Sadly, there’s no room for a “Aren’t You A Little Short For A Dictator?” gag in the subject line. C’est la vie, as Napoleon might have said with a Gallic flourish. News breaks from the European Land-Mass Videogameisual Show that – as perhaps expected – Creative Assembly are adding using the tiny tyrant as their next step on from Empire: Total War. CA’s interview with IGN is about the only information in the public sphere which isn’t in the press release, their site gubbins or the trailer. You’ll find all of them, for your convenience, beneath the cut.
The press release:
TOTAL WAR LIVES THE LEGEND
Direct The Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte in Napoleon: Total WarTM.
LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO (August 19th, 2009) – SEGA Europe Ltd. and SEGA of America, Inc. today announced Napoleon: Total War, the first in an all-new story driven branch of The Creative Assembly’s multi award winning Total War RTS franchise. Napoleon: Total War will keep the franchise’s genre-leading 3D battles on land and sea. The turn-based campaign is split into three different story-driven campaigns, telling the story of the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte through his most famous battles.
In Napoleon: Total War, aspiring generals have the chance to play as the legendary French general Napoleon Bonaparte or as one of his opposing factions. Battling through his three biggest military campaigns, the game will take you through Italy and Egypt, narrating the early years of the fearsome commander, while the third campaign will tell the story of his fateful drive towards Moscow and, ultimately, his showdown with the Duke of Wellington at one of the most famous battles of all – The Battle of Waterloo.
“In Napoleon: Total War you get to actually be Napoleon – to face the problems he faced, to win the battles he won, and to build the Empire he built. Or better,” commented Mike Simpson, Creative Director at The Creative Assembly and father of the Total War franchise. “However, the game allows you to step in the shoes of his opposing generals as well, allowing the player to rewrite history as they see fit.”
Napoleon: Total War expands on the successful Total War series by taking all the features from previous games such as the full 3D land and naval battles, the detailed campaign map, and an in depth diplomacy system and taking them a step further.
History is as yet unwritten.
Napoleon: Total War™ is the new chapter in the critically acclaimed Total War series and opens up a new narrative layer to the genre-defining franchise. From the early Italian campaign to the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon covers two decades of relentless battles, a backdrop of a world in flames against which the story of an extraordinary military career unfolds.
Whether you play as the legendary General or against, the outcome of war can never be guaranteed. The course of history relies on your ability to lead your troops through the most intense battles as never seen before in a Total War game.
The genre-defining franchise brings Napoleon to life:
Napoleon: Total War defines a new standard within the genre with exciting characters and a cinematic narrative, mind-blowing battle sequences and an unrivalled mix of turn-based and real-time strategy.Three new episodic campaigns:
Take command and lead your armies on land and sea over three campaigns: Italy, Egypt and Mastery of Europe. The seamless mix of objective-based missions and sandbox experience makes this the most complete Total War experience to date.Cutting-edge multiplayer:
Napoleon features fully integrated multiplayer modes and a complete set of online functionalities: Steam achievements, gameplay bonuses, uniform editor and voice communications.All new Napoleonic battles and units:
Advanced weaponry enables new tactical options and even more exciting real-time battles on an epic scale, while the highly detailed environments and improved battlefield buildings guarantee a realistic recreation of famous historical battles.
Hmm. My top level view raises an eyebrow a little – the talk of mixing the sandbox and the set-pieces is an interesting approach, but it does lead you to wonder exactly how much freedom there’s going to be in them. Reading the IGN interview, there seems to be a case of creating an objective – say, pushing back the fucking Austrians – and then being able to go about it how you wish. Will this allow them to keep the narrative core they like while giving you the freedom of action? God knows. And it’s a bit of a shame there’s no talk of – say – expanding the timeline of the previous game into the 1800s.
But still – the Total War expansions have tended to be a more coherent, focused experience than the game they sprung from. I suspect this is one thing Empire could really do with. It’s looking for a February 2010 release.
That said – it doesn’t actually say that this *is* an expansion pack at any point. I suspect we’re in expandalone territory.
Related Stories:
Rome Total War has been my favorite so far. Certainly it has flaws, as do they all, but it’s the only one where the good bits far outweigh the bad bits (for me).
Medieval 2 was a bit clunky by comparison…even the interface didn’t seem as elegant, somehow.
Still, I enjoyed R:TW so much that I preordered Empire: Total War. Unfortunately I’m still waiting for them to finish it enough to feel worth playing.
This is a game that was always going to happen, but I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.
I bought empire, and I’ve long since given up on it. The reasons why have already been covered.
To be honest, I am still a little bothered by the glowing reviews the game received at launch. It seems like the gaming press didn’t really play the game beyond ooing at the shiny graphics.
I’ve pretty much given up on CA as a company, which is a shame. They made really great games once.
ahh empire, you already have enough of my money you broken piece of crap.
As perviously mentioned the AI, particually in its lack of ablity to use naval invasions and some of the other features (such as fortresses being totally bypassable) make it seem stupid.
I wish that the game had a real army logistics role to it other than providing them lots of cash, most armys can survive away form home for years in the Arctic on minimum wage.
