The Egyptian setting is "pure Total War material" says Creative Assembly

If you've been wondering why Creative Assembly decided to pick the setting of early Ancient Egypt for Total War: Pharaoh, we now know exactly why. Speaking with game director Todor Nikolov at Gamescom this year, we asked what made the setting so special and why the team decided to build a game around it.

"Well, first of all, Ancient Egypt is really influential, a culture and a civilization and it's well known throughout the world," said Nikolov.

"And we wanted to tell a specific story from the entire lengthy history of Ancient Egypt, that about the Bronze Age collapse."

He continued, "It's a period that's very fitting for a Total War game because at the end of the Bronze Age in this part of the world, like the area of Egypt and the modern Middle-East, all of the civilizations were living together in a sort of international community, which was pretty stable, but over the course of several decades everything unravelled and most of these civilizations were no more in a pretty violent way, which is pure Total War material."

This period of time doesn't include the likes of Cleopatra and the famed final era of Egyptian pharaohs, but it does feature an array of influential and iconic figures, such as Ramesses II.

We recently had the chance to play more of Total War: Pharaoh, all ahead of its launch next month, and you can read that preview here to learn more about the game's campaign mode. Likewise, you can catch the full interview with Nikolov below for more information on the mythological portion of the game, the difficulty options, and how it is looking to be authentic to the time period.