By Craig Pearson on February 13th, 2012 at 5:40 pm.
I did a double-take on seeing there was ‘reveal’ footage of Total War Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai, because my brain had told me that Sega’s standalone expansion of their awesome historical war game was already out. I had a check and there are other lies in there, too. Lie #1: Corey Feldman is dead. Lie #2: Squid are not alive. Lie #3: Donkeys are extinct. Lie #4: Egyptians came before dinosaurs. Lie #5: Twin towns are exact copies of each other. While you tell us in the comments about the lies your brain has told you, readers, why not buffer this five minutes developer lead chit-chat about Fall Of The Samurai?
Two of those are real. Although, in my defense, one was more of a childish misconception that just keeps lodging in there. You know, like believing that the past was actually black and white, or that my dad loved me.
13/02/2012 at 17:43 Palindrome says:
The voice over is shocking.
13/02/2012 at 17:47 Tams80 says:
Hear, hear! Far too American for my tastes, though the main problem is that is bad in general.
13/02/2012 at 18:12 Ginger Yellow says:
A shameful display, you could say.
13/02/2012 at 18:25 maldoror says:
I got some American you can taste.
13/02/2012 at 23:39 Tams80 says:
American pancakes? Why yes please!
14/02/2012 at 00:39 ulix says:
I actually really like that style of trailers, as pioneered by Rockstar with RDR (and continued with Max Payne 2), has an almost “Infomercial” kind of flavor.
Sure, the voice-over dude could’ve been someone British, or someone with a fake Japanese accent, but it gets the job done.
I’d like more trailers to be like this, please.
14/02/2012 at 03:35 oafasdfasf says:
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13/02/2012 at 17:59 Sardonic says:
Trains? This just became a day 0 preorder.
13/02/2012 at 22:45 MyPetHamster says:
This is a Total War game. There will be pathing issues.
13/02/2012 at 23:23 Tirranek says:
If there is I’ll consider it an accomplishment.
13/02/2012 at 18:05 somini says:
But the world were actually black and white, colours were only invented in the 50′s. Old paintings have colours because the artists were insane. I though even a 10-year-old would know this.
13/02/2012 at 21:21 mjig says:
Reminds me of this:
http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=10831853#10832323
Warning: 4chan
13/02/2012 at 18:07 Unaco says:
Lie #6: The Cake.
13/02/2012 at 18:50 EOT says:
Unaco, that’s below you and you know it.
13/02/2012 at 19:08 Unaco says:
It was too easy! And I thought I’d get it out of the way early on, to allow others a freer hand.
13/02/2012 at 18:13 westyfield says:
Lie #7: everything your eyes ever tell you, apparently.
Seriously, each week I read of some new way in which your mind deceives you and makes you think that everything’s fine.
13/02/2012 at 18:16 Askeladd says:
Lie #8: everything is fine.
13/02/2012 at 18:31 somini says:
You can stop reading Cracked…
13/02/2012 at 18:34 westyfield says:
I don’t actually read Cracked. It’s mostly idle curiosity leading to four-hour Wikipedia binges.
13/02/2012 at 18:40 somini says:
How do you think Cracked articles are written? You are just skipping the middleman.
13/02/2012 at 18:44 westyfield says:
Yeah, but it requires slightly more effort and allows me to avoid Cracked’s hideous layout.
13/02/2012 at 18:17 Duffin says:
Is this the most modern Total War game ever? YES IT IS!
13/02/2012 at 18:24 Aerothorn says:
Now if only we could have a *postmodern* Total war game…
13/02/2012 at 18:51 The Innocent says:
In case you missed it, this is the most modern Total War game yet.
13/02/2012 at 20:15 dontnormally says:
This takes place in the most modern era of any Total War game.
13/02/2012 at 21:22 BioSnark says:
Far from a selling point, imo. Much rather be going back to Rome, medieval Europe, or unifying China. Lining up orderly units of rifles just isn’t the same as throwing bloodthirsty melee hordes into each other under a rain of flaming arrows and catapulting boulders.
While they’re at it, CA can reinstate good mod support for another romp through the gates of Mordor.
:/
13/02/2012 at 21:27 Vinraith says:
@BioSnark
China?
14/02/2012 at 04:13 BioSnark says:
@Vinraith
Yes, that huge setting just next door to Shogun 1/2 that CA has yet to try… and I don’t mean an even more modern Total War with the Japanese empire vs Communists vs KMT :S
14/02/2012 at 06:01 The Innocent says:
@BioSnark
I think Vinraith’s question was due to you saying:
“Much rather be going back to… unifying China.”
Which implied that CA had done that setting before.
14/02/2012 at 13:28 BioSnark says:
@The Innocent
Right. I meant “back” to mean “back in time period”
;)
13/02/2012 at 18:55 DogKiller says:
Is it true that you can take control of certain units in first person and aim their guns yourself?
13/02/2012 at 19:15 Askeladd says:
Where did you hear that? I certainly wouldn’t like it.
13/02/2012 at 19:59 Zenicetus says:
Yep, it was mentioned in this First Look that you can take personal control of a Gatling gun:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/02/first-look-shogun-2-fall-of-the-samurai/
Sounds like something that would be fun the first time, but will be ignored after that, unless you can have an AI that steps in and commands your army in the meantime.
