Preview: Medieval II: Total War

The latest in the Total War series promises to deliver a strategy gaming experience drenched in detail.

Creative Assembly, developers of the latest highly anticipated addition to the Total War series; Medieval II: Total War, as “an evolution of the series”. We’d nicely call that humility. What most developers call “an evolution” in actually, in the case of Medieval II, a complete overhaul. Every aspect of this wonderful game has been enhanced.

Medieval II is as near enough to a completely new game as you could wish for.
Having forged ahead year after year with the Total War series, Creative Assembly knows what its fans want, and largely, that’s detail. This successful strategy series now comfortably outguns Civilization IV for being a complete recreation of races at war, their economies, religions, cultural particulars, military and history.

It’s “turn-based meets real-time combat” says Creative’s Dan Toose. “We moving to evolve the series.” Toose continues. “We found that Medieval was the most popular of the Total War series. We’re taking what we learnt from Rome and applying it to Medieval.”

The period Medieval II is set in is 1080AD through to 1530AD – as era Toose describes as “the last romantic period of warfare. It’s an era where people have to answer for everything.”

Creative Assembly has an unusually close connection with its community of fans – even so far as to employ full-time playtesters from the community, and basing them in its Brisbane HQ.

A lot of work has gone into overcoming the feeling in all previous Total War games that you’re running an army of clones. The results are spectacular. Each soldier in a line, or a battle, moves to his own beat. You’ll never see a row of clones all locked into the same movement animations. Watching a battle rage onscreen now seems far more realistic, messy, and human.

Creative Assembly has worked to add individual traits to each soldier on the field, without compromising the need for uniformity. Each soldier has slightly different articles of clothing and weapons markings. Best of all, it’s historically accurate. Heraldry was researched for units and the families that fought in them.

Like that? Then you’ll love that there’s persistent damage that carries through a campaign. A soldier may loose a helmet in a battle, for example, and be helmet-less for the rest of the game. Chinks may be cut off shields, etc, and that damage carries over.

Another example of sameness that Creative Assembly has worked to overcome is the castles design. While nice enough, the castles of Medieval and Rome were low poly count grids. Flairless and with a dull right-angle form with a great big square in the middle of every one as a rallying point. Now a ton of effort has gone into creating complex and organic castles. Two and even three ring castles are now the norm, and the layout feels much more authentic.

They’re destructible now, too! Finally artillery damage looks genuine and messy. While not quite at a ‘per brick’ level, the destructibility should satisfy the most finicky of gamers.