Rome: Total War (impressive screenshots!)

[A Black Falcon]

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/new...63,00.html

I know that Medieval only came out last fall, and the developers are still working on the Medieval expansion pack, but the next game in the series is announced, and screenshots are out... WOW.

If you don't know, Shogun and Medieval are strategy games with Turn-Based overworld map play and Realtime battles. Like Axis & Allies with Lords of the Realm battles, sorta... but better... :) . Shogun and Medieval had cool battles that allowed thousands of guys, but the men themselves were just sprites. So thousands and thousands of guys would be on the screen, but didn't look as impressive as they could if they had been 3D..

Rome changes all that. :) 10,000 polyagonal soldiers on the screen... and now there are screenshots. They look very impressive... :)

Activision announces that it's publishing Creative Assembly's next Total War strategy game, which will have massive fully 3D battles set in Roman times.

Although information on the next Total War game hasn't been kept secret these last couple of weeks, Activision has now officially announced that it will be publishing Rome: Total War. The third game in the strategy series known for combining empire-level strategy and massive tactical battles will take place during Roman times and will challenge players to rewrite history and be proclaimed Imperator of Rome. The new game will take a big step forward visually, and it will be based on a brand-new engine that's completely 3D, down to each one of the thousands of units that can meet on the battlefield.

"One of the biggest challenges we've faced so far with Rome: Total War is getting people to believe what they see when we show them the game," said Tim Ansell, managing director of The Creative Assembly. "The cinematic battles are beyond anything ever before seen in a game. So, when people see a screenshot or the game running, they automatically assume that we're showing a cutscene or that it's going to take a supercomputer to run the game. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even before final optimizations the engine performance and the system specs are already very competitive."

In Rome: Total War, players can fight as, or against, legendary generals, including Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and the rebel Spartacus, as they lead their faction to the gates of Rome. There will be hundreds of different troop types available, with frontline troops such as legionaries, hoplites, barbarian hordes, war elephants, gladiators, and scythe chariots, as well as war machines like siege towers, battering rams, and catapults that hurl flaming missiles into enemy cities and strongholds. Battles will take place in more than 10,000 unique battlefields based on the actual topography of Europe and North Africa.

No release date has been announced as of yet. For more details, check out our previous coverage of the game.

Note where they say that this will run with "very competitive" system reqs... ")

[OB1]

Yowza, look at all of those troops! Very impressive indeed. Good thing I just bought a new computer, eh? I think my 1.73 GHZ Athlon with a spankin' new NForce 2 board and Radeon 9500 Pro card will run this quite nicely. I got the computer at ibuypower, all for about $740 after shipping. It'll be here in two weeks! Wee! The first computer that will be all mine... and I had to save up money for a few months to get it. Compulsive DVD buying makes that kind of difficult, you know?

[EdenMaster]

Great. I'm pretty sure there are about 20 computer on this earth that will be able ot run this game smoothly. They'll all have to cooperate simultaneously to do it too.

[Private Hudson]

10,000 polygonal character my ass.

As soon as they get a certain distance away, they turn into sprites.

Besides that, it looks a lot like Kessen, on the PS2.

[A Black Falcon]

Kessen? Never played that... it was a early PS2 game, right? Shogun: Total War was out before that (it came out in early/mid 2000)... its just that Shogun and last years Medieval had sprite-based units (and no towns).

As for if they turn into sprites, well, maybe... but it doesn't look like it in those screenshots. I can't tell for sure, but if they do its very well done. Even the guys in the back definitely look like polygons and not sprites like Medieval here.





Oh... one more thing. If you haven't played one of these games, how you'd control so many thousands of guys might seem overwhelming... but its not. You see, they are divided into units -- 60-100 men each -- which you control as one... you only control units, not individual soldiers. See all of those flags the guys are holding? Each of those is that units' selection flag... you click it (or click and drag to select multiple groups, etc) to select them, then move, maneuver, or change the facing/settings for the unit. Simple, yet cool... much better than many games of the type, which would use one guy to represent each unit the Total War series represents with 60 to 100 guys.

[Dark Jaguar]

That's pretty nice. It's one of this little things that helps the feel of the game, like when having the lead RPG character be the only one on screen replaced with having the rest follow behind.

I have to say that having a maximum of like 30 units fighting at once just didn't sound like a full on WAR in WC3. It looked like a minor scurmish in fact, though the game still felt very hectic and warlike and all, it wasn't due to numbers, that's for sure. But oh well, there's also the issue of buildings being like only 4 times the size of units :D.

