Rome: Total War Updated Impressions

At a recent European press event, we had a chance to take a look at a battle sequence in Creative Assembly's upcoming large-scale strategy game Rome: Total War. The battle took place between an army of allied Roman and Greek forces pitted against an army of barbarians on a seaside map on a bright, sunny Western European summer day in 500 BC. Like Medieval: Total War - The Viking Invasion, the game will have a prebattle deployment phase that will let you commission and place specific groups of archers, spearmen, and swordsmen, maong others, on the battlefield before the fight begins, and like the original Medieval: Total War, Rome will have generals who possess specific virtues and vices that can help or hinder them on or off the battlefield. If these generals are cut down on the battlefield, their entire company of soldiers will suffer a heavy morale penalty, which makes them far less effective in combat.

But unlike the previous games, Rome: Total War will show specific generals as distinct-looking characters that can be specifically targeted by cunning foes. According to Creative Assembly's Ian Roxburgh, the developer is attempting to give the game "a very cinematic quality." This is quite obvious in the game's massive 3D battles, in which thousands of fully polygonal 3D soldiers square off individually and engage in one-on-one combat, or get tossed sky-high by fiery catapult ordnance. The detail of the 3D environments in the game will even be reflected in the strategic, turn-based portion of the game, since actual terrain in strategic mode will be reflected in battles (for example, if you engage your enemy in a valley area surrounded by a river on the strategic map, the real-time 3D battle will take place on just such a valley with just such a river).

The battle we watched took place in a green, hilly area just off the coast, near a huge barbarian city. According to Roxburgh, Medieval featured a great many battles, some of which were inconsequential and could be easily skipped. The newer game will have fewer battles, but they'll all be much larger and more important, and will usually involve the capture of a city--major settlements that are centers of trade and diplomacy.

Yet Creative Assembly is attempting to make the game far more accessible to new players than any of the previous Total War games. The developer has already implemented an alternate "standard RTS interface" (in addition to the original control scheme of Shogun and Medieval) that lets you group-select companies by clicking and dragging your mouse, and clicking on their destinations or targeted enemies. The game will also feature governors in each city that can be ordered to automatically take care of one or more important aspects of the game, including diplomacy, trade, and military operations. This feature was added to let players play as much or as little of the game as they wish (so if players prefer to stick to "high-level" strategy by taking a larger view of their holdings, they can let their computer-controlled advisors take care of minor concerns). In addition, new players will benefit from a full-fledged tutorial, as well as an advisor feature that will continually offer helpful hints throughout the course of the entire single-player campaign. And if you don't care to play through the single-player game, Creative also plans to add about 16 stand-alone historical battles that can be played as one-shot matches, in addition to multiplayer play. Rome: Total War won't be out until next year, but stay tuned to GameSpot for future updates on this impressive-looking game.