What will the next Total War game be?

So earlier in the month Creative Assembly put out some info saying that they would be announcing the next addition to the Total War franchise at EGX on the 25th of this month.

EGX has just announced they will be revealing our next Total War Title at their show in London on the 25th-28th of September! This unannounced title joins our ongoing ROME II content development and the previously announced ARENA F2P project.

Near the start of the year both Creative Assembly, and the creators of the Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k universes, Games Workshop announced that CA had gotten the ability to make games under license for Warhammer Fantasy. And just shortly ago CA had been looking to fill an Associate Producer position for a Warhammer Fantasy game on their site here.

An exciting new role for a Warhammer Fantasy Battle enthusiast. Joining our new team working on this IP, your deep understanding of the Warhammer universe will be critical to the project's success.

So being the Warhammer fanboy I am (both 40k and Fantasy) I am REALLY hoping this is a Total Warhammer game. I mean can you think of a better setting for a non-historic Total War game? The entire basis of Warhammer is that all of these different races and nations are at a continuous state of war with each other for all time! Most of the armies fight using melee weapons, though there are some firearms and magic at play. And really the magic is where I see the biggest problem being. The closest thing to magic we have in Total War games are the different commander abilities you can use on your different units or against the enemy troops.

Back in 2006 Black Hole Games released a Warhammer Fantasy strategy game, Mark of Chaos. Mark of Chaos seemed to borrow the actual combat from the Total War series and was very similar to what you find in Rome and Medieval but the campaign itself was so on rails that ultimately you felt like you were being led by the collar and wasn't very fun. If what CA are going to announce is going to be a Warhammer Fantasy Total War game I have faith they will create a much better game than Mark of Chaos.

New Factions I would like to see in Company of Heroes 2

So we are a little over a year into the release off Company of Heroes 2 and so far we have received quite a few patches to fix the issues many people had when the game first came out. We have also seen a multiplayer DLC/expansion released introducing the Oberkommando West and U.S. Forces factions and a new single player Battle of the Bulge centered DLC is about to be released as well. The developers of CoH 2 have stated they have a 5 year plan for the game and are open to introducing more factions. Here is what I would like to see, and it may be mostly multiplayer based because that is the majority of what I play.

There are several new factions that can be added to the game to spice things up. Frankly I am tired of the Germans with both OKW and the Ostheer forces already being in the game, plus we had the American army in the first game as well. No, we need something different than the same old European and Western Asia settings and factions we currently have. Some people I have seen suggest that Relic add North Africa next. But really what does that net us? For the sake of flavor it would have to be Italy and Britain/US. I really can’t deal with another German faction in the Deutches Afrika Korps (aka DAK). The German factions are spread pretty thin with units as it is across their western front and eastern front armies, it would be extremely difficult to add yet another German army and make it feel different from the others.

The Italians would be an interesting addition I think. They could have their base military units but German commanders to fill in any specific infantry and armor needs they may have. The Italians themselves weren’t bad per se, but they suffered from having horrible leadership in their officer corps both at the highest and lowest levels. You could add the British Expeditionary Force which was made up of the British of course and supplementary units from across the empire. But then you would be forced to deal with the issue of this taking place in the early war period. How would the British be able to make up for the fact that the Ostheer and Oberkommando West armies are both using more advanced weapons and vehicles?

 What I personally would like to see is Relic bring us factions from the Pacific Theater. The U.S. Marines could be designed to play differently enough from the USF to make them feel unique and not like a clone army. Being an amphibious assault force would allow the Marines to use amphibious tracked vehicles as their sort of gimmick if you will and allow them to cross rivers and lakes carrying squads of infantry. This would add another dimension to the game since you would now have to be worrying about being flanked. I won’t go too into detail as to what they could be equipped with or what special units they could have (maybe in another post) but Marine Raiders and Sniper units are the two main ones that spring to mind.

Then we have Imperial Japan. The Japanese seemed a little light on the Anti-Tank front so you could introduce some mechanics to make up for that. Give them cheap AT options like grenades, rocket launchers, and AT guns. Their armor was also a bit lacking so maybe give them cheaper armor or reduce the manpower resource that the tank units take up so they can field more than other factions to make up for the fact that they are more easily destroyed. The Imperial Japanese Navy had their Special Naval Landing Force which was a Marine like unit that could either be dropped into combat as paratroopers or make amphibious assaults. I would also give them the ability to use amphibious vehicles in the same manner as the Marines. 

Sometimes I see people complain that the Pacific Theater mostly had naval battles but really this is fiction. Of course large portions of the combat did take place at sea but more than enough battles were fought on land to make this seem absolutely silly. People also mention that the Japanese had weak AT and armor but really I trust that Relic are good enough at their jobs to come up with game mechanics to negate these things and allow the Japanese to be on the same footing as the other factions.

