Total War Franchise Familiariser (revised)

In the last few days British video game developers Creative Assembly have announced their latest Total War video game, Total War: Pharaoh. The Total War series is now one of the biggest-selling strategy video game series of all time, shifting more than 40 million copies of sixteen games and numerous expansions since the turn of the century. Only Sid Meier’s Civilization titles have been more successful among turn-based strategy games, and its lead is now very narrow. A lot of people have recently been discussing the franchise, its history and future, but what if you have no idea what they are going on about? Time for a Franchise Familiariser course.

Note: This is a revised and updated version of an article originally published in 2017.

The Basics

Total War is a video game series which sets out to recreate some of the most notable wars and military campaigns in human history, as well as, more recently, conflicts from the Warhammer fantasy setting. Each Total War game stands alone as its own, self-contained title, although the three Warhammer games can be combined into one larger game.

The earliest setting in the games is the Peloponnesian War of Ancient Greece in 432 BC. The latest setting is the Bakumatsu period of Japanese history, ending around 1868 AD.

Each Total War game works as both a grand strategy and a small-scale tactics game. Every game has a large, turn-based campaign map on which you can assemble armies, construct buildings and engage in diplomacy, technological research and espionage. When armies meet, the game switches to a real-time 3D battlefield where you take direct control of your army and direct the course of battle using realistic and – somewhat – historically accurate tactics.

The Series

The Total War series consists of sixteen stand-alone games, nine expansions and a large number of small expansions and unit packs, sold as downloadable content (DLC). There are also a significant number of fan-made “mods” for the games, doing everything from tweaking unit stats and artwork to adding entire new maps and campaigns.

The series to date consists of the following titles (along with their approximate historical settings and the major expansion packs for each game indented, although not every optional bit of DLC is listed for clarity):

• Shogun: Total War (2000) – Sengoku Japan, 1467-1603
• Shogun: Total War – Mongol Invasion (2001) – Mongol invasion of Japan, 1274-81
• Medieval: Total War (2002) – Medieval Europe, 1087-1453
• Medieval: Total War – Viking Invasion (2003) – Viking invasions of Britain, 793-1066
• Rome: Total War (2004) – Roman Europe, 270 BC-14 AD
• Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion (2005) – Roman Europe, 363-476
• Rome: Total War – Alexander (2006) – Greece, Persia, India, 336-323 BC
• Medieval II: Total War (2006) – Medieval Europe, 1080-1530
• Medieval II: Total War – Kingdoms (2007) – various, 1174-1520
• Empire: Total War (2009) – Europe, North America, India, 1700-1800
• Empire: Total War - Warpath Campaign (2009), North America, 1783-1825
• Napoleon: Total War (2010) – Europe, 1780-1820
• Napoleon: Total War - The Peninsular War (2010) - Portugal & Spain, 1807-14
• Total War: Shogun II (2011) – Sengoku Japan, 1467-1573
• Total War: Shogun II - Rise of the Samurai (2012), Genpei War, 1180-85
• Total War: Shogun II – Fall of the Samurai (2012) – Bakumatsu Japan, 1853-67
• Total War: Rome II (2013) – Roman Europe, 272 BC-28 AD
• Total War: Rome II - Caesar in Gaul (2013) - Roman invasion of Gaul, 58-50 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Hannibal at the Gates (2014) - Second Punic War, 218-201 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Imperator Augustus (2014) - War of the Second Triumvirate, 32-30 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Wrath of Sparta (2014) - The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Empire Divided (2017) - The Crisis of the 3rd Century, 270-284 AD
• Total War: Rome II - Rise of the Republic (2018) - 399-272 BC
• Total War: Attila (2015) – Roman Europe, 395-453
• Total War: Attila - The Last Roman (2015) - Gothic War, 535-551
• Total War: Attila - Age of Charlemagne (2015) - Charlemagne's War, 768-814
• Total War: Warhammer (2016) – The Old World
• Total War: Warhammer II (2017) – The New World
• Thrones of Britannia: A Total War Saga (2018) - The Viking Invasion of Britain, 878 AD
• Three Kingdoms: Total War (2019) - The Three Kingdoms, China, 190-278
• Yellow Turban Rebellion (2019) - The Three Kingdoms, China, 190-278
• Eight Princes (2019) - War of the Eight Princes, China, 291-306
• Mandate of Heaven (2019) - The Yellow Turban Rebellion, 182-278
• A World Betrayed (2020) - China, 194-278
• The Furious Wild (2020) - The Three Kingdoms, China, 190-278
• Fates Divided (2021) - Battle of Guandu, 200
• Troy: A Total War Saga (2020) - The Trojan War, 1194-1184 BC
• Total War: Warhammer III (2022)
• Total War: Pharaoh (2023) - The Great Bronze Age Collapse, 12th Century BC

There are also a series of spin-off games, either action titles for console or highly-simplified games for mobile devices. These are: Spartan: Total Warrior (2005), Viking: Battle for Asgard (2008), Total War Battles: Shogun (2012), Total War: Arena (2013) and Total War Battles: Kingdom (2015). Aside from borrowing the franchise title, these games are not related to the main series at all.

Franchise History

The Creative Assembly was founded in 1987 in Horsham, West Sussex, UK. The company originally worked on porting games from the Amiga and Spectrum formats to the PC, as well as developing numerous games with Electronic Arts under the EA Sports brand. The company gained a great deal of financial success from the unglamorous but profitable job of porting games like the FIFA series to PC.

In 1999 the company began work on its first original project. The first proposal had been for a hack-and-slash action game set in ancient China. This shifted after the team began playing a samurai-based board game, which quickly made them rethink the game with a Japanese title with a more strategic focus. The small scale of the game, with several very similar sides, shared units and a relatively small map based on Japan, allowed the game to be developed quickly. The breakthrough moment in development came when a designer decided to move the battle camera from a fixed overhead perspective to a 3D viewpoint and found this worked very well and improved immersion. However, it did cause issues with the 2D units moving across a 3D environment. It was ultimately decided that this was a worthwhile price to pay for the improvements to gameplay.

Shogun: Total War

Released on 13 June 2000, Shogun: Total War took much of the gaming press by surprise. Coming from a publisher with no strategy track record, the quality and depth of the title was remarkable. The setting is Sengoku Japan, the lengthy period running from roughly 1467 to 1603 when Japan was almost constantly at war with rival clans battling for the title of Shogun.

The strategic map was presented as a tabletop planning session, with units presented as beautiful wooden pieces being pushed around like a general planning his next move. The map is divided into provinces and units are moved from province to province one square at a time (a key difference to later games in the series). It is also possible to undertake naval operations (by putting ships in to sea squares to form an effective bridge) and send agents including ninja assassins to kill enemy generals rather than having to face them on the battlefield.

