The last 25 years of Total War have offered something for everyone. By everyone, I of course mean "everyone who is into painting strategy maps red and setting up intricate flanks on the battlefield" – which, presumably, is everyone. But I digress.
As Creative Assembly outlines its vision for the future of Total War, GamesRadar+ asked eight developers at the studio to name their most influential Total War game. From the directors of Total War: Medieval 3 to senior creatives and the minds behind Total War: Warhammer 3's Lords of the End Times DLC, everyone at Creative Assembly has their own definition of influential – you can read their answers below.
Total War: Medieval 3's directors weigh in
Pawel Wojs, game director: "Oh gosh. I think for me personally, there are a few. Empire comes to mind because at the time naval [warfare] was completely new. We already had a game of two halves, so we added a third, which was the naval battles. That was definitely influential. Rome 2 as well, to a certain extent. This is from my personal developer lens, but it was huge. There are parallels between Rome 2 and Medieval 3 because Rome 2 was us following Rome 1, trying to live up to the expectations fans had, so that was definitely a big one. Then Three Kingdoms, just because of how different it was, how we developed the character focus and diplomacy system. Three Kingdoms is definitely up there."
Leif Walter, creative director: "Three Kingdoms we definitely share. We worked on it together back in the day. It was a great balance of historical authenticity with interesting, compelling stories we were able to create. The depth of its campaign, I think fans really appreciate. To mention two other ones, one would be Napoleon because I think that had a great sense of simulation of the world, and the simulation of battles, with really cool angles for me as a player to step into the world and change history. And then the other one is Shogun 2 – a similar generation of games, but I think it's still such a great game that really brought everything together. The art, the gameplay, from a technical point of view, but also the immersion and storytelling. Those would be the three for me."
Total War: Warhammer 3 developers shelve their bias
Rich Aldridge, senior game director: "Warhammer's one that I've been on a very long journey for, so it means an awful lot to me. But if I was to look beyond that for the rest of the series, probably Shogun 2. Shogun 2 was a game that I think myself and many others in the studio really wanted to make, we were really excited about the nature of the setting. But also, it's very tight on design, tight on the gameplay experience, with really interesting and enjoyable battles. And then of course we introduced Fall of the Samurai and Avatar Conquest mode, which was really good fun."
Sean MacDonald, associate design director: "The most hours I've sunk in has been in the Warhammer space. But if I had to not use that cop-out answer of the thing I work on, I think Three Kingdoms had a really clear goal of what it wanted to improve, looking at the diplomacy system, and have this play out of that great climax of the realm splitting into the Three Kingdoms. That was, for me, a really well-executed vision of a great Total War in modern history. So if I'm not using my Warhammer bias, it's probably Three Kingdoms."
To fantasy and beyond
Ellie Koorlander, art tech director: "From my perspective, Warhammer has been such a massive project. We didn't realize it was going to be so big. It's the gift that keeps on giving. We're still making amazing content, but so many of our learnings from having an engine that wasn't really built for live build development has influenced what we're doing now. I think that is the greatest piece of what we've done so far, and I'm really glad we've taken those learnings into what we're doing now."
Andy Hall, lead narrative designer & writer: "I'm a Warhammer nerd. When I was headhunted to help with the Warhammer games I thought I'd be here for a couple of games. I'm here well over a decade later, so I'm part of the furniture now. So my love of Warhammer has always shone through for me. But my experience with Total War starts before that. I remember watching Time Commanders, which was a show that used the Total War engine, and that was my first introduction to Total War. I was like, 'I need that game!' So Total War: Rome was my first game, but I never had a PC good enough to run it until I actually joined and could play any Total War game in the back catalog. So I do love the history ones, but I've always got a Karl Franz campaign on the go."
Kevin McDowell, franchise content director – art: "We draw inspiration from all of the different projects that we have - constantly. I don't think there's one golden project. We can look at Shogun 2 and go 'Well that was really well delivered, very polished', et cetera, but the content scope was quite small. So then we can look at Empire as something that had a wide range of features and we can see, okay, well actually we can map big new feature sets to our new games and the players will engage with them. So in Empire, we had naval battles and the different regions. I'm not saying we'll have those in future games, but they were big new feature sets. I think we draw inspiration from all of our back catalog games, but I don't think there's any specific one where we go 'Oh, that's the one we're trying to emulate'."
Roger Collum, vice president of Total War: "What he's saying sounds almost like a cop-out, but it's true. The team is incredibly introspective about our successes and failures. We look at Warhammer 3 at launch and, like, that probably should have shipped with Immortal Empires. So immediately that seems like a big mistake in the rear view mirror. Hopefully we don't make that mistake again. Rome 2 had a very rough launch, it [needed] a bunch of bug fixing. We look at those things too like 'let's not do that'. But Three Kingdoms comes up quite a bit. Rome, Medieval 2, Shogun 2, all these games come up. Our most successful game right now, far and away, is the Warhammer series. It's an incredible IP that has a ton of legs and a huge fandom, so it's difficult to not look at that formula and decide, well, where does that formula fit? Not that exact formula, but similar – where does that formula fit? Nobody has anything to fear with Medieval 3 however, because the people working on that are hardcore history designers so it will not feel anything like Warhammer 3. But we have to ask ourselves that question: what works and what doesn't work?
We've also rounded up the best Total War games that you can play during the wait for Medieval 3, which seems to be shaping up nicely