@Scundoo
a) At no point did I declare this to be my own opinion. Rather, I stated that recent scholarship was returning to this conclusion. The debate has been going full circle since Napoleon’s death. A viewpoint can be expressed more than once, with differing evidence, and still be relevant and not a part of the emotive “British Propaganda machine”. We found a lot of other opportunities to do nasty things by the way and I wouldn’t ever argue to the contrary. I’ve no interest in defending the indefensible. I’d bet I was more painfully familiar with and angry at Britain’s considerably unjust modern history than yourself.
b) The other view which defends Napoleon as a champion of liberty and revolutionary republican principles is championed for the most part by the French and Americans, who shared in the political sentiments of 1789. The more despotic character is championed by British, Russian, German academics and so forth. Namely those whose ancestors were prey to the Emperor’s conquests. There is no neutral position here. History cannot, I’m afraid, be reduced to what actually happened and the deviant British presentation thereof.
c) I could go on but I found the latest book I read on the subject and its seven hundred pages better argued, sensitive, informed and persuasive than your paragraph which attacked my recycling of clichés which you yourself committed. Despite what you might think, as conveyed in your tone, your argument was flimsy, if indeed there was one above personal insults. I’m happy to genuinely debate stuff, and I was probably mistaken in launching into a largely historical debate on a games forum and for that I apologise, but far from being wowed by the bombast and enlightenment of your argument I’m more inclined to think that you are Jeremy Clarkson, such is your condescension and complete lack of subtlety, although your willingness to defend someone from the Continent who is not responsible for making cars means this cannot be so.
We are still skirting around the matter of whether he had tits or not.
Empire is fine now. It’s not particularly clever or complicated compared to the Paradox games, but I doubt they’d do so well sales-wise if they were as complicated as the Paradox games.
Anyone else think Sonsonofapreachermon is actually Summer Glau?
Reading this thread, I realised that I’d never played either of the expansions for Rome:TW. Amending that right…. now.
Didn’t know who she was, but I can now confirm I am indeed Summer Glau and just didn’t realise it before. Hi Fans!
Aww man, same old WW1 cliches.
1) The Germans are the baddies. They not only acted like massive jerks, thereby starting the arms race but they started the war quite deliberately. Then of course there is their lack of democracy, stomping over neutrality, various war crimes in Belgium, ethnic cleansing in Poland and the East etc. They used gas first, they used flamethrowers first etc. They’re not Nazi’s but they’re not all that nice either.
2) WW1 is not just the Western Front. You have the war in Africa, in the Balkans, in the Alps, in the East, in the Far East, in the Middle East, in Central Asia etc. Everything from open mountain combat to guerilla warfare in the desert to commando raids to naval landings.
3) If you include the Eastern campaigns that resulted from the Tsarist Empire’s collapse (so 1917-21) then you have warfare that stretched from Poland to Mongolia, from the Baltic to Afghanistan. Most of it open, featuring cool stuff like armoured trains, the rise of the Bolsheviks, Mongolian hordes etc.
4) Trench warfare only applies on the Western front from 1915-1917. Both 1914 and 1918 are largely fought in the open (and both years have far more casualties than any of the trench war years).
5) Trench warfare was not just dumb slaughter. The Generals were not idiots. British bite and hold operations proved very effective for instance. There was continuous tactical and technological innovations. The big question is, if it was so dumb then why did the Allies win and not the Central Powers?
However WW1: Total War wouldn’t work anyway. Total War relies on tactical battles on a big field where you can see and command everyone. WW1 battles were so large that they stretched for miles at a time, including hundreds of thousands of men, vehicles, planes and tanks. There is just no way you could command that. The same goes for WW2. Then again Total War has never been that realistic anyway…
Napoleon looks intriguing, though I’m still waiting for Empire to be fixed before I buy it, but surely Napoleon lost in both Egypt and Russia…
@Sonofapreach…
All that gibberish and you still didn’t answer my question.
Maybe that REALLY BIG book with its so persuasive arguments (the title of which you didn’t even mention) has the answer there for you. Or maybe they don’t deal with the subject at all, and like you would rather avoid this annoying detail, since it puts quite a dent in their theory.
Mate, I’m not really into proving that things are definitley right or wrong, as they rarley are. My “gibberish” was an attmempt to convey the worth of subtley and balance in argument and repsond to your attacking my intellect and percieved apologising for Brtiain’s Imperial past, but seeing as you’re so persistent the book is Napoleon’s Wars by Charles Esdaile, and there’s about sixty pages of a chapter in there that deals precisley with Amiens, its beginnings and its eventual ending by Britain and various historians views on this and what it means to the reputation of Britain and Napoleon. Give that a read if you are genuinley interested as to another interpretation and not, as I suspect, simply being pathetically snide and condesceding for no apparent reason.
Game stripped down to sell extra content, bad AI, and now an early sequel. This franchise is not for me.
Sonsonofapreach…: attmempt[sic] to convey the worth of subtley[sic] and balance in argument
Mate, really, you are hilarious. You compare Napoleon with Hitler and then you have the nerve to speak about subtlety and balance.
Sonsonofapreach…:your paragraph which attacked my recycling of clichés which you yourself committed.
Nope, I didn’t post any clichés, and neither did you for that matter; comparing Napoleon with Hitler is just so embarrassingly stupid, there aren’t enough people with the necessary lack in intellect to actualy believe and post such nonsense often enough for it to turn into a cliché.
I am done with this conversation, the level of discourse here is appalling.
Sorry to dig this up again, but I have to broadcast this –
Nobody told me that Brian Blessed presides over Rome: Alexander’s historical battles!
Rome is promoted to best TW ever.
I was actually at the Brian Blessed recording sessions for Alexander.
He took great delight in saying “GORDON FREEMAN’S ALIVE?” for PC Zone’s coverdisk.
@Jim: Hahahaha.
eh, remake lords of conquest….j/k give me shogun ii