous Bronze-Age collapse. It is up to you to either survive or fade into history.”
The most recent entry in the Total War series was Total War: Warhammer III in 2022, and before that was Total War Saga: Troy in 2020 and Total War: Three Kingdoms in 2019. In addition, Creative Assembly is working on the team-based shooter Hyenas, which is due to be released later this year, and marks a change of pace for the studio from its bread and butter of real-time tactics games.
Creative Assembly was also behind the wonderful Alien: Isolation in 2014, and although rumours circulated last year that the team might be working on a sequel, they sadly proved to be unfounded. Recently, Jon Bailes caught up with the Creative Assembly folks who worked on Isolation to find out how they so successfully managed to capture the spirit of the creepy xenomorph.
Total War: Pharaoh is due out in October 2023 on PC, and will be released on both the Steam and Epic stores.
