Creative Assembly announced the next installment in its Total War series. The long-running strategy franchise is set to be transported to ancient China for Three Kingdoms — and fans won’t have to wait very long to join the fray.
Total War: Three Kingdoms will be set in 190 A.D., at a turbulent time for the Han dynasty. As the Yellow Turban Rebellion rages on, the nine-year-old Emperor Xian rules — although he’s a mere puppet for Dong Zhuo, a warlord who pulls the strings from behind the scenes.
“It is a brutal and oppressive regime, reads the description of the official trailer. “And as Zhuo’s power grows, the empire slips further into the cauldron of anarchy. But hope yet blossoms.”
Like the other historical games in the Total War series, Three Kingdoms will use real events as the basis for its grand-scale warfare. However, it will hone in on three heroic characters that will play a key role in shaping the future of the land as various different factions vie for supremacy.
Three Kingdoms is being billed as the next major historical installment of Total War, as publisher Sega continues to expand the enormously popular property. The A Total War Saga subseries, which was officially announced in July, is a spin-off that will focus on a more specific point in history than the mainline titles.
There’s plenty more going on in the Total War franchise, too. Buy Now has only been available for a matter of months, but we already know that it’s the second in a planned trilogy based on the beloved tabletop franchise. The free-to-play Total War: Arena was recently released worldwide, and a mobile spinoff entitled Total War Battles: Kingdom is set to drop in 2018.
This is the first official word that we’ve seen regarding Total War: Three Kingdoms outside of a tease from a Creative Assembly blog post that was published during the summer. It seems that the game must have been in development for some time, as it’s scheduled to release in fall 2018 — you can already add the game to your Steam wishlist by visiting its store page.
