Total War Saga: Thrones Of Britannia now pre-loading

"Never pre-order," we say, then youse go and pre-order A Total War Saga: Thrones Of Britannia right into the Steam top ten. Ah but sure, you know what's coming: it's another Total War, and you can already read Nic Rueben's Total War Saga: Thrones Of Britannia review for our official word on it. So hey, you cheeky pre-orderers: know that you can now pre-load Thrones Of Britannia on Steam ahead of its Thursday launch.

If you've pre-ordered the game all the kids are calling ATWSTOB, as of four minutes ago you can download 5.8GB of it in advance - though not play until it's actually out, obvs. Look for it in your Steam library. I don't know how substantial the preload lump is; the system requirements say ATWSTOB needs 30GB of free hard drive space, but those always include a nice safety margin. Still, that's 5.8GB you won't need to download on Thursday.

A 10% pre-order discount makes Thrones Of Britannia £27/€36/$36 on Steam right now but OBVIOUSLY don't pre-order even though people OBVIOUSLY are. It'll hit Windows first, with Mac and Linux versions to follow "shortly after."

Here, a chunk of Wot Nic Thought:

"Faction-specific units are few, so personality comes from unit specialities. West Seaxe has some seriously nasty late game cavalry, for example, and a few units of Welsh archers with flaming arrows will make short work of an approaching siege tower. Those coming from Total Warhammer might be disappointed that the most novel thing on offer here is units of ferocious war dogs, but it's still satisfying to watch a charge of pugilistic puppers who’ve just decided the opposing frontline have biscuits in their pockets."

Doggos, you say?