Many of these ideas would make their way into later versions of the games in more sophisticated forms, but it’s surprising how much of the core Total War mechanics and feel is already in place with this first game.

The game was released to critical acclaim, catching the eye of reviewers in a period noted for its numerous, excellent strategy games (Homeworld, Ground Control and Hostile Waters would all come out within a year of Shogun’s release). It also sold well, despite some early fears that the non-European setting would put some buyers off.

A year later the game was given an expansion, The Mongol Invasion, which chronicled the Mongol Empire’s two ill-fated attempts to invade Japan between 1274 and 1281. Whilst neither invasion got very far in real life, the expansion posits a “What if?” scenario and asks what would have happened if Kublai Khan’s forces had successfully landed.

Medieval: Total War

Given Shogun’s success, Creative Assembly began work immediately on two follow-ups: one using the same engine and an all-new and far more powerful engine that would ultimately take four years to bring to fruition. In the meantime, Medieval: Total War was announced and got people very excited.

Shogun: Total War was noted for its tight focus but Medieval was epic and sprawling. The entire continent of Europe, the north coast of Africa and parts of the Middle East were now on the map and instead of the variations on a theme of Shogun, the game now had over a dozen very different factions. Spanning the period 1087 to 1453, the game featured countries such as England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Castile, Aragon and the Byzantine Empire fighting for control of Europe, all the while trying to keep the Pope happy. The game played very similarly to Shogun, but the theme had a wider appeal. Medieval: Total War was released in 2002 to rapturous reception and outsold its predecessor significantly.

A year later, once again, the game was expanded. The Viking Invasion added a new map to the game, an expanded one of the British Isles, and Scandinavia, and focused on the Viking raids on the British coast between 793 and 1066, following up by settlements and invasions. The expansion was a big success and once again showed that Total War could be both a sprawling, epic title and a very focused one with equally strong results.

Rome: Total War

After two games built on the same, slightly archaic engine, Creative Assembly decided to change things up. Rome: Total War was released in 2004 and saw the biggest shake-up in the series to date. The battlefield maps were now full, proper 3D environments with proper 3D units: each soldier in each legion was a full, detailed 3D figure: the game used some exceptional scaling technology to make it possible to get thousands of such figures on screen at once without destroying players’ computers.

More striking was the campaign map. Formerly a 2D tabletop image divided into provinces, it was now a 3D environment in its own right. Armies now have to march across territory rather than just hopping from province to province and where your armies meet on the map determines the terrain of the battlefield. So whilst the previous two games had only one battle map per province and town, Rome has thousands of possible maps to fight on.

The game’s strategic layer now had a full overhaul. Although still straightforward, it had a more complex trade model under the hood and a greater focus on diplomacy and things to do in peacetime. The game also had a nice endgame situation where your faction, if it became too powerful, would be declared traitors by a fearful senate and attacked in a brutal Roman civil war. The game also allowed you to play other factions, such as an ahistorical version of Egypt, one of several Greek factions or a “barbarian” faction such as the Britons.

The game was also given a fresh UI, a welcoming tutorial mode and a lot of advice so newbies, put off by the game’s perceived complexity in the past, could now get stuck in with little problem.

Rome: Total War was the best-reviewed game of the series to date and outsold its predecessors significantly, and managed to do well despite coming out just a few weeks ahead of one of the biggest behemoths in PC gaming history, Half-Life 2.

As usual, the game was joined by expansions. In 2005 Barbarian Invasion is set at the end of the Roman Empire and sees the player controlling either the faltering Western or strong Eastern Roman Empire, or one of the invading migratory tribes. The expansion was noted for its extreme difficulty compared to the base game. More importantly, Barbarian Invasion fixed some niggling AI and control problems the base game had shipped with.

Released in 2006, Alexander was a mini-campaign focused on the adventures of Alexander the Great. A very tightly focused campaign, given a dramatic voiceover by actor Brian Blessed, the expansion required the player to use Alexander’s actual tactics to win enormously lop-sided battles, with a few hundred elite Macedonian and Greek soldiers attacked by thousands of Persians or Indians. The campaign was an experiment by Creative Assembly in creating digital-only content for one of their titles and charging only a modest amount for it, and it was a success.

Rome: Total War was also noted for shipping with completely open and modifiable game files, allowing fans to adjust unit stats, replace 3D models or even completely replace the campaign map, leading to a popular, sprawling and inventive modding scene.

Rome later became the first game in the series to be ported to smartphones (in 2018) and then remastered fully for PC (in 2021), the latter released to acclaim as Total War: Rome Remastered.

Medieval II: Total War

Released in 2006, Medieval II did pretty much what the title suggested: it updated the Medieval: Total War paradigm into the Rome engine, allowing for a much more visually spectacular game.

The Creative Assembly pulled out all the stops for this title, increasing the graphical fidelity of the models, giving players more stuff to do on the campaign map and adding gunpowder and cannons to the game. It also made the 3D maps more interactive and more complex, with castles and cities now sprawling over hills with multiple layers of fortifications. A late-game development also allowed players to send ships to the New World and land on the coasts of North and South America for the first time in the series.

Medieval II was easily the biggest and most visually spectacular game on the market when it shipped and it was highly praised for this. It was also somewhat bugged when it shipped, with the game’s AI often stymied by sieges and unexpected tactics. These problems were eventually fixed and Medieval II is often, even now, cited as the best game in the series for its mix of visual splendour, tactical complexity and its excellent modding scene.

Medieval II was the last game in the series with open source files, allowing players to modify the game any way they wanted. Given the greater variety of troop types and superior graphics, the Rome modding scene moved almost entirely over to Medieval II, and soon “total conversion” mods were appearing for franchises including A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones), Lord of the Rings, Warhammer and even Zelda. It’s likely that fears over copyright claims led CA to dropping the open modding in later games (which only permit modest tweaks to unit stats).

Medieval II was expanded by Kingdoms in 2007, a major expansion which was divided into four sub-campaigns. One fleshed out the New World, featuring the player establishing colonies in the Americas and fighting off hostile natives and rival colonial powers. Another focused on the Crusades and the battle for control of the Holy Land. Another focused on Eastern Europe and the battle for control of the region by the Teutonic Knights. The final campaign focused on the British Isles in the 13^th Century.

Medieval II became the second game in the series to get a smartphone port, released in 2022, with a possible PC remaster to follow.