13/02/2012 at 22:31 GenBanks says:
Yes it’s true but I imagine it would be a gimmick similar to the way in which it’s possible to direct control a tank in Company of Heroes: Tales of Valo[u]r
13/02/2012 at 21:33 the intricacy says:
Dear gaijin gamemakers– It’s really not too hard to pronounce “samurai” correctly. It’s not “SAM-urai”, like “Sam-I-am”. It’s “SA-murai”, like “Saw V”. I mean, really, it’s not going to confuse your customers to actually pronounce your own title correctly, and you’ll sound less… ignorant.
14/02/2012 at 00:00 Boosterh says:
Well, actually, according to dictionary.com, the English word “samurai” is correctly pronounced
SAM – u – rai. I don’t know anything about how the Japanese root word is pronounced, but insofar as the clip was done in English, I’d say their pronunciation is perfectly valid.
14/02/2012 at 00:05 Cinnamon says:
You must be some sort of expert on Nippon and it’s ways.
14/02/2012 at 05:07 the intricacy says:
@ Boosterh, heh, I stand corrected: That is apparently how you pronounce “samurai” in english, I guess. ENGLISH, not nihongo. Anyway, listen to RotS’s first trailer’s in-game narrator, which they pronounce it correctly. It just seems odd to mispronounce your own game’s title in adverts.
dictionary.com also mangles karate and karaoke too, btw.
edit: you know, this trailer’s narrator also mangles “Shogun” too, pronouncing it “Sho-Gun”, like “ray-gun”, instead of “goon-squad”, so… whatever.
14/02/2012 at 08:13 Mattrex says:
The Japanese language is exclusively composed of a finite syllabary, and except for a few unusual syllables (chi, sho, tsu, n), they all take the form of either a plain vowel or a consonant-vowel phoneme. All of the vowels are short except for the O (ah, ee, oo, eh, oh). So this makes “correct” Japanese (at least romanized Japanese) extremely easy to pronounce from sight, though some words have been used enough in English that the pronunciation has changed somewhat to reflect English rules of use.
So the words above:
Samurai is SA-MU-RA-I, so the first syllable is in fact “sah” as in “sorry” and not “sam”. Of course, this is the native Japanese pronunciation, so in English we use the pronunciation “sam-ur-eye”.
Shogun is SHO-GU-N, so the middle syllable and last syllables together are indeed pronounced as “goon”. Again, this is primarily in the native Japanese.
This is also why sometimes you’ll see self-professed otaku using the pronunciations “ah-nee-may” or “mahn-gah” for their favored pastimes, as the words do break down to A-NI-ME and MA-N-GA.
Bottom line is that it’s not really wrong to pronounce the words like we’ve been pronouncing them, even if it’s not how native speakers pronounce them. It’s just how they end up sounding when they’re spoken with a different language’s phonetic rules. After all, Japanese people love English words too, and we would probably have a hard time recognizing some of theirpronunciations of English, too.
13/02/2012 at 21:40 phuzz says:
Lie #9: John is a great healer.
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14/02/2012 at 02:09 X_kot says:
Lie #10: Everything is true, nothing is permitted.
14/02/2012 at 03:08 Aximili55 says:
I think this is the first Step to Moving to Total War: American Civil War.
14/02/2012 at 05:24 SiriusDawn says:
I wouldn’t play that. Too isolated, little significance. Though it would make a nice mod or dlc for Empire or Napoleon because of the first ironclads.
14/02/2012 at 14:23 Soulstrider says:
On the other hand
Total War: Russian Civil War
ALL OF MY DAMN MONEY, TAKE IT, ALL OF IT, DO YOU WANT MY HOUSE? TAKE IT TOO
14/02/2012 at 08:06 Teronfel says:
@1:21 the guy says it’s the “closest any TW has been to the modern day” lol what about empire and napoleon then?
14/02/2012 at 08:21 Mattrex says:
The Revolutionary War took place between 1775 and 1783. The Napoleonic Wars occurred between 1803 and 1815. The events that touched off the Meiji Restoration, on the other hand, began in 1853 and concluded in 1869.
14/02/2012 at 08:41 RogB says:
surprisingly interested by this, I didnt realise it was going to be so many years (300?) on from Shogun.
so its TW: The Last Samurai? quick, someone mod Tom Cruise in there!
14/02/2012 at 08:49 Goomich says:
No, war from Shogun takes place couple years before rebellion from Last Samurai.
14/02/2012 at 08:48 Goomich says:
I hope they do something with load times. Waiting 2-3 minutes jut to see a menu is ridiculus.
14/02/2012 at 13:31 Aemony says:
“Reimagined and redesigned” seems to be thrown around quite extensively these years when it comes to sequels, expansions or DLCs to games.
14/02/2012 at 15:35 John Brindle says:
Suggested name for those in charge of RPS: “The Shotgunate”.
14/02/2012 at 15:38 Wut The Melon says:
My dirty mind read that as “See-through time : D”
I guess I’m on the wrong site…