One of the greatest names in PC gaming is getting a makeover. An epic, empire-building, sea-faring makeover. So take Napoleon’s advice to heart. Empire is being developed by Creative Assembly in a mechanical-looking office block just inside the Horsham ring road. Presenting it to me are James Russell, lead designer, and Mike Simpson, founder of the company.
Such as game design: “It’s easy to design a complicated system. Hard to design an easy system that retains flavour”, gusts of wind: “The thing is, gusts don’t actually move at the speed of the wind,” and programming: “Getting 10,000 guys to collide with each other, and objects, and find their way out of a paper bag - now that’s a problem”.
There are some fundamental truths to Total War. The first is the holy trinity of pikes, archers and cavalry. Cavalry will cut down archers, no question, but will buckle if charged into pikes. But pikes are slow and vulnerable to archer fire. In Empire, that’s a thing of the past. The new 1700s-to-early-1800s setting, with its muskets and artillery, demands new stratagems. Generals will have to rethink their entire approach. Best of all, you’ll see and feel it all: the wind in the sails, the choking atmosphere of the gun-deck as the crew frantically reload the cannons, the fights on deck… the man at the steering wheel, driving the boat. Umm. Maybe we need to read up on the actual nautical terms before we start wearing epaulettes.
Some of the game play may vary in most of the theatre of war in the game, in sea or in land based battles, for the land is a straight forward approach you command a full regiment of forces, pike or a musketeer force and have a numerous ways they can be commanded, either they have a defensive that has the ability to guard and hold their ground in any form of attack by the enemy but sacrifices the speed in the battle field or the straight forward attack mode that increased the ferocity of the units fighting and increasing the speed but more vulnerable to surprise attack from the rear, basically the game is a real linear, game play give you the choice to take the battle or be more passive and take you enemy by surprise, as the same in sea but your units are based in heavy wooden warship with 15 to 20 guns at each side for all physics gore and effects and truly fascinating the level of graphics placed in this new installment comparing with their previous games.
Empire will span the 18th century, the dawn of the modern world, from about 1700 to somewhere past 1800. This period encompassed a lot of revolution and warfare, including the Seven Years’ War, a conflict that could be considered the first true world war because it was fought all around the globe. The game will run right up to the cusp of the Napoleonic Wars, but it doesn’t sound like it will cover that epic conflict. If that’s truly the case, it’s not too hard to imagine that the Napoleonic Wars, a popular request by Total War fans, could easily be implemented in an expansion or a sequel.