Empire: Total War

For the next game in the series, Creative Assembly decided to go big. The success of the gunpowder and cannon units in Medieval II and Kingdoms had encouraged them to move the time period further towards the present. They also accepted the frequent player complaints that having naval battles being auto-resolved was dull. Finally, they felt that players had outgrowing the map of Europe they’d used for three games in a row and wanted something bigger and more expansive.

Empire: Total War was released in 2009, after the biggest delay in the series to date, and featured a new engine, the “Warscape Engine” (which has powered all Total War games since). The scale of the game was jaw-dropping. Spanning the 18^th Century, the game had three campaign maps linked together, allowing players to sail from North America to the far east of India if they wished, as well as fighting more focused, smaller campaigns in North America (including the War of Independence). It was the first (and, to date, only) game in the series to focus on North America and to feature the United States as a playable faction.

The battle maps were more impressive than ever, with even more detailed figures and changes to accommodate the greater user of rifles and cannon. The strategy map featured a more complex economic and political model, to reflect the more tangled web of family and diplomatic ties in this period, and, most striking, naval battles were now present, featuring massive galleons destroying one another with broadsides.

It was all very impressive, with a scale that was incredible, but there was one slight problem: it didn’t work. Or at least, it didn’t work very well. The game shipped with a large number of bugs, AI problems and technical issues. CA had normally been quick to fix the immediate problems with patches and the bigger issues with the expansion, but with Empire for some reason the problems were more persistent and weren’t cleaned up for some considerable time.

More frustrating for players, the game was not moddable in the same way previous titles were, and “total conversion” mods like the popular Middle-earth game, Third Age: Total War, were simply impossible to create in the new engine.

A digital-only expansion, The Warpath Campaign, was released, focusing on the struggles between the American colonists and the Native American tribes, but that was it. No big expansion, which traditionally would fix the game’s bigger technical problems, was released, surprising and frustrating many players.

Napoleon: Total War

Napoleon: Total War (released in 2010) started life as Empire’s big expansion pack, but the scale of the game soon led CA to turn it into a (more expensive) stand-alone title. The game focuses on the Napoleonic Wars, with the player taking on the role of either Napoleon or one of his many enemies and fighting for control of the continent. The vast scope of Empire was reduced to just Europe (with sub-campaigns focusing on the Italian and Egyptian theatres) and the game was applauded for bringing back focus and a more constrained scope to the franchise. The game also had its own expansion, The Peninsular War, focusing on the military campaign of the Duke of Wellington across Portugal and Spain.

Napoleon was well-received and free of the technical issues that had plagued Empire but also criticised by fans for not being a cheaper expansion to the base game, and also for not porting its bug fixes and technical stability over to the older game.

Total War: Shogun II & Fall of the Samurai

Released in 2011, Total War: Shogun II (the titles were now reversed so all the games in the series would be listed next to one another on online services like Steam) was seen by some as a soft reboot of the series, despite having the same engine as Empire and Napoleon. Returning to the setting of the original Shogun, Shogun II has a very small, tight and focused campaign map and focuses on presentation, with beautiful period Japanese artwork informing the game’s interface and animated sequences. The focus this time was on interesting battles, with the AI able to far better-handle the more limited avenues for advancing across Japan compared to wide-open Europe.

In this regard, Shogun II was successful and won back some fans to the series who’d been concerned by the situation with Empire and Napoleon. The game’s expansions were also well-received, the digital-only Rise of the Samurai depicting the emergence of the samurai faction in the years prior to the outbreak of war and Fall of the Samurai depicting the Bakumatsu Period of the mid-19^th Century, when Japan was forced to modernise at a rate that appalled traditionalists. This expansion, which is the most recently-set Total War game, is also the first to feature automatic weapons such as gatling guns and led to speculation that CA was preparing to move into more advanced times, with the next game focusing on either the American Civil War or even World War I.

Total War: Rome II

As it turned out, CA had other plans. Rome: Total War had arguably been the most popular Total War game released to date and CA decided to return to its setting with their new engine to create an even bigger and more enthralling game. There was a much greater focus on historical realism than the original Rome and the game was going to have a complex strategy mode which required the organisation of provinces into regions, with each region granting specific bonuses and units.

The result was an unmitigated disaster. Released in 2013, Rome II was released in a heavily bugged state, with major graphical problems and near-non-existent AI. The technical problems were deeply embarrassing, forcing CA to release no less than seventeen major patches to try to desperately fix the problems (with only moderate success). The game was also fiercely criticised for its stupendously enormous map, which meant it took half a dozen turns just to walk up the coast of Italy, and the resulting slow pace of gameplay.

Rumours spoke of a rift between CA and Sega (who had published every game in the series since Rome: Total War’s expansion), who had forced CA to release the game before it was ready. This was fiercely denied. CA did swing into action, eventually releasing an entirely new version of the game complete with a new, elaborate campaign based on the War of the Second Triumvirate (the civil war for control of the nascent Empire following Caesar’s death). The “Emperor Edition” fixed most of the technical and AI issues and was given free to every owner of Rome II, but CA’s reputation was badly damaged. Could the series survive its worst launch to date?

Total War: Attila

As it turns out, yes. Released in early 2015, Attila had started life as a Barbarian Invasion-style expansion for Rome II but had grown substantially in the planning into its own title. Unlike Napoleon, which never quite escaped its “overblown expansion pack” feel, Attila easily did so. It was enormous, with an immense scope which was increased further by its own expansion, Age of Charlemagne, which meant the game could now depict the entire Dark Ages period of European history.

The game was critically acclaimed on release. It was free of the problems that had blighted Rome II and was inventive and impressive.  Total War had gotten its mojo back.

Total War: Warhammer, Warhammer II & Warhammer III

Since the beginning of the franchise, fans had suggested that the game’s engine would be a great fit for not just historical battles, but also epic fantasy ones. The mods for Rome and Medieval II had showed the potential of this, particularly the spectacular and popular Third Age: Total War mod which provided a strategic map of Middle-earth and recast the factions as Mordor, Gondor, Rohan, the elves of Lorien etc, all fighting the War of the Ring.

Sega, which had bought CA in 2005, had also recently acquired the rights to the Warhammer fantasy world from Games Workshop. They suggested that CA shift gears and make a game based on the Warhammer world for its next title. CA were keen to do something fresh that would completely invigorate the franchise, and relished the challenges that would come from introducing elements such as flying units and magic to the series. However, they were also concerned about losing fans who were not interested in fantasy games. When Total War: Warhammer was announced, they made it clear that the historical games were going to continue as well, with Warhammer as a side-project, albeit an ambitious and lengthy one.

