While Battlefield 1 (read our hands-on preview for it here) takes military conquest back to World War 1, a new report from GamesRadar claims their main competition, Call of Duty, almost beat them to the punch with a game that focused on … ancient Rome.

The game, featured above, was tentatively named Call of Duty: Roman Wars, and was received quite well by Activision, even by CEO Bobby Kotick himself. Despite this, GamesRadar’s source claims “a mixture of studio stubbornness and fears of over-saturating the brand” stopped the game from happening.

According to the source, the original developer on the game, Vicarious Visions, created the prototype. After not receiving the greenlit at Activision, key members left the company and repurposed it as just “Roman Wars” to Ubisoft.

Originally meant as a test to see what Activision’s teams could make with the Call of Duty name, Roman Wars was built from the core of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 and made use of first and third-person perspectives.

The source claims that you would play as “several” different characters, from no-name grunts to even Julius Caesar himself. The goal was to focus on the accuracy of battles, with the hopes of keeping them as close to Caesar’s actual historical movements.

Editor’s Note: Featured image is from HBO’s series, Rome