[A Black Falcon]

Its for more than looks, DJ... sure, part of it is that battles look a whole lot cooler when you're controlling 800 guys instead of 20, for sure... but it also adds more strategy. If each unit was one guy it would make the unit facings VERY hard to do decently... you know, how if you attack a unit from the side its a lot easier to kill it? Unit facings, mode (offensive/defensive/etc) are important and make more sense to the player with more guys.

Oh... one thing those shots admittedly do is make it seem like most battles have many thousands of guys. Thats often not true. You see, it says "up to 10,000" but from my experience in the first two games, your army usually doesn't get much above 1000. Shogun and Medieval only allow 16 units on the field per side at a time... and since units are usually not full strenghth, a size 16 army can be 800-1000 guys, maybe 11 or 12 hundred at the most. Also, usually its just two sides in a battle, not 3 or 4 like some of those shots have (you can tell because each nation has its own flag color...). But there are some like that middle shot I have there of Medieval with probably 10,000 guys... not that many. Of course, once you see the framerate in battles that big, you'd be happy there aren't more of them... unless you have a LOT of ram...

Also, if you look at advertising for any of the Total War games, you'd see it has almost exclusively the battle part of the game... the other half of the game on the campaign map doesn't look as good (it being a 2d topdown map with provinces) so it doesn't get as much advertising attention. Oh well, they do have to make it look as good as possible.

Anyway, both parts (RTS battles and TBS strategy map part) are very fun, so anything that gets the series more attention and sales is good... its becoming one of the best serieses of its kind really fast...

[OB1]

Hmm, I think it'd be so much cooler if they replaced all of the European medieval stuff with a Japanese Samurai setting. I've always wanted to see a big Samurai battle like the one in Kurosawa's incredible movie "Ran".

[Private Hudson]

Originally posted by OB1
Hmm, I think it'd be so much cooler if they replaced all of the European medieval stuff with a Japanese Samurai setting. I've always wanted to see a big Samurai battle like the one in Kurosawa's incredible movie "Ran".

Kessen 1 and 2 have been out on the PS2 for years.

I haven't actually played Kessen 2, but it sounds much better than the first (which was quite fun).

[A Black Falcon]

OB1... read more closely. The first game in the series was Shogun: Total War... :)

Set in the 1600s, I think. When there was that long period of civil wars. I'm sure I've mentioned the game here before... it did come out in 2000.

Of course, that one was simpler -- graphics weren't as good, for one, and sieges weren't that great. Shogun has no siege weapons in the game, or any way to go over or destroy walls of castles, so sieges were just 'attack the gates and lose lots of guys'... it was usually better to just starve out castles. Also, the game only has one battle map per map zone, while Medieval has many (randomly generated?) ones and Rome, the article says, has 10,000 historically-accurate ones.

Oh, the series's official site is http://www.totalwar.com ...

Oh... and while the Japanese middleages period is intresting, I like the European Middle Ages more... I've always liked history, and the (european) middle ages have always been one of my favorite periods.

[Weltall]

They look so goddamn like the same person!

I say to them, you want ice cream cone, all of them say yes. How in the hell?

[Dark Jaguar]

Haha, now my turn!



I am Sparticus! No, I am Sparticus! I am the one who is Sparticus!

Sorry, had a little persona argument here. Okay, here's the pic's subtitle.

"Why does HE get a helmet?"

[Private Hudson]

Originally posted by Dark Jaguar
I am Sparticus! No, I am Sparticus! I am the one who is Sparticus!

Sorry, had a little persona argument here. Okay, here's the pic's subtitle.

"Why does HE get a helmet?"

Sparticus one was much better.

[A Black Falcon]

You do realize of course that from the normal distance you'd play from you can barely tell they HAVE heads... much less that they're identical... its a standard marketing procedure: zoom in so the graphics look best! And ignore the fact that, if you were actually playing the game, it is really not playable from that zoom distance...

Plus, most guys have helmets. :)

Anyway... yeah, the Spartacus joke was funnier. As long as that's the different guys saying that, and not the voices in your head. :)

[A Black Falcon]

Ooh... two new screenshots. Scaling ladders! Shogun had no siege stuff, and Medieval had catapults, cannon, trebuchets, etc, but not ladders... cool!

[OB1]

ABF: Yeah I know that there's a Shogun game. I just wish that it were this new one. I don't have much interest in medieval Europe.

[WhiteFleck]

I played the M:TW demo and that was a blast, but oh, if my computer could handle this (it can't) I would SOO be all over it.

[OB1]

So what are the minimum system requirements?

[A Black Falcon]

For what? Medieval? I don't know offhand, but could find that... Shogun, of course, is older and will run on any modern computer.

If you mean Rome, who knows? They haven't said anything specific yet... just that general 'people are surprised that they dont need supercomputers' thing in that interview...

