Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia official artwork showing off a king

The upcoming Thrones of Britannia is going to be the very first of the new Total War Saga spin-off series. In other words, instead of covering a large stretch of territory across an equally large time frame, Thrones of Britannia will narrow down the focus to the British Isles and the most interesting events that happened after the English king Alfred the Great halted the Viking invasion in 878 AD.

In gameplay terms this means you can expect to see a smaller amount of more interesting and unique factions, "the most detailed Total War map yet", plenty of local flavor, as well as a variety of gameplay improvements. A little while ago Creative Assembly highlighted most of the combat additions and changes, while this time around it is the politics & intrigue system that's getting all of the spotlight. Have a gander, it's quite an interesting video:

While all of these are certainly good changes, I'm quite curious to see how they will actually pan out in-game. Will they simply be more busy-work in between battles, or will they be actual decisions you need to think about? Given Total War's history with such features this can go either way, but I really do hope they'll managed to nail it down with Thrones of Britannia since the Total War: Warhammer series is severely lacking in this regard.

Either way, we'll find out soon enough as Total War: Thrones of Britannia is set to arrive this May 3rd for Windows, while the Mac and Linux versions will be following shortly after. You can learn more about it, or just check out some of the other previews, by heading over to either the official website or Steam.