The result was highly successful. Released in 2016, Total War: Warhammer (alas, they were unable to call it Total Warhammer) was the fastest-selling game in the series and brought in a whole load of fantasy fans who had never sampled the series before. The traditional Total War rules and structure was tweaked to better fit the setting and the four main races (plus the numerous other ones introduced in DLC) gave the series its most diverse roster and feel to date. Some fans complained about the focus on “hero” units, but there was little doubt that the game had reinvigorated the series.

More was to come. In 2017 Total War: Warhammer II was released, expanding the story to incorporate the western continents of the Warhammer world. An optional mode, Mortal Empires, was also released which combined the Warhammer and Warhammer II maps into one massive campaign map, the largest ever officially supported by Creative Assembly. The game had even better reviews than its predecessor, and likewise sold well on release.

After a fairly hefty wait, Total Warhammer III was finally released in 2022, completing the trilogy. A further optional mode, Immortal Empires, combined all three games into one mega-map covering the entire globe of the Old World, making easily the largest game in the Total War series to date.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

Although the Total Warhammer trilogy had brought the series to a massive new audience - lifetime sales of the series would double in the seven years after Warhammer's release, compared to the sixteen years prior - Creative Assembly were keen to assure fans that the historical games would continue.

In 2019 they released Total War: Three Kingdoms, based on the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history. The new game was marketed heavily in China, where the series had relatively little traction beforehand, and picked up huge sales as a result. However, traditional fans of the series were concerned about the introduction of "hero" units into a historical title, with some complaining of "fantasy content" creeping into what should have been a historical-only title. Despite these concerns, the game sold well and generated a significant amount of minor expansions and DLC.

Total War Sagas: Thrones of Britannia & Troy

Due to the critical acclaim given to some of the shorter, focused games in the series, CA decided to develop a spin-off series - Total War Saga - which would feature much more focused conflicts. This resulted in Thrones of Britannia, based on the conflict between the native British kingdoms and the invading Danes in the 9th and 10th centuries, and Troy, based on the Trojan War.

Both games attracted only modest acclaim, and Troy's sales were muddied by a deal which saw the game given away for free during its first 24 hours on sale, resulting in 7 million downloads. Thrones of Britannia may have also suffered from featuring an over-exposed period of history in the series, with both the Viking Invasion expansion for Medieval: Total War and the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval II: Total War featuring extensive campaigns based on the British Isles. Troy's critical reception was again muted by fans of the historical games again noting the creeping onset of fantasy elements into a historical game (although the mostly-mythical nature of the Trojan War makes that more understandable in this context).

The Future

The healthy sales of the Warhammer games have assured that CA will have the freedom to continue the Total War series for many years to come.

In late 2023 they will release Total War: Pharaoh, set during the Great Bronze Age Collapse period of Mediterranean history and focusing on Egypt. The game appears to be operating at a smaller scale than the likes of Warhammer III or Three Kingdoms, but at a larger scale than the Total War Saga titles. It may represent an attempt to gauge sales interest in a purely historical title and to see if these can match the enormous sales of the fantasy games. Fans have frequently requested Medieval III or Empire II as the next game in the series, but these titles would require a significant investment that CA may not feel comfortable making until they know they can match the sales of their other games.

Although the Warhammer trilogy is concluded, Creative Assembly are keeping their eye on further opportunities to exploit fantasy properties. In a documentary made by Noclip in 2020, CA representatives voiced both J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium and Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher books as possible properties they could look at developing in the future as Total War titles, and between properties such as Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time, there's no shortage of possible franchises that could be exploited (and almost all of these have appeared in the form of mods for the existing titles).

Whatever the case, the future of one of PC gaming’s longest-lived gaming franchise seems very bright.

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Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard in the biggest deal in video game history

Microsoft is making a massive play to buy Activision Blizzard, one of the largest publishing and development companies in video gaming. The deal is reportedly worth $68.7 billion, almost ten times the price that Microsoft paid to acquire the Zenimax and Bethesda family of publishers almost a year and a half ago.

News of the deal has sent seismic shockwaves through the video game industry. Activision Blizzard is traditionally one of the two biggest non-manufacturer video game companies in the West, competing for that title with Electronic Arts. Formed in 2008 from the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games (the former parent company of Blizzard Entertainment), the company is best-known for its giga-selling Call of Duty shooter franchise and the slew of IPs produced by Blizzard: WarCraft, StarCraft, Diablo and Overwatch. Activision Blizzard's other companies include online gaming giant King, creators of the Candy Crush series, and Major League Gaming, a huge player in the eSports field. Other franchises linked to the company include Crash Bandicoot, Skylanders and Guitar Hero. They have also published the Destiny series.

Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda has already given them control of the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, Dishonored and Prey franchises, in addition to first-party Microsoft franchises like FORZA and Halo. Microsoft has also been buying up smaller studios, such as Obsidian Entertainment (Pillars of Eternity, The Outer Worlds, Grounded, Alpha Protocol) and inXile (creators of the Wasteland RPG series). They also control the Minecraft franchise after acquiring it in 2014.

The news will position Microsoft as the third-largest video game company in the world by revenue, behind only Sony and Chinese giant Tencent. It will be expected that Activision and Blizzard's formidable battery of franchises will join the Xbox Game Pass, a Netflix-like service allowing players to access a huge library of games for only a modest monthly subscription fee.

Activision Blizzard has recently endured a storm of controversy over long-standing allegations of harassment, bullying and unprofessional behaviour at several of its studios, but most notably Blizzard. Multiple staff have quit Blizzard in recent months and work on several in-progress games (such as the long-gestating Diablo IV and Overwatch 2) has been delayed as a result.

Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard will entail a massive shift in the gaming landscape and will likely see antitrust investigations to ensure that Microsoft is not acting anti-competitively. Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Switch owners will likely find themselves shut out as those franchises also become Xbox-platform exclusives, which will have enormous ramifications for customer choice.

Heads of the MASS EFFECT and DRAGON AGE franchises quit BioWare

In a surprise move, the heads of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises have quit BioWare and its parent company, Electronic Arts.

Casey Hudson, who is the BioWare General Manager and head of the Mass Effect IP, and Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, are both departing the company ahead of their next releases.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a HD/4K remaster of the original Mass Effect trilogy, is currently scheduled for release in the first half of 2021, whilst Mass Effect 5 is in early pre-production. Dragon Age 4 is in development for a believed 2022 release.

EA and BioWare have confirmed that the franchises will continue under new management.

Hudson joined BioWare to work on MDK2 in 2000. He subsequently worked on Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000), Neverwinter Nights (2002), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), Jade Empire (2005), Mass Effect (2007), Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). He left BioWare in 2014 and spent more than two years working for Microsoft Studios before returning to BioWare in 2017.

