Attila: Total War

[mikeck]

It does look good, but I'm surprised there is so much excitement over this. Attila really doesn't do much for me. I would have preferred a new period altogether, or even a return to Medieval times.

I'm not interested in playing as Attilla but the other factions would be cool...like late Rome

[Nefaro]

It does look good, but I'm surprised there is so much excitement over this. Attila really doesn't do much for me. I would have preferred a new period altogether, or even a return to Medieval times.

I'm not interested in playing as Attilla but the other factions would be cool...like late Rome

I think the other "barbarian" factions will make or break this one for me.  Excluding any Hun faction, of course. 

Some of the announced upgrades to the UI and campaign mechanics are welcome.  I wasn't very enamored with the campaign mechanic changes they made between Shogun 2 and Rome 2, but the ones for Attila look to be a nice improvement.

[Gusington]

I also like the evolution of the unit art from Rome 2 to Attila. At least the shots I have seen in the latest clips. I wonder too if Medieval 3 is in the works, after the alleged Warhammer title.

[mikeck]

Wish they would do a 1453-1700 version but that time period just isn't popular enough.

[Gusington]

^I hear you, I love that era too.

[MengJiao]

Wish they would do a 1453-1700 version but that time period just isn't popular enough.

  The Fall of the Western Empire is an odd pick -- not that I'm complaining, I'm just intrigued that they came up with the idea at all.  The whole dynamic of how some tidbits of history get into games while most of what has happened makes no appearance at all is kind of mesmerizing -- in a more or less unwholesome way.  As a fanboi, I want to believe there is some kind of logic, while as an actual human being I'm stuck with a kind of horrified amusement or bemusement and no serious belief that there is anything resembling logic involved at all.

  Let's face it:  which bits of history end up in games is just plain strange and which bits of history end up in big computer games is even stranger.  For example, I haven't played any Assassins Creed, but what's up with what they pick as the settings for those things?  No to mention the interpretations they want to impose on events.  At least with games like Attila, the supposed dynamic that drives events is more or less geopolitical: you get your factions and your locations and resources and you fight it out -- it makes some kind of sense, even a gamey kind of sense.

[MengJiao]

I also like the evolution of the unit art from Rome 2 to Attila. At least the shots I have seen in the latest clips. I wonder too if Medieval 3 is in the works, after the alleged Warhammer title.

RPS takes a look and adopts some of the usual themes in talking about Attila:
   
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/05/total-war-attila-preview-sega/#more-260575

  Which brings up more about the problem of imagining the 5th Century:  as a game and a century it follows Classic Rome and does not look the same and when Attila the game is discussed it is generally as an improved Rome II -- but this means that the themes one tends to pick for the 5th century (barbarian "hordes", imperial collapse, the end of the world, gathering darkness, flames, horror etc.etc.) also have to seem like positives -- because -- well -- you can't just look at the 5th century as a time period apparently even in a game -- it has to be chock-full of moral lessons and cataclysmic imagery.  Which is apparently great for games as marketing extravaganzas, but of dubious value if one is looking at some kind of functioning state imagery in the game.
Because the Total War series has come to be about  how to run a state (empire, kingdom, tribal confederation, republic, etc. etc.) so (paradoxically) there have to be some functional elements left in the 5th century (as in fact obviously in reality there were).  So the game has to have elements that cut against the supposed themes of unstoppable, nightmarish collapse.

To me this all sounds like a good mix even filtered through the lenses of RPS's need for themes (which Rome II lacked it seems, but that Attila will have) and the tendency of many people to insist that Attila is the game that Rome II should have been.  You get your goofy marketing themes of barbarian this and that plus the oddly overblown imageries of decline and fall and against all that some kind of functional state structures in the game and some gamey attempts by the player to make the functional elements work somehow.

[Gusington]

I have to admit I love RPS' view on this, the theme of impending doom. But it's not really new to the series: it's what I really loved about Barbarian Invasion 10 years ago.

[MengJiao]

I have to admit I love RPS' view on this, the theme of impending doom. But it's not really new to the series: it's what I really loved about Barbarian Invasion 10 years ago.

  I think the results will be a fun game, but the doom thing is a bit premature: sure the Western Empire evaporates but that might have saved everybody a lot of trouble.  The doom really hits in the later 6th century and into the early 7th : the Yellow Plague, the most massive erosion of topsoil between the late Roman Republic and fascism, Catholic Merovingians, human sacrifice at Sutton Hoo, the near collapse of the Eastern Empire (all between 550 and 650 except Catholic Clovis at 495 IIRC).  Even the cold weather was later: 450 to 950.

  You'd have to run the game well past 450 to get any real doom going, realistically anyway.  Even as late as about 500 you get the historical King Arthur, who really seems to have been a warm period kind of guy.

[Gusington]

The game starts in 395 so...OMG THE CATHOLIC MEROVINGIANS ARE COMING

[Sir Slash]

Video preview over at...  http://twcenter.net/  Don't tell them it's Barbarian Invasion 2 or else they'll screw it up to try to make it different.

[Gusington]

Sweet, gotta watch that on a proper screen.

[Sir Slash]

I'm afraid to Gus. I might start uncontrollably licking my computer screen.

[Gusington]

We all do it.

[GDS_Starfury]

no we all don't.