British development studio Creative Assembly has a solid reputation in the industry, what with having delivered a slew of excellent strategy titles in the Total War series, not to mention the excellent first person horror title Alien Isolation. We’ve all been wondering what it is that they’re working on next, and reports earlier last year, arising from the studio hiring people to work on a new project, suggested that their next game was going to be a tactical shooter.

A new update by the developer on Twitter (sort of) confirms that. Recently, film director Neill Blomkamp visited the studio, and according to Creative Assembly, got to see a behind the scenes look of the game that they’re working on next, which they say is a brand new IP, and a first person shooter. Check out the tweet below.

No other information on the game was given, as you might expect, and we don’t really have any prior information to go on either. So for now, all we know is that it’s a first person shooter, and it’s a new IP. The aforementioned job listings last year did seem to suggest that the game might have live service elements, given the focus on things such as in-game economy and player retention, but there’s no concrete information on that front, so don’t take that as confirmation of any sort.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt, and we’ll keep you updated in case any more info comes our way.

So, this happened. @NeillBlomkamp dropped by CA HQ for a behind-the-scenes look at the development of our brand-new FPS IP! pic.twitter.com/hXEAnAHEEX

— Creative Assembly (@CAGames) February 4, 2019

If the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment sale on Steam isn’t for you, then maybe Creative Assembly’s sale on the Total War franchise is going to perk you up. The entire series has been discounted on Steam, with slashes ranging from 10 percent to 90 percent, and they include some must-have titles.

For example, Total War: SHOGUN 2 has a 75 percent discount for the base game, and for the base game with its collection of DLC (not including the Fall of the Samurai DLC, which is discounted separately). Though released in 2011, the historical strategy title still offers an incredible rendition of 16th century warfare in Feudal Japan. As the Daimyo, players will have to re-unite Japan using diplomacy, Art of War tactics, and much more.

Other titles that have been discounted include Total War: ATTILA, Empire: Total War, and Medieval: Total War – Collection (all discounted by 75 percent), along with Total War: ROME 2 – Emperor Edition (discounted by 66 percent). Sadly, Total War: Warhammer 1 and 2 are not part of this sale. Looks like we’ll have to wait for a site-wide Steam sale in the meantime. Meanwhile, the current Total War sale ends on October 1st, 10 AM PST.

The Creative Assembly are some of the most talented developers around- if their talent wasn’t already apparent with the Total War games they manage to put out on an almost annual basis, then the fact that they could switch gears so suddenly to Alien: Isolation, and have it be as awesome as it turned out to be should have been evidence enough.

According to an insider’s remark, reported on by PCGamesN, The Creative Assembly is now working on what is “the biggest multiplatform game” in their history; accordingly, their careers page also seems to be updated, with postings for a senior meta game designer, lead systems designer, and a lead technical artist have gone up; the listings themselves seem to indicate many RPG like systems in place, but that doesn’t mean anything since just about every game these days has those in some measure.

Whatever the new game is, it is clear it is coming to more than just PC or Xbox- it will be interesting to see what it is, and whether it can live up to their pedigree.

The game come out today and GamingBolt’s Martin Toney found it to be one of best strategy games that you will find on the market. Before the launch of the game, I got the chance to speak to the Project Lead of Total War: Attila, Janos Gaspar to know what kind of changes they have implemented in the sequel.

Rashid Sayed: Rome II received mixed reactions because of the aggressive changes to the formula. Having said that how did that affect while developing Attila?

Janos Gaspar: Rome II was a very ambitious game, and we went on to make some significant changes to it in the year after launch. This culminated in the Emperor edition, which has become the largest entry in Total War history,and got a very positive reception. With Attila we took these solid foundations and built from there. Total war is 15 years old now, and with every iteration we look at all the features and ideas we have and decide what would go best with the scope and the theme of the upcoming game.

We wanted to make Attila one for our core fans, so we looked through the community feedback and incorporated many features and tweaks that were not just in our backlog of things to do but also reported as favourites by them. For example, the family tree is something that was missing from Rome II and Empire because of the grand timeframe of those titles, but the more human scale level of Attila and the sentiment of our fans made it a very early candidate for inclusion in Attila.

"The long sieges, the worsening conditions provide a fertile soil for outbreaks of nasty diseases. And as these epidemics spread between armies and cities, through trade routes and the road network, you’ll be in grave danger, even if you manage your realm well."

Rashid Sayed: Total War Attila is set very close to the Dark Ages, a period where famine and diseases were common. How deeply will Attila include these calamities? Furthermore, how will this impact gameplay?

Janos Gaspar: We call Attila a survival strategy game. All the new features revolve around this survival aspect. No matter which faction you play or how cautious you are, sooner or later you’ll encounter the deteriorating conditions. The encroaching war and the climate change will affect your economy and food production and will cause famine sooner or later, especially if you are not ready to migrate or defend your territory.