Darrah has worked with BioWare almost since its founding. He created the Infinity Engine's combat system for Baldur's Gate (1998), which subsequently was used in numerous other games (including Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series, for Black Isle, as well as Baldur's Gate II). He also worked on Jade Empire (2005), Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008), Dragon Age: Origins (2009), Dragon Age II (2011), Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014), Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) and Anthem (2019).

BioWare has been in difficulties recently, with both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem under-performing in sales and critical acclaim compared to expectations, and the studio not delivering a bona fide hit game in six years. Their last few games have had exceptionally difficult development processes, and numerous reports about Dragon Age 4's torturous development process have surfaced.

BioWare and another formerly critically-lauded studio, Blizzard, have both been held up as examples of once-great companies that have withered and declined under corporate ownership, since the former's buy-out by Electronic Arts in 2007 and the latter's acquisition by Activision in 2008. Both studios have struggled to release games matching their pre-acquisition quality ever since, with widespread reports of corporate interference. Both companies have been hemorrhaging talent for years, with dozens of major Blizzard developers quitting the company in the last few months to found new studios.

Ex-Blizzard personnel, disheartened by life under Activision, set up a new company and two new studios

A group of former staffers from Blizzard Entertainment have founded a new company in apparent protest over the treatment of their former home by parent company Activision, which acquired Blizzard in 2008.

The new company is called Dreamhaven and has been founded by former Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime. Morhaime ran Blizzard until 2018, stepping into an advisory role for a year before leaving altogether. Dreamhaven will run two development studios: Moonshot Games and Secret Door. No games have yet been announced, but presumably both studios will be anxious to get projects underway ASAP.

Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse. They released their first two games, Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings, in 1993 before before switching their name to Chaos Studios, Inc. They became known as Blizzard in 1994.

Blizzard had their first big hits with WarCraft: Orcs and Humans (1994) and its sequel WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995), fantasy real-time strategy games inspired by Warhammer and Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis. They achieved even greater success with a science fiction variant on the franchise, StarCraft, which was released in 1998 to universal acclaim and enormous sales, becoming the biggest-selling real-time strategy game of all time with over 20 million copies sold.

They also began development of a dark fantasy action roleplaying game, Diablo (1997), and achieved success with more sequels: Diablo II (2000) and WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002). In 2004 they shifted gears again and released World of WarCraft, the most successful and popular online roleplaying game of all time with more than 100 million player accounts and over $10 billion in generated revenue.

The game's immense success saw them acquired by Activision in 2008. However, as part of the deal Blizzard continued to operate autonomously and they continued to release sequels: the much-delayed StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released in 2010 and Diablo III in 2012. Both games were criticised, StarCraft II for the immense wait for the second and third parts of the campaign (the final part was not released until 2015) and Diablo III for technical problems and an "auction house" approach which was believed to be nickel-and-diming loyal fans. Diablo III's problems were fixed by the release of the critically acclaimed Reaper of Souls expansion in 2014. StarCraft II's sales topped out at under 20 million, with the game losing online momentum and long-term fans preferring the original game's unit balance and online play. In recognition of this, Blizzard abandoned plans for a StarCraft III in favour of StarCraft Remastered, released in 2017 to critical acclaim. Diablo III and Reaper of Souls went on to achieve tremendous success with over 30 million sales, but "cold feet" by Activision executives saw a second expansion cancelled and developers transferred over to a fast-tracked Diablo IV.

Blizzard experienced further controversies when a second MMORPG they put into development in 2007, Titan, was cancelled in 2014 after an immense amount of money had been spent on it. Blizzard salvaged the game's plot and art assets to create an online action game called Overwatch (2016), which proved an unexpected huge hit with almost 50 million sales to date.

Despite delivering massive sales successes - by some metrics Blizzard's games have sold over 250 million copies, making them one of the most successful development studios in history - rumours began to spread in 2018 that Activision was unhappy with Blizzard's development schedule, which saw games released only when "they were done" and not iterated on annually, like Activision's own Call of Duty franchise which has delivered a new game annually since 2005. Blizzard was forced to cut costs and downsize, angering executives and developers alike who were well aware of the continued massive revenue being generated by Overwatch, Diablo III and even the then-fourteen-year-old World of WarCraft. Morhaime stepped down around this time. Activision was also criticised for its handling of Diablo IV, cancelling an early version of the game which would have represented a more radical shift away from the classic gameplay (and would have perhaps been released as a spin-off rather than a continuation of the main series), losing key staffmembers and cancelling the formal announcement of the game in 2018 in favour of derided mobile spin-off Diablo Immortal, to the bafflement and then fury of fans.

This is familiar territory for Activision, who acquired original Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward in 2003. After initially giving Infinity Ward a lot of freedom and rewarding them for early successes, Activision took closer control of the company, forcing them to release games annually and bringing in other studios to help speed the production of spin-offs. They also refused to consider letting Infinity Ward work on new IPs or experiment more dramatically with the gameplay. As a result, the founders of Infinity Ward quit the company in 2010, triggering an epic series of suits and counter-suits that lasted several years. Many other Infinity Ward developers followed them out the door and they established an new company called Respawn, which collaborated with Electronic Arts on the Titanfall franchise (including the hugely successful multiplayer spin-off Apex Legends) and the recent Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, with EA guaranteeing them greater freedom to work on different projects.

It sounds like history has repeated itself, with reports of numerous Blizzard developers and staffmembers quitting the company to join forces with Dreamhaven.

Blizzard continues to work on Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal and Overwatch 2. Dreamhaven's new projects have yet to be announced, but I suspect that both Microsoft and Sony would be very happy to have their games on their new consoles and the PC platform.

Total War Franchise Familiariser

In the last few weeks British video game developers Creative Assembly have released their latest Total War video game, Warhammer II, and announced plans for at least four more games in the series. The Total War series is now one of the biggest-selling strategy video game series of all time, shifting more than 20 million copies of eleven games and numerous expansions since the turn of the century. Only Sid Meier’s Civilization titles have been more successful among turn-based strategy games. A lot of people have recently been discussing the franchise, its history and future, but what if you have no idea what they are going on about? Time for a Franchise Familiariser course.

The Basics

Total War is a video game series which sets out to recreate some of the most notable wars and military campaigns in human history, as well as, more recently, conflicts from the Warhammer fantasy setting. Each Total War game stands alone as its own, self-contained title, although the two Warhammer games (and a forthcoming third one) can be combined into one larger game.

The earliest setting in the games is the Peloponnesian War of Ancient Greece in 432 BC. The latest setting is the Bakumatsu period of Japanese history, ending around 1868 AD.

