Publisher Sega and developer Creative Assembly have announced Total War: MEDIEVAL III, the latest in their beloved strategy game franchise.

While details are scant, Total War: MEDIEVAL III is currently in early development for Windows PC.

Here’s a rundown on the new game, plus its reveal trailer:

Hi Total War Community!

Here we go, the first official blog about Total War: MEDIEVAL III.

First and foremost, welcome to TotalWar.com and the MEDIEVAL III hub, our official space where we will discuss anything and everything related to the game.

My name is Pawel Wojs, I’m the Game Director for this exciting project and I’m here to kick off a series of blogs about our early vision for it. This is a series we know means a lot to many of you, and having personally worked on MEDIEVAL II almost 20 years ago, it’s beyond my wildest dreams that I get to lead the team bringing its sequel to life.

Our intention for announcing this early is simple; MEDIEVAL III is important to us, and we know it’s important to you, so we want to give you the opportunity to get a bit closer to it. Our goal is to talk to you more about what we’re working on and why we’re doing it. It is a very new way for us to communicate about these early phases of game development, but we’re excited to take you on the journey.

The main purpose of this hub is to share news & updates on our progress and it’s a place where we’ll discuss parts of the game directly with you. We’re expecting to have updates on a roughly quarterly basis as development at this stage is very fast moving, so this will allow us to present ideas that are more likely to stand the test of time. If you want to be involved in the conversation, please feel free to sign up.

So, let’s dive into the big questions: What is MEDIEVAL III? Why is now the right time? And how are we going to bring this vision to life?

Our vision is for MEDIEVAL III to be the definitive Total War sandbox set within the Medieval world and to be the ultimate “What if?” game where you can alter the course of history. We aim to set the scene by immersing you in the historical authenticity you expect from Total War. As you play, the world responds in ways that feel genuinely plausible. You can choose to follow the course as written in the history books or take a bold step towards rewriting it.

As development progresses, we’ll have more to show and discuss about its design direction – and in some cases, we’ll give you a voice to shape certain decisions. But game development is challenging, so we’re only going to be able to discuss certain areas when we’re confident they’re ready to be shown. Through this, we hope to provide more insight than ever before into the development of a Total War title. We’re going to make some mistakes, but we’re excited to make this journey with you.

Creating any Total War game takes time and immense effort, not just to make, but to ensure it hits the quality expected by you and us. The truth is, we’ve wanted to make this game for a very long time. We made attempts to bring it to life in the past, but we never felt we could truly do it justice.  

So, what’s changed? For starters, we now have Warcore – the next evolution of our game engine. It’s unlike anything we’ve worked with before, offering a bespoke set of new and improved tools across our animation system, to the renderer and campaign building blocks – all designed to bring the medieval era to life in ways we’ve previously never been able to achieve.

We also knew it was essential to bring together the right people – a team with decades of experience and a deep understanding of what makes historical strategy so compelling. This expertise, combined with the passion of those who helped shape the series, gives us the foundation to build something truly special.

Right now, the game is in early pre-production, so think about it being years away, rather than months, meaning we’re just past the opening stages of its long journey. This phase is about laying the foundations: defining scope, prioritizing features which number in the hundreds at this stage, and shaping how our vision will translate into an unforgettable experience.

We have never talked about one of our games this early on in pre-development before, so it is a very exciting prospect for us, but of course as with anything new, we will have to expect bumps and bruises along the way, so please bear with us whilst we find our rhythm. This is particularly important when we are in the middle of big project milestones as we won’t be able to talk much, so we just want to set clear expectations for the instances in which we’re busy focusing on the game.

We still have work to do before we can show you the game in its early state, but we’re ready to talk about things like our vision, the magnificence of the medieval time-period, how we aim to bring the game to life – and of course, introduce you to our talented development team.

This means that alongside the community management team, we will have members of the development team chatting to everyone, so you can hear all of the juicy details directly from them.

We will also have our brilliant community moderators supporting us on the CA Community hub, so we also expect it to be a safe space and respectful for any and all to join in on the conversation. The usual community rules apply here, and we won’t tolerate any breaches of them.

To begin with, we want to start sharing our vision; from discussing the Medieval time period to game & art pillars – and why these are important foundational building blocks. While we may not talk about game features just yet, this will be a great opportunity for you all to understand a bit more about how we tackle development from the early stages. Not everything we say in the future will be major news, and some things might be light touch but still very interesting for us all to get our teeth into.

You’ll hear plenty more from me in the weeks and months ahead, but if you’re looking to know even more about what Med III truly is, click here to go straight to Our Vision for Med III from Creative Director Leif Walter, and learn all about our vision for this game.

Thanks for reading, and welcome to the MEDIEVAL III team!

– Pawel, Game Director