When I first sat down to play, I expected to react with a slight shrug. Even after playing Emperor Edition for a good while, I’m not entirely convinced that all of the technical issues that troubled my time with Rome II have been eradicated, but I’m impressed by Attila’s focus and commitment to a central thesis. If the question posed by Rome II was “What would Rome: Total War look and behave like with modern technology driving it?”, Attla seems to be built on a rather more interesting proposition – “How does a genre and series that thrives on expansion deal with a turn toward decay and decline?”
I like that question and I hope that Attila is able to formulate a robust response. But I don’t know if it will because 40 turns only reveals the first flakes of winter. I spoke to Creative Assembly at great length about what they hope to achieve with the game, what they took away from the experience fo Rome II and how the series has changed over time. I came away impressed and excited to see more, and we’ll have the full transcript of that conversation later this week.
Attila is promising and the new additions could run deep, changing the character of the strategic map and the way players interact with it. That’s the intention and this is a case where listing new features isn’t as important as understanding the thematic significance of the new features. There’s a focused goal at work here and an attempt to play with the Total War formula in a way that should make this far more than a pseudo-expansion.
I’m intrigued. But I’ve been here before and this time, let’s not bring a pinch of salt to the table – let’s bring enough to pay an entire legion with*. There’s not long until release on February 17th and it’ll probably take at least a week with the full game after launch before the extent of the new features and flaws can be seen. I want to see the darkness enveloping my empire, I want to take my horde from one end of the map to the other, burning and pillaging as I go. I want to push the simulation to its extremes and see which bits break. It’s ok for some bits to break, that’s what happens, but will they break in a way that makes me interested to see more? If so, I’ll probably end up losing weeks of my life to the game, as I did wit the first Rome and Medieval.
I also want to play as the Huns, to see which strategies suit them and if it’s possible to create the radical alternate histories that the series makes me hungry for. I want to eradicate empires and rebuild them in the cold, dark end of everything. But that will have to wait and so shall we, until the full picture is revealed.
Look out for more details and thoughts in an extensive interview later this week.