Each Total War game works as both a grand strategy and a small-scale tactics game. Every game has a large, turn-based campaign map on which you can assemble armies, construct buildings and engage in diplomacy, technological research and espionage. When armies meet, the game switches to a real-time 3D battlefield where you take direct control of your army and direct the course of battle using realistic and – somewhat – historically accurate tactics.

The Series

The Total War series consists of eleven stand-alone games, nine expansions and a large number of small expansions and unit packs, sold as downloadable content (DLC). There are also a significant number of fan-made “mods” for the games, doing everything from tweaking unit stats and artwork to adding entire new maps and campaigns.

The series to date consists of the following titles (along with their approximate historical settings and the major expansion packs for each game indented, although not every optional bit of DLC is listed for clarity):

• Shogun: Total War (2000) – Sengoku Japan, 1467-1603
• Shogun: Total War – Mongol Invasion (2001) – Mongol invasion of Japan, 1274-81
• Medieval: Total War (2002) – Medieval Europe, 1087-1453
• Medieval: Total War – Viking Invasion (2003) – Viking invasions of Britain, 793-1066
• Rome: Total War (2004) – Roman Europe, 270 BC-14 AD
• Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion (2005) – Roman Europe, 363-476
• Rome: Total War – Alexander (2006) – Greece, Persia, India, 336-323 BC
• Medieval II: Total War (2006) – Medieval Europe, 1080-1530
• Medieval II: Total War – Kingdoms (2007) – various, 1174-1520
• Empire: Total War (2009) – Europe, North America, India, 1700-1800
• Empire: Total War - Warpath Campaign (2009), North America, 1783-1825
• Napoleon: Total War (2010) – Europe, 1780-1820
• Napoleon: Total War - The Peninsular War (2010) - Portugal & Spain, 1807-14
• Total War: Shogun II (2011) – Sengoku Japan, 1467-1573
• Total War: Shogun II - Rise of the Samurai (2012), Genpei War, 1180-85
• Total War: Shogun II – Fall of the Samurai (2012) – Bakumatsu Japan, 1853-67
• Total War: Rome II (2013) – Roman Europe, 272 BC-28 AD
• Total War: Rome II - Caesar in Gaul (2013) - Roman invasion of Gaul, 58-50 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Hannibal at the Gates (2014) - Second Punic War, 218-201 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Imperator Augustus (2014) - War of the Second Triumvirate, 32-30 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Wrath of Sparta (2014) - The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 BC
• Total War: Rome II - Empire Divided (2017) - The Crisis of the 3rd Century, 270-284 AD
• Total War: Rome II - Rise of the Republic (2018) - 399-272 BC
• Total War: Attila (2015) – Roman Europe, 395-453
• Total War: Attila - The Last Roman (2015) - Gothic War, 535-551
• Total War: Attila - Age of Charlemagne (2015) - Charlemagne's War, 768-814
• Total War: Warhammer (2016) – The Old World
• Total War: Warhammer II (2017) – The New World
• Thrones of Britannia: A Total War Saga (2018) - The Viking Invasion of Britain, 878 AD
• Three Kingdoms: Total War (2019) - The Three Kingdoms, China, 190-278 AD

There are also a series of spin-off games, either action titles for console or highly-simplified games for mobile devices. These are: Spartan: Total Warrior (2005), Viking: Battle for Asgard (2008), Total War Battles: Shogun (2012), Total War: Arena (2013) and Total War Battles: Kingdom (2015). Aside from borrowing the franchise title, these games are not related to the main series at all.

Franchise History

The Creative Assembly was founded in 1987 in Horsham, West Sussex, UK. The company originally worked on porting games from the Amiga and Spectrum formats to the PC, as well as developing numerous games with Electronic Arts under the EA Sports brand. The company gained a great deal of financial success from the unglamorous but profitable job of porting games like the FIFA series to PC.

In 1999 the company began work on its first original project. The first proposal had been for a hack-and-slash action game set in ancient China. This shifted after the team began playing a samurai-based board game, which quickly made them rethink the game with a Japanese title with a more strategic focus. The small scale of the game, with several very similar sides, shared units and a relatively small map based on Japan, allowed the game to be developed quickly. The breakthrough moment in development came when a designer decided to move the battle camera from a fixed overhead perspective to a 3D viewpoint and found this worked very well and improved immersion. However, it did cause issues with the 2D units moving across a 3D environment. It was ultimately decided that this was a worthwhile price to pay for the improvements to gameplay.

Shogun: Total War

Released on 13 June 2000, Shogun: Total War took much of the gaming press by surprise. Coming from a publisher with no strategy track record, the quality and depth of the title was remarkable. The setting is Sengoku Japan, the lengthy period running from roughly 1467 to 1603 when Japan was almost constantly at war with rival clans battling for the title of Shogun.

The strategic map was presented as a tabletop planning session, with units presented as beautiful wooden pieces being pushed around like a general planning his next move. The map is divided into provinces and units are moved from province to province one square at a time (a key difference to later games in the series). It is also possible to undertake naval operations (by putting ships in to sea squares to form an effective bridge) and send agents including ninja assassins to kill enemy generals rather than having to face them on the battlefield.

Many of these ideas would make their way into later versions of the games in more sophisticated forms, but it’s surprising how much of the core Total War mechanics and feel is already in place with this first game.

The game was released to critical acclaim, catching the eye of reviewers in a period noted for its numerous, excellent strategy games (Homeworld, Ground Control and Hostile Waters would all come out within a year of Shogun’s release). It also sold well, despite some early fears that the non-European setting would put some buyers off.

A year later the game was given an expansion, The Mongol Invasion, which chronicled the Mongol Empire’s two ill-fated attempts to invade Japan between 1274 and 1281. Whilst neither invasion got very far in real life, the expansion posits a “What if?” scenario and asks what would have happened if Kublai Khan’s forces had successfully landed.

Medieval: Total War

Given Shogun’s success, Creative Assembly began work immediately on two follow-ups: one using the same engine and an all-new and far more powerful engine that would ultimately take four years to bring to fruition. In the meantime, Medieval: Total War was announced and got people very excited.

Shogun: Total War was noted for its tight focus but Medieval was epic and sprawling. The entire continent of Europe, the north coast of Africa and parts of the Middle East were now on the map and instead of the variations on a theme of Shogun, the game now had over a dozen very different factions. Spanning the period 1087 to 1453, the game featured countries such as England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Castile, Aragon and the Byzantine Empire fighting for control of Europe, all the while trying to keep the Pope happy. The game played very similarly to Shogun, but the theme had a wider appeal. Medieval: Total War was released in 2002 to rapturous reception and outsold its predecessor significantly.

