Total War: Arena will take the real-time strategy war video game in a completely new direction, making the series more accessible to larger numbers of fans.
The free-to-play online game is a 10-versus-10 multiplayer game coming from Sega’s The Creative Assembly and Wargaming. Sega teamed up with Wargaming, maker of World of Tanks, because of its free-to-play experience.
And The Creative Assembly hopes to go beyond appealing to its traditional hardcore real-time strategy customers. Total War has sold more than 20 million units on the PC since the debut of Shogun: Total War in 2000.Total War: Arena has no single-player campaign, and it has a lot less depth than the normal Total War title. But it might be just the thing to help the franchise grow.
Image Credit: Sega/Wargaming
“It’s a battle slice of Total War. We want to lower the floor to make Total War more accessible to some,” said Elliott Lock, lead battle designer of the game, in an interview with GamesBeat last week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big game trade show in Los Angeles. “History is still the No. 1 pillar of Total War. But we want to make it less like a history lecture and more fun.”
You command groups of soldiers and can zoom in on individual soldiers or zoom out for a bird’s-eye view of the 3D battlefield. In this case, players controlling soldiers will be able to square off against each other on a sizable battleground with lots of strategic control points.
You start in a camp. So far, you can choose among Romans, Barbarians, and Greeks. You can choose leaders, such as Germanicus. Each commander has three special abilities, such as “vengeance,” “testudo,” or “infantry charge.” With vengeance, troops have more determination to win. With testudo, troops can turtle up and use their shields to deflect long-range arrow attacks.
Image Credit: Sega/Wargaming
In Total War: Arena, you’re kind of a mid-level commander in a…
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