Gadgetory

hey everyone this is steve from gamers nexus donna and we are here with creative Assembly's james russell who is a lead designer on rome 2 total war and today we're going to be talking about rome 2 and specifically some more interesting aspects about the game design philosophy and history of the game and their research process what can you tell me about your research collection how do you do have specific researchers do your game designers do it what's up on that front yeah cool so you know obviously rome 2 is a game set in history the total series is all about you know creating a world for you to explore a world that that kind of sets the scene we set the scene in a in a really sort of historically accurate point in in world history right so so what we do is we have this starting position in the game which is absolutely accurate as absolutely how the world was right and then it's up to the player to make their own history so what total war games are all about is you have a grand strategy map where you you you you decide the fate of Nations right you pick one particular nation to play you don't have to play as Rome you can play as any one of Rome's enemies and you meet you meet your own history from that point and you know we've got a deep tech tree you fight these real-time battles with you know real units that we use by armies of the period so you know it's a huge it's a huge world that we need to create the setting for right so that is absolutely a lot of research to do but what we don't do is have a sort of specialist team that just does research and then kind of briefs everybody right it's really important to us that the that the game designers themselves are the ones that know about the period is the game designers themselves that immerse themselves in in understanding the the period that we're trying to portray right because that's the way you get a really authentic game world so it's not just the designers it's also the hot all different areas of the team so for example you know the animators have to understand you know how the Roman army would fight and how Rome's enemies fight so you know you have big debates over over you know whether the Spirit iculous spearmen are fighting you know under under have with the spears underhand or over hand and that kind of thing because they have to make those decisions and actually create the animation so we go you know we going to talk to all the reenactment guys we going you know do a lot of a lot of primary research and and we read some of the sort of you know you know we read some of the primary sources of you know descriptions of battles all that kind of stuff whereas some of the designers you know the ones that are having to build the map you know we pour over loads of ancient world atlases and read accounts and when we have to understand you know who's in charge of each particular area of the world you know some obscure part of bactria right up near Afghanistan and we have to understand who's in charge what characters were around who's the king who was you know you know what was what was the Carthaginian Senate like right we have to understand all this stuff so we have to we just have to receive designer responsible for each parts of the game have to has to do their research you know the person designing the economic system has to understand how the ancient world economy worked you know where where the different trade routes were you know the guy dealing with the naval vessels have to understand you know who had what kinds of ships also we have to create technologies so we have to understand not just what what people had at the beginning but what was developed over the next few hundred years right to create the tech tree for you to to actually research there's just a lot of work but it's great fun to do and one of the biggest challenges with a game like Rome is the sheer scope of it so you know like I said it's not just about Rome we were trying all these different barbarian tribes in in Britain in Spain and you know ginger in Germany all the way to the east across you know Russia and Ukraine and into Afghanistan even there almost so you know it's a huge world we also have to research how the city's looked right so we've got to portray these massive cities and that's one of the big new things about the games we portraying cities in a way that we haven't done before I mean absolutely huge you know we're trying to portray you know eastern cities you know Greco Roman cities barbarian settlements this whole range of a whole range of different different content that's in the game all these different fighting styles so we have to look at the different animations for all these different tribes these different weapons that they use this is just a massive effort it's fantastic fun to do and you know we create a really epic experience out of it we're gonna be working on the game for over two years but we got out you know over 200 over 100 people working for to you so that's over 200 kind of man years of work right which is which is incredible amount of effort and and and and its way the biggest game we've ever made in terms of budget I mean we've spent we were the resources on this game are you know well over one and a half times what we put into the previous game shogun 2 is there anything in particular that you personally are excited about what when you saw it in the game whatever this this this element was what made you really go wow we did an awesome job on that well you know this is a thing I think I think I think it's a thing that's unique and magical about total war is that you know you'll have lots of games that look great when you're when you're really really close up okay but what's special about total war is the spectrum of scale you've got so you can zoom right in and you can see you know two guys fighting it out right then you zoom out a bit you can see that there's you know 200 of them in a unit they're all fighting it up and then you zoom out and you can just see thousands upon it's a man right and you just get this breathtaking spectacle because you know we have the battles plus we have the kind of strategic map which is you know a big kind of forex game in itself you know so it's almost two huge games in one and you know absolutely and looking more the programming side of things on the inner workings of the game have there been any major iterations on the engine which we've really really you know hugely enhance the graphics change the lighting systems change the particle size effect system so it looks completely you know on a complete different level from drum even the previous iteration so you know that I guess the big thing is that one one of the really big things to mention is the fact we've kind of combined you know land battles with naval battles because previously we've had land battles and had naval that was we never had that in one single battle very cool and on the mod in front the Total War series has historically had a pretty open open engine for modding you could plug into ini files I understand you have some tools in the works and have had tools on Steam Workshop for a while can you tell us more about that well yeah you know Shogun's who's got great modding seen all I previous titles you know it's really vibrant to see players you know messing around with the game and and creating some amazing pretty some amazing things you know I think that's a great way to actually sort of start off becoming a game designer is sort of you know like actually going you know what actually I want to change these stats and I think this unit should be a bit more powerful that unit should be a bit faster you're playing around with game systems like that is I think you know it's a great way to get in get into the industry and really understand you know how how the hell games work but certainly we think it's fantastic to have a vibrant modding community they you know having having multiple games really increases the longevity of the game it creates variety allows people to really have a lot of fun and and we want to support that as much as we can so you know we're going to be you know we are intention is to release more and more modding tools as you know as we go along do you have any any final thoughts for your fans for people who have been waiting for this game for so long it's just around the corner probably by the time this video ends up it'll be one day away what do you have to say to your fans well you know if you see this before the release you've got a pre-order because you get the Greek States for free and and that's a writ that's a really good chunk of content so you know if you forget your pre-order in get the great states for free it is it's a really exciting time for us right because we've been slaving away making this game and we're really really you know excited for when it when it when it hits hits the guys out there you know and we get to see all these gamers you know playing without having fun with it you know we really really psyched for that because you know we've been working on it for so long you know we just we want to see people at people out there playing it so it's exciting time for us we're going to be like glue two screens on there on release day I think a lot of us will be glued to our screens i know i know i'm personally pretty psyched about it if you're psyched about rome 2 total war check all the links in the description below will have full article coverage have any other videos photos from the show and thanks again I will see you guys next time peace is