A year later, once again, the game was expanded. The Viking Invasion added a new map to the game, an expanded one of the British Isles, and Scandinavia, and focused on the Viking raids on the British coast between 793 and 1066, following up by settlements and invasions. The expansion was a big success and once again showed that Total War could be both a sprawling, epic title and a very focused one with equally strong results.

Rome: Total War

After two games built on the same, slightly archaic engine, Creative Assembly decided to change things up. Rome: Total War was released in 2004 and saw the biggest shake-up in the series to date. The battlefield maps were now full, proper 3D environments with proper 3D units: each soldier in each legion was a full, detailed 3D figure: the game used some exceptional scaling technology to make it possible to get thousands of such figures on screen at once without destroying players’ computers.

More striking was the campaign map. Formerly a 2D tabletop image divided into provinces, it was now a 3D environment in its own right. Armies now have to march across territory rather than just hopping from province to province and where your armies meet on the map determines the terrain of the battlefield. So whilst the previous two games had only one battle map per province and town, Rome has thousands of possible maps to fight on.

The game’s strategic layer now had a full overhaul. Although still straightforward, it had a more complex trade model under the hood and a greater focus on diplomacy and things to do in peacetime. The game also had a nice endgame situation where your faction, if it became too powerful, would be declared traitors by a fearful senate and attacked in a brutal Roman civil war. The game also allowed you to play other factions, such as an ahistorical version of Egypt, one of several Greek factions or a “barbarian” faction such as the Britons.

The game was also given a fresh UI, a welcoming tutorial mode and a lot of advice so newbies, put off by the game’s perceived complexity in the past, could now get stuck in with little problem.

Rome: Total War was the best-reviewed game of the series to date and outsold its predecessors significantly, and managed to do well despite coming out just a few weeks ahead of one of the biggest behemoths in PC gaming history, Half-Life 2.

As usual, the game was joined by expansions. In 2005 Barbarian Invasion is set at the end of the Roman Empire and sees the player controlling either the faltering Western or strong Eastern Roman Empire, or one of the invading migratory tribes. The expansion was noted for its extreme difficulty compared to the base game. More importantly, Barbarian Invasion fixed some niggling AI and control problems the base game had shipped with.

Released in 2006, Alexander was a mini-campaign focused on the adventures of Alexander the Great. A very tightly focused campaign, given a dramatic voiceover by actor Brian Blessed, the expansion required the player to use Alexander’s actual tactics to win enormously lop-sided battles, with a few hundred elite Macedonian and Greek soldiers attacked by thousands of Persians or Indians. The campaign was an experiment by Creative Assembly in creating digital-only content for one of their titles and charging only a modest amount for it, and it was a success.

Rome: Total War was also noted for shipping with completely open and modifiable game files, allowing fans to adjust unit stats, replace 3D models or even completely replace the campaign map, leading to a popular, sprawling and inventive modding scene.

Medieval II: Total War

Released in 2006, Medieval II did pretty much what the title suggested: it updated the Medieval: Total War paradigm into the Rome engine, allowing for a much more visually spectacular game.

The Creative Assembly pulled out all the stops for this title, increasing the graphical fidelity of the models, giving players more stuff to do on the campaign map and adding gunpowder and cannons to the game. It also made the 3D maps more interactive and more complex, with castles and cities now sprawling over hills with multiple layers of fortifications. A late-game development also allowed players to send ships to the New World and land on the coasts of North and South America for the first time in the series.

Medieval II was easily the biggest and most visually spectacular game on the market when it shipped and it was highly praised for this. It was also somewhat bugged when it shipped, with the game’s AI often stymied by sieges and unexpected tactics. These problems were eventually fixed and Medieval II is often, even now, cited as the best game in the series for its mix of visual splendour, tactical complexity and its excellent modding scene.

Medieval II was the last game in the series with open source files, allowing players to modify the game any way they wanted. Given the greater variety of troop types and superior graphics, the Rome modding scene moved almost entirely over to Medieval II, and soon “total conversion” mods were appearing for franchises including A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones), Lord of the Rings, Warhammer and even Zelda. It’s likely that fears over copyright claims led CA to dropping the open modding in later games (which only permit modest tweaks to unit stats).

Medieval II was expanded by Kingdoms in 2007, a major expansion which was divided into four sub-campaigns. One fleshed out the New World, featuring the player establishing colonies in the Americas and fighting off hostile natives and rival colonial powers. Another focused on the Crusades and the battle for control of the Holy Land. Another focused on Eastern Europe and the battle for control of the region by the Teutonic Knights. The final campaign focused on the British Isles in the 13^th Century.

Empire: Total War

For the next game in the series, Creative Assembly decided to go big. The success of the gunpowder and cannon units in Medieval II and Kingdoms had encouraged them to move the time period further towards the present. They also accepted the frequent player complaints that having naval battles being auto-resolved was dull. Finally, they felt that players had outgrowing the map of Europe they’d used for three games in a row and wanted something bigger and more expansive.

Empire: Total War was released in 2009, after the biggest delay in the series to date, and featured a new engine, the “Warscape Engine” (which has powered all Total War games since). The scale of the game was jaw-dropping. Spanning the 18^th Century, the game had three campaign maps linked together, allowing players to sail from North America to the far east of India if they wished, as well as fighting more focused, smaller campaigns in North America (including the War of Independence). It was the first (and, to date, only) game in the series to focus on North America and to feature the United States as a playable faction.

The battle maps were more impressive than ever, with even more detailed figures and changes to accommodate the greater user of rifles and cannon. The strategy map featured a more complex economic and political model, to reflect the more tangled web of family and diplomatic ties in this period, and, most striking, naval battles were now present, featuring massive galleons destroying one another with broadsides.

It was all very impressive, with a scale that was incredible, but there was one slight problem: it didn’t work. Or at least, it didn’t work very well. The game shipped with a large number of bugs, AI problems and technical issues. CA had normally been quick to fix the immediate problems with patches and the bigger issues with the expansion, but with Empire for some reason the problems were more persistent and weren’t cleaned up for some considerable time.

More frustrating for players, the game was not moddable in the same way previous titles were, and “total conversion” mods like the popular Middle-earth game, Third Age: Total War, were simply impossible to create in the new engine.

A digital-only expansion, The Warpath Campaign, was released, focusing on the struggles between the American colonists and the Native American tribes, but that was it. No big expansion, which traditionally would fix the game’s bigger technical problems, was released, surprising and frustrating many players.