So that’s it, my thoughts on the next faction. I would still like to see the Italians added as well, but not the Germans, please god anything but the Germans again!

Are Indie Developers the future of RTS games?

So it's no secret that over the last few years releases in the RTS genre have been anemic at best. I mean sure you have your big franchise releases from Relic, Creative Assembly, and Blizzard, but what else is there? The Command & Conquer series has been abandoned unfortunately, Ensemble Studios who were responsible for the Age of Empires series and Halo Wars were shut down after not long after the release of the latter, and while yes Blizzard continues to release Starcraft games (albeit slowly) they have left the Warcraft series to collect dust.

Yet over the last year we have seen an uptick in the number of real time strategy games being released and put into development, but no longer really from from the large developers of the past. We have had re-releases of Age of Empires 2 HD, Age of Mythology: Extended Edition, and Rise of Nations: Extended Edition of course published by Microsoft but brought back from the dead by the likes of Hidden Path Entertainment and SkyBox Labs. While of course these releases are not the same as having original IPs created and released they have shown that maybe big publishers are willing to put their feelers out and test the waters of the strategy community by entrusting smaller companies to update old school games. Of course one of the most interesting aspects here is that SkyBox Labs worked with modders on a expansion that had been in the works prior to the creation of AoE 2 HD and for the first time since the year 2000 Age of Empires 2 had received new content in the form of The Forgotten expansion.

But we aren't just seeing retread of old franchises with a new coat of paint on them. Smaller development teams and companies are beginning to take to the genre for the first time in a significant way. Uber Entertainment began a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 for their game Planetary Annihilation, which has been described as a throwback to the Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation games, that was just officially released on the 5th of this month. It was amazing to see how much support the company received both financially and the number of people backing and buying the game.

There is the French company Eugen Systems who have been around for a time but seemed to just hit their stride over the last couple of years with the introduction of their Wargame series all the while they are currently developing an old fashioned resource gathering and base building RTS in the vein of the Command & Conquer Generals series called Act of Aggression. The Wargame series itself are more along the lines of Real-Time Tactics games but Act of Aggression is promising to go back to the roots of the RTS genre.

Another game that's caught my eye is the Science Fiction strategy game Etherium by French Developer Tindalos Interactive. I've actually been lucky enough to get into the beta for this game and while I can't really say much due to the NDA I can let their teaser for the game speak for itself.

The last game I will mention is Grey Goo by developer Petroglyph Games. Petroglyph do have some strategy pedigree (Star Wars Empire at War, Universe at War: Earth Assault) but aren't backed by a large publisher themselves. I have seen several video's of Dev vs. Dev games and it's looking excellent so far. Science Fiction games seem to be becoming more prevalent at the moment which doesn't really bother me as long as they are unique enough and can distinguish one from the other.

Of course there are others out there like Meridian: New World another Sci-Fi game most notable for being developed by a single man believe it or not, Ancient Space, and the Fantasy MMORTS Avalon Lords. It does make me curious why more of these smaller companies seem to throw their collective hats in the ring and all in such a small amount of time as well. My personal belief is that technology has finally developed to the point that you don't need to be this big company with lots of resources to create real time strategy games anymore, or that you can be a small company and use crowdsourcing to help get you the resources that may not have been available otherwise. Whatever the case may be I'm very happy that so many of these games are being made now and I hope this doesn't prove to be a coincidence and is more of a pattern.

Welcome!

So I'm thinking this blog will be my Strategy video game focused blog. I'm actually really into Real-Time Strategy gaming in particular and that will probably see the majority of my focus though I might dabble in other game types from time to time.

I can't really remember what came first for me, Age of Empires or Starcraft. Either way I found them both around the same time in 1999 or 2000 and never looked back. From there I went on to Age of Empires 2, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Red Alert 2, and so on. Creating and bashing large armies together caught my imagination and to this day I love massing troops and wreaking havoc.

These days I play Total War: Rome 2 and Company of Heroes 2 mostly. Yet I can't help but go back to some of the classics. Last year saw the re-release of Age of Empires 2 on Steam (dubbed the HD Edition) and I have played that from time to time to get my AoE fix. I picked up the Command & Conquer Ultimate Edition several months ago as well if only for Red Alert 2 which kept me pretty busy when I was younger. I actually own somewhere around 70ish strategy games both physically and digitally from places like Steam, Origin, and GOG.

Anyways this has been my intro and hopefully I will be adding more thoughts to this blog soon, cheers!