Look at it this way: We get games that take advantage of the latest hardware, while the console gamers get stuck with ancient gear that would melt if you ever threw something as sweet as a high end PC game at it.
We just have to rely on a nice, scalable engine for the game. I hope these guys deliver.
I’m guessing most people won’t have problems running it at medium settings at 1280x720 or so resolution and it will still look great. If you want to run it at 1920x1200 and the highest settings then, yeah, you might need an upgrade. But at least we have that OPTION. Console gamers don’t.
Take Oblivion, for example, which I’m replaying right now while I wait for Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 to come out. If I had the XBOX 360 I’d be playing that game at 1280x720 rez, with the same graphics level when it first came out, and the same low fps problems that plague it from time to time.
On my PC, I’m running it with 10 different mods which enhance gameplay AND graphics. I get over 80 fps, running with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing, video settings on max and at a true HD resolution of 1920x1200. That right there beats the console vesion in terms of graphic goodness by a factor of 10. Now toss in the Natural environments and realistic lighting mods for the game and this several year old game looks like it came out yesterday. It truly looks and runs amazingly. Console gamers just won’t be able to experience the game I’m experiencing now.
Am I willing to give that up for the less than what some people spend on cigarretts in one year? Hells no.
How can you do a faithful port of this game to the 360? Have you played previous Total War titles? I can see the turn based strategy portion being ported, albeit with tedious controls. But how do you manage 10,000 men on the battleground with a controller?
Oh, I’ve played only every single Total War game that’s been released thus far.
That’s not my problem. That’s up to the designers. It’s not impossible. Hell, the right thumbstick could spin the camera, the left one could move the cursor. Problem solved.
Hmm, using formations and the like would be fiddly as hell. You could probably do it, although it’d loose a lot in the conversion. RTS games have never been the console’s forté.
I’ll probably upgrade my rig at Christmas to play Fallout 3 in all it’s glory (at the moment it meets the minimum specs, but only my graphics card is up to scratch for the recommended…a new CPU and some more RAM needed methinks), and be ready for Empire, which will likely be a resources hog.
Somehow I suspect that just like in M2:TW, double envelopment will still be the way to beat the AI.
(Although it would be cool if they allowed a version of the tactic that worked in M:TW, advance by columns, where you divvied up your units into columns of 3 or 4 units each and advanced into the enemy: the first unit would push back the first enemy unit, and the next ones would outflank the enemy units to their left and right in the space the first one made. Doesn’t work in M2 cause units aren’t pushed back as far, but it would be cool if it worked slightly better in Empires due to being slightly more historically accurate.)
I also suspect that another winning tactic will still be to send a chunk of that enveloping cavalry willy-nilly into the enemys flank casualties be darned in order to produce a rout due to sheer weight of numbers then causing a domino effect. Unless the AI learns to concentrate its artillery into this mass.
Am I the only one who finds the combat preview wholeheartedly underwhelming?
It looks exactly like MWII:TW except with more delicately waving fronds of grass, tumbling endlessly in the slight breeze until I turn them off to save sprites for arrows.
Honestly, I hope they do more than give us new units with the same glitchy system. Maybe I’d better wait for the mods.
Console control could be easy, if different - thumbsticks for camera control, up and down arrows to scroll through units/groups, side arrows to scroll through formations for the selected units, triggers for selecting multiple units, and buttons for commands (advance, charge, guard, withdraw).
I too am not looking forward to the serious upgrade my computer will need (I can barely run MTW2 as it is), and am nervous about naval combat.
Looking at some of the vids; the combat all seems just too…static for my liking. Perhaps the nature of the C17th beast, but in gameplay terms it almost looks like a step back. I’m not convinced about the new cover/garrison mechanic either, but we’ll see. I don’t like to see my men get butchered charging enemy lines, preferring to win with as minimal casualties as possible, so I’m not sure I’m gonna like Empire’s battlefields as much as Medieval or Rome’s…
Naval battles on the other hand look quite good. Grapeshot? Boarding? Hell yeah. Unfortunately I don’t see how it’ll be anything other than a number crunch, or at best, a rock-paper-scissors strategy with naval battles, that’s always been the way they’ve been portrayed in pretty much every game I’ve played. The wind apparently has to be taken into consideration, which should be interesting.
I’ll just be happy if they get the diplomacy right, for once. Even in fully patched or modded Medieval II the AI was painfully stupid in diplomacy. You own half of Europe, your foe controls one city; offer him a ceasefire and he’ll choose death. I mean, come on!
What’s next for the series? I’ve got my fingers crossed for Rome II, personally, that was always my favourite in the series. The time period suits the game mechanic so well.
Well…I think it looks pretty kick ass myself. I’m a big fan of the series and have enjoyed every game they have released. I STILL play Rome with the TR patch (played a game last weekend in fact) and M2 as well (I haven’t tried many of the patches…my biggest disappointment is that MedII never got the TR mod finished and looks like it never will).
I agree that the combat is going to be a bit more mechanistic…pretty much the nature of the beast there as that WAS what the combat was like during this period. And for good reason. You needed massed fire and close formations to stand off cavalry and to maximize your firepower against the enemy. These things were slugging matches with lots of causalities when the big armies clashed. Still, there is plenty of room for tactical maneuver, and the strategy on the big map should still be the same or similar to RTW and M2TW.
I’m also pretty keen on checking out the naval combat, especially as you can supposedly use it in a more flexible way to cut off an enemies trade routes and actually capture their merchant vessels. The big fleet engagements (up to 20 ships IIRC) should also be interesting.
All in all this is one of the titles I’m really waiting for. I’m actually glad it has gotten pushed back past Christmas at this point…I’m at gaming overload or soon will be. I have Warhammer Online that I’m playing (love the RvR/PvP aspects), Sins of a Solar Empire mini-expansion comes out next week I believe, then there is Fallout 3 which I’m planning to jump into full bore. By the time TW Empire ships I should be just about ready for it.