Napoleon: Total War

Napoleon: Total War (released in 2010) started life as Empire’s big expansion pack, but the scale of the game soon led CA to turn it into a (more expensive) stand-alone title. The game focuses on the Napoleonic Wars, with the player taking on the role of either Napoleon or one of his many enemies and fighting for control of the continent. The vast scope of Empire was reduced to just Europe (with sub-campaigns focusing on the Italian and Egyptian theatres) and the game was applauded for bringing back focus and a more constrained scope to the franchise. The game also had its own expansion, The Peninsular War, focusing on the military campaign of the Duke of Wellington across Portugal and Spain.

Napoleon was well-received and free of the technical issues that had plagued Empire but also criticised by fans for not being a cheaper expansion to the base game, and also for not porting its bug fixes and technical stability over to the older game.

Total War: Shogun II & Fall of the Samurai

Released in 2011, Total War: Shogun II (the titles were now reversed so all the games in the series would be listed next to one another on online services like Steam) was seen by some as a soft reboot of the series, despite having the same engine as Empire and Napoleon. Returning to the setting of the original Shogun, Shogun II has a very small, tight and focused campaign map and focuses on presentation, with beautiful period Japanese artwork informing the game’s interface and animated sequences. The focus this time was on interesting battles, with the AI able to far better-handle the more limited avenues for advancing across Japan compared to wide-open Europe.

In this regard, Shogun II was successful and won back some fans to the series who’d been concerned by the situation with Empire and Napoleon. The game’s expansions were also well-received, the digital-only Rise of the Samurai depicting the emergence of the samurai faction in the years prior to the outbreak of war and Fall of the Samurai depicting the Bakumatsu Period of the mid-19^th Century, when Japan was forced to modernise at a rate that appalled traditionalists. This expansion, which is the most recently-set Total War game, is also the first to feature automatic weapons such as gatling guns and led to speculation that CA was preparing to move into more advanced times, with the next game focusing on either the American Civil War or even World War I.

Total War: Rome II

As it turned out, CA had other plans. Rome: Total War had arguably been the most popular Total War game released to date and CA decided to return to its setting with their new engine to create an even bigger and more enthralling game. There was a much greater focus on historical realism than the original Rome and the game was going to have a complex strategy mode which required the organisation of provinces into regions, with each region granting specific bonuses and units.

The result was an unmitigated disaster. Released in 2013, Rome II was released in a heavily bugged state, with major graphical problems and near-non-existent AI. The technical problems were deeply embarrassing, forcing CA to release no less than seventeen major patches to try to desperately fix the problems (with only moderate success). The game was also fiercely criticised for its stupendously enormous map, which meant it took half a dozen turns just to walk up the coast of Italy, and the resulting slow pace of gameplay.

Rumours spoke of a rift between CA and Sega (who had published every game in the series since Rome: Total War’s expansion), who had forced CA to release the game before it was ready. This was fiercely denied. CA did swing into action, eventually releasing an entirely new version of the game complete with a new, elaborate campaign based on the War of the Second Triumvirate (the civil war for control of the nascent Empire following Caesar’s death). The “Emperor Edition” fixed most of the technical and AI issues and was given free to every owner of Rome II, but CA’s reputation was badly damaged. Could the series survive its worst launch to date?

Total War: Attila

As it turns out, yes. Released in early 2015, Attila had started life as a Barbarian Invasion-style expansion for Rome II but had grown substantially in the planning into its own title. Unlike Napoleon, which never quite escaped its “overblown expansion pack” feel, Attila easily did so. It was enormous, with an immense scope which was increased further by its own expansion, Age of Charlemagne, which meant the game could now depict the entire Dark Ages period of European history.

The game was critically acclaimed on release. It was free of the problems that had blighted Rome II and was inventive and impressive.  Total War had gotten its mojo back.

Total War: Warhammer and Warhammer II

Since the beginning of the franchise, fans had suggested that the game’s engine would be a great fit for not just historical battles, but also epic fantasy ones. The mods for Rome and Medieval II had showed the potential of this, particularly the spectacular and popular Third Age: Total War mod which provided a strategic map of Middle-earth and recast the factions as Mordor, Gondor, Rohan, the elves of Lorien etc, all fighting the War of the Ring.

Sega, which had bought CA in 2005, had also recently acquired the rights to the Warhammer fantasy world from Games Workshop. They suggested that CA shift gears and make a game based on the Warhammer world for its next title. CA were keen to do something fresh that would completely invigorate the franchise, and relished the challenges that would come from introducing elements such as flying units and magic to the series. However, they were also concerned about losing fans who were not interested in fantasy games. When Total War: Warhammer was announced, they made it clear that the historical games were going to continue as well, with Warhammer as a side-project, albeit an ambitious and lengthy one.

The result was highly successful. Released in 2016, Total War: Warhammer (alas, they were unable to call it Total Warhammer) was the fastest-selling game in the series and brought in a whole load of fantasy fans who had never sampled the series before. The traditional Total War rules and structure was tweaked to better fit the setting and the four main races (plus the numerous other ones introduced in DLC) gave the series its most diverse roster and feel to date. Some fans complained about the focus on “hero” units, but there was little doubt that the game had reinvigorated the series.

More was to come. In 2017 Total War: Warhammer II was released, expanding the story to incorporate the western continents of the Warhammer world. An optional mode, Mortal Empires, was also released which combined the Warhammer and Warhammer II maps into one massive campaign map, the largest ever officially supported by Creative Assembly. The game had even better reviews than its predecessor, and likewise sold well on release.

The Future

The healthy sales of the Warhammer games have assured that CA will have the freedom to continue the Total War series for many years to come. They are developing a major new expansion for Total War: Rome II, Empire Divided, which may also more fundamentally fix the problems with that game, for release in 2017.

In early 2018 they will release Thrones of Britannia, the first game in the Total War Saga sub-series, a series of games with a narrow geographic and historical focus. This game will focus on Alfred the Great as he tries to unify the kingdoms of Britain together in the face of Viking incursions and opposition from local leaders.

In late 2018 the historical Total War series will also return with a vengeance, with a major new game focused on a never-before-visited era of human history. Fans had speculated on a WWI or American Civil War game, but others have suggested that the franchise may return to its roots and finally develop a game set in ancient China, as they’d planned before switching to Japan. In January 2018 this was confirmed with the announcement of Three Kingdoms: Total War, the first Total War game set in China.

In 2019 Creative Assembly will also release Warhammer III, rounding off their excursion to the Warhammer universe, probably with a visit to the Dark Lands east of the Old World.

The success of the Warhammer series also suggests that we could see the series branching out to other fantasy worlds: a visit to Middle-earth or Westeros could also be on the cards for the venerable series.

Whatever the case, the future of one of PC gaming’s longest-lived gaming franchise seems very bright.

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