When Total War: Pharaoh was leaked a couple of days ago pretty much everyone assumed it would be a part of the Saga cycle of Total War games - kind of like Thrones of Britannia or Troy. Now that it has been properly announced, however, it looks like Total War: Pharaoh will be a mainline entry in the series and a fully-fledged historical grand strategy game to boot! And yes, this sadly does mean that all of the mythological stuff is out... at least for the time being.

Set during the Bronze Age Collapse, Total War: Pharaoh will put you in the shoes of eight faction leaders spread across three unique cultures: Egypt, Canaan and the Hittite empire. From there you'll need to gather territory through diplomacy or brutality, slowly build up and evolve your empire, forge all sorts of alliances, and naturally, crush anyone that dares defy you through large-scale RTS battles. In other words, Pharaoh is indeed going to be a Total War game!

While there are sadly no gameplay details to discuss just yet, there is one very significant addition coming with Total War: Pharaoh - the ability to customize your campaigns! These new settings will let you do everything from randomizing the starting positions of all factions to dictating the amount of available resources or even just playing around with natural disasters.

This is exactly what the series has been missing for many years now, especially on the Total War: Warhammer front, so I must admit I'm quite excited about the idea. After all, even if Creative Assembly plays it too conservatively and doesn't let us go wild with the changes, there's always going to be a bunch of mods to fill in the gaps and really help keep things fresh and interesting.

Whatever the case may be, I'll make sure to let you know once we get to see some actual gameplay. Until then, I'll leave you with the official trailer featuring an epic dung beetle battle: