Games
Total War: ARENA spells a change for the long-running strategy series. We speak with developers Creative Assembly about the move to games as a service, and what it means for players.
The Total War series has spanned centuries and continents. The first in the series, Shogun: Total War, arrived in 2000 and introduced players to the series’ addictive blend of turn-based strategy, intricate tactical decisions, and fierce warfare. Since that Japan-set bow, we’ve seen war waged in Rome, fought bitter battles with and against Napoleon Bonaparte, and even cleaved our way through mythical settings in 2016’s Total War: Warhammer.
It’s safe to say, then, that the series, and developers Creative Assembly, are unafraid of change. But while previous instalments have mixed up locations, time periods and characters, Total War: ARENA, the series’ latest instalment, is set to deliver change on a more radical scale. Now, the battle is being brought to games as a service.
Joshua Williams, Developer Communications at Creative Assembly, tells us how this came about:
“Total War: Shogun 2’s Avatar conquest system was a big inspiration for ARENA. It was the first time we really saw the demand for a serious competitive Total War, and we started talking about our ‘ideal’ multiplayer Total War game.”
“These key pillars of aggressive, captivating and epic-scale gameplay have stayed with us throughout the entirety of the game’s development process and helped us form every patch and update to the game since then. We took inspiration from our own Total War series, but we also looked at free-to-play games, such as the Wargaming titles. It then seemed like a natural fit for the two of us to work together.”
Indeed, while many of the series’ previous iterations included multiplayer in the form of co-op campaigns, Total War: ARENA is the first to only and fully embrace the online model. Games as a service, of course, is growing increasingly prominent in the way our favourite titles – from Destiny 2 to Rainbow Six Siege – are being delivered, yet for Creative Assembly it posed some difficulties. Williams explains:
“Transitioning from being a standalone game to a service has been one of the biggest challenges for us. We had to ramp everything up, our communication with the players, our online capabilities, our patching process – it took us a while to get the ball fully rolling, but now we’ve got all the processes in place.”
Now that the ball is rolling, Total War: ARENA is set to be the first free-to-play game in the series. This, according to Williams, will affect more than the weight of players’ wallets. Instead, it’ll have a fundamental impact on the way the game is played.
Williams says, “ARENA stands in a unique place in both the strategy genre and the multiplayer genre. The game plays very differently to other Total War games. There are familiar elements to the gameplay, but the speed and focus on teamwork is really new to the series. You can’t just be self-sustaining, you need to work with others in order to accomplish a bigger goal.”
Speed seems to be a particular focus in how the game differentiates itself from its forebears, and Williams tells us that while most strategy games can take between an hour and six months to finish a level, they’ve designed Total War: ARENA around a different timescale – minutes, not months.
“While the metagame and progression allows you to upgrade over time, the battles themselves take a maximum of 15 minutes, meaning that you get the same depth of a traditional strategy game, but in much more digestible bites.” He adds, “We’re also unafraid to make a co-operative game. In a lot of multiplayer games, teams are just groupings of you and strangers and has very little bearing on how you approach the match.”
We give you lots of tools to communicate with your team because working together as an army is key to victory
“In ARENA, after you see your team composition, that’s when you start to talk tactics and plans with each other. We give you lots of tools to communicate with your team because working together as an army is key to victory. Working with a team-mate to lure an enemy into a perfect ambush, or to protect a friend’s elephant unit while they smash through Roman legions is an incredibly satisfying and utterly unique experience.”
This, of course, required a change of tact from the developers. There was less of a focus on AI, for instance, and more on gameplay because the game’s not about a single-player experience.
“We don’t have to try and work around how AI would work or interact with the player, but instead we have put that time into working on the abilities and balance in gameplay,” Williams explains.
That said, those eager to pit their wits against AI opponents shouldn’t look the other way just yet. Creative Assembly have still included some AI in the game as a learning option in the early tiers. They’re also willing to expand the game’s options, depending on feedback, even if offline users shouldn’t hold their breath. Williams says:
“We’ve recently introduced custom battles, a feature which lets you play 1v1 etc. We’re looking at the feedback and deciding if people want us to add AI to that mode. If we do, then that’s effectively an offline sandbox mode. However, I wouldn’t count on having a dedicated mode that can be played offline.”
Regardless of the game’s features, strategy titles are having something of a moment right now, with Total War: ARENA arriving just at the right time. Games like They Are Billions, for instance, have found a huge audience of tactical schemers, ready to jump into the heat of battle. That said, Williams feels that the strategy genre will always retain its mystique:
“There’s a renaissance of strategy titles at the moment, but I think strategy games will always be popular. I think the current surge is caused by the large number of remasters coming out, it’s drawing back a player base that maybe had moved on from strategy games, but they’re getting their tactical itches again.”
And while there’s been plenty of movement in the strategy genre in recent years, Creative Assembly assure us that this hasn’t impacted their own strategy when creating Total War: ARENA. Williams explains:
“We’ve had a focused design philosophy that’s led us the entire time. We haven’t really seen any games come out that are similar to ARENA, and we were really keen to make sure we didn’t compromise based on outside factors.”
This willingness to stick to their guns has also ensured Creative Assembly won’t be plotting a console bow, with Total War: ARENA very much built for PC:
“We have no plans to release ARENA on consoles. We did experiment with trying to find a control scheme that would work, but we don’t want to sacrifice gameplay in the transition, and that seems nigh on impossible.”
And while that may be familiar to fans of the series, Total War: ARENA still promises to shake things up.
Williams concludes: “We’re hoping that ARENA will become a Total War title with an incredibly long life, with continuous content and balance updates making sure that the game stays fresh, while other Total War titles are released alongside.”
Total War: ARENA is coming to PC in 2018, with the game now in open beta.
