Total War: Rome 2 – Euro Gamer 2012 Preview

by Simon Kobic

I had the chance today to get behind the closed door presentation that was happening at the Eurogamer with James Russell, the lead designer at Creative Assembly. We were being shown for the first time pre-pre alpha gameplay and demonstration from ROME II.

It is pretty exciting, as the game was just recently announced and ROME II is hugely anticipated by the fans of Total War Series.

Here is a quick rundown of what we can expect and what was shown.

– The development team felt they needed to make a sequel to ROME because it was the most popular in the entire series and fans demanded it most.

– There are over 100 people currently working on this project.

– The release date is expected to hit late 2013 (probably holiday season)

– Improved engine will be able to run even more units and generate bigger and more detailed environments.

– James Russell talked about how much emphasis goes into sound design and creating very immersive experience.

– Rome II will feature more brutal and gore battles, to show more real scope of ancient wars

– The camera movements and how you follow your units has been hugely revamped. Watching battles now feels like watching a Lord of the Rings movie (even more than before)

– The demonstration started with naval fleet approaching land and dispatching smaller ships to  send off infantry (which means you now will be able to combine naval and land battles)

– The city that was under siege was also attacked from it’s harbour.

– The city that was demonstrated in battle was enormous. Beautifully designed (as oppose to being only copy/paste of the same buildings closed down within simple walls)

– Watching the whole battle really made an impression as if you were watching Troy movie, but you still had control over everything.

– There seems to be much more emphasis on cinematics, with an opening scene of the battle and up close camera scenes of commanders ordering their units and giving motivational speeches.

– There is a new “emotional” animation feature, that will reflect soldier’s emotions on their faces and some body language to represent what’s happening on the battlefield.

– Once again…the camera…gosh it’s so good…! Some of the moments are so eye candy with how it operates.

– Music is superb, fitting the atmosphere perfectly.

– This being pre alpha build, in few movements the AI felt very unpolished. Big units clashing with only the front rows fighting and surrounding soldiers standing still.

– New strategic camera angles, where you can zoom out completely (like an isometric view) to get better orientation of the battlefield.

– Lots of new siege machinery ( you can now move camera up close inside of the siege towers to see what your units are doing)

– Each model will have approximately 6000-7000 polygons, (as oppose to 2000 in Rome 1)

– Everything feels better and on much bigger scale. It really makes huge impression of what they managed to achieve with the game so far.

– It is going to be PC exclusive (again they mentioned memory and control limits of consoles), they’re aiming to have the same minimum requirements as Shogun II, with better hardware you will enjoy the game at its best.

It really looks fantastic so far, I am really looking forward to this one, ever since Total War: Napoleon I have felt as if they’ve lost the magic of the series, but with Rome II there is no dying it is going to be amazing experience.