Remember, Medieval just came out last summer, and its expansion pack isn't even out yet... this game is probably two years away... Shogun came out in 2000 and then Medieval in '02, so summer '04 would make sense.

http://www.totalwar.com/community/rome.htm

The new official site.

* Epic battles between collosal armies. Over 10,000 fully polygonal, motion captured units can be displayed simultaneously with virtually no sacrifice of performance compared to Medieval: Total War.

If they can deliver on that promise, I'll be impressed...

[Dark Jaguar]

Yeah I figured the sparticus one was better, as the last one was something I just put together myself (and we know how that ends up) when I decided it would be funny to claim the sparticus thing as voices in my head.

[WhiteFleck]

Thing is, it probably RUNS on most average computers, but it has to be dulled until it looks like Medieval. Those are really well skinned textures for thousands of units, and I really don't think it could run as well as M:TW on my computer.

[A Black Falcon]

Well, great new info... IGN has a great interview with amazing details of this game and more great screenshots...

http://pc.ign.com/articles/401/401508p1.html

READ IT if you have ANY interest! Some of the cool new details... fully 3d overworld map! No provinces -- armies, cities, and everything else are actually where they are shown... no more provinces. Means more strategic placement of armies, for sure!

Oh, and as the shots show you can (and probably will do a lot of) attack cities... and fight in the streets, etc. as opposed to just castles.

Oh, and the timeframe is 300 BC - 14 AD.

More interesting details in the interview.

And these three great looking screenshots.






The game is looking phenominal... both graphically and gameplay-wise. Shogun and Medieval have been two of the best strategy games of the last few years... and this one looks like it'll easily beat both of them. Wow...

[OB1]

Cool. Now let's see another Shogun game!

[A Black Falcon]

The Roman Empire is more intresting than Medieval Japan. Though a new Shogun game with a upgraded version of that graphics engine and plenty of gameplay improvements would be cool, the Romans is cooler. :)

[OB1]

Oh hell no. Ancient Japan is so much cooler than Ancient Rome. All they did in Rome was feed Christians to lions and stuff and have bad Russel Crowe movies made about them.

[A Black Falcon]

I could say something similar about ancient Japan. But its not true in either case...

I just like ancient Rome more than ancient Japan. I'd take Medieval Europe over that period too... but hey, I love all three eras... but I've always really liked (European) castles, and medieval/ancient Western history... but I like all kinds of history. Those are just some of my favorite types of it.

[OB1]

Chinese history beats all of them, though. It's just so rich, so... long, for lack of a better word.

[A Black Falcon]

Its hard to decide... its all so interesting...

[A Black Falcon]

Not much new. Just a interview. Just going to say that this game sounds so amazing... like Shogun and Medieval, but with 3d characters... and the biggest change, a true world map. Yeah, not provinces... now where your army is on the map is actually where your army is. I assume cities are the major capture points now, something backed up by all those scenes of attacking cities... Major changes... but I'm sure it'll just make the series better. :)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/r/?..._story.php(que)id=95039

[A Black Falcon]

The game's coming out in fall 2004... a year away. Its a while... but I think we now have a good candidate for best game of next year. :)

[OB1]

Crap, I thought it was coming out this year.

Ah well, guess that gives me more time to finish Shogun then.

[A Black Falcon]

I was hoping it would be sooner too... but it really doesn't surprise me that much. For one thing Medieval is still current -- it just came out last fall, and its expansion was just this summer...

You know, when Lords of the Realm III was first announced, before Shogun came out I think, I thought 'I'll get this to hold me over but it'll never be the same'... but then came Medieval... and then LOTR3 was delayed again and again... and now I'm looking forward to Rome more than LOTR3. Funny how that works... though LOTR3 will probably be out in late '02 or early '03, so they aren't direct competitors.

Oh yeah, you got Medieval? Its like Shogun but with all kinds of awesome new features... sure I know you like Asian history more, but Medieval is really a phenominal game.

[OB1]

I'll wait until I finish Shogun before I move onto Medieval.

[A Black Falcon]

But how do you "finish" a game like this? Winning once? I don't know... its not too hard to finish a game of Shogun on easy. I did that. It gets a lot harder, though...

Oh, that brings up the one thing that LOTR has over Total War.

Maps.

Sure, Total War games have HUGE maps, compared to relatively small ones for most games of LOTR (LOTR2, anyway... not sure about 3), but you just get one map... that is too bad. Its not awful, but its still too bad... I really liked the variety of short-play maps you had in LOTR. As in, not too many territories so games don't take forever... but in Total War you just have single battle (and no battle-map creator either, like LOTR2 has) or the full campaign. Its a minor issue, sure... but it is the only real issue I can think of that is bad about these games. :)