The long sieges, the worsening conditions provide a fertile soil for outbreaks of nasty diseases. And as these epidemics spread between armies and cities, through trade routes and the road network, you’ll be in grave danger, even if you manage your realm well. And there’s a lot more to worry about: the arrival of the Huns uprooting tribes, and the new migratory elements can do the same. At the end as a chain reaction, all these people end up on the borders of the Roman Empires, trying to claim a new home for themselves and protect it at all cost.

Rashid Sayed: Total War is one of those rare real time strategy franchises that consistently break into millions of sales with each entry. How does it feel to lead the genre with such dominance?

Janos Gaspar: It’s very humbling to work on such a title, and with such a dedicated and talented team. At the end all of us are total war fans and players, and we want to do the best we can!

Rashid Sayed: How many people are working on Total War Attila right now?

Janos Gaspar: Currently around 80, as we are ramping down in the run-up to launch. At its height there were around 150 of us.

"Attila and the Huns are true nomads, they can never settle. So you have to completely change your mind set about how you play a total war game. Usually you go out, capture territory, and build up a huge empire. Now that doesn’t work for them."

Rashid Sayed: I have this assumption that in real world events, the reason why Attila was so successful was because he had access to superior technology. How are you making sure that this is reflected in the game?

Janos Gaspar: The technological differences are present in the factional tech-trees, but the unit availability and their different battlefield roles, the overall political climate and the freedom of hit and run tactics even on the campaign map also make them fearful enemy…Or a very interesting and fun faction to play with.

Rashid Sayed: The climate change and the migratory factions seem to be interesting concepts. How are you planning to make them work within the context of the game?

Janos Gaspar: Some of the key reasons behind this migration were overpopulation and climate change. As time passes in the game, the winters will become more and more severe and the fertility of the land decreases. This will prompt tribes to consider moving, but the arrival of the Huns will definitely dislocate them.

If a faction is migrating, their armies effectively carry their cities with them – these are what we call hordes.When the horde chooses to camp, it can get to work on constructing and upgrading its buildings, enabling the horde to sustain itself and generate income. At any points, they can pack up their tents and move on again.

Rashid Sayed: Will Attila and the Huns play in a very different manner? If yes, can you please explain how?

Janos Gaspar: Attila and the Huns are true nomads, they can never settle. So you have to completely change your mind set about how you play a total war game. Usually you go out, capture territory, and build up a huge empire. Now that doesn’t work for them.

You can only subjugate people, raze their settlements and wage war around Europe. This gives you an unprecedented freedom which, combined with their unique faction traits, makes them the force that sets events in motion across the map. If you play with the Huns you can become very strong, very early and take whatever you want, eliminating anyone who resists. If you’re playing a different faction… Well, then they will come after the waves of tribes fleeing from them, and make your life miserable!

"Supporting multiplayer is important for us and with Attila we made sure all the new features are available and valid in multiplayer as well."

Rashid Sayed: Is there a specific reason why the same co-op system from Rome II is being carried over to Attila?

Janos Gaspar: The framework is but the game isn’t entirely the same. Supporting multiplayer is important for us and with Attila we made sure all the new features are available and valid in multiplayer as well. So you can migrate and raze settlements in multiplayer campaigns, but now you have your family and political matters to worry about, for example.

Rashid Sayed: You have probably been asked this question a lot in the past. Given the success of PS4 and Xbox One, are there any plans to bring Attila? Don’t you think the game could do well given the console’s emphasis of social engagement this time around? 

Janos Gaspar: There are certainly no plans to do so at the moment, but it’s fair to say that we keep an eye on new and emerging technologies to see if they fit with what Total War is.

Total War : Attila has a certain, je ne sais quoi. It’s rather difficult to point to one particular aspect of the game and say, “this is what makes it better.” So in this review, I will attempt to point out what it is that makes this a worthy entry into the series and a powerful sequel to Rome II.

"Total War : Attila has a certain, je ne sais quoi. It’s rather difficult to point to one particular aspect of the game and say, “this is what makes it better.”"

When I started the game, the first thing that I noticed was the game’s massively improved load times. One of the most reported problems for Rome II was the lengthy load times that players were forced to sit through upon launching the game. That’s not the case here as I am at the menu screen in well under 20 seconds, having skipped the intro scene of course. The menu screen itself retains the same left aligned layout of icons, so once you’re loaded up, the process will be instantly familiar, but I suggest you hang around a bit to listen to that pretty entrancing theme music.

First things first, the options available to the player. You will be pleased to know that the game offers fully rebindable keys for those of you that prefer to tweak your game to better reflect what you find most comfortable because gone are the days of using arrow keys for ingame camera controls, this is the time of W,A,S,D, by default.

Customisable UI’s return with the options to have selection markers, target zones for archers and trebuchets etc and threat indication markers toggled on or off depending on your personal preference alongside other options such as the ability to turn of the Advisors. Thankfully. Graphics settings are as in-depth you would expect from a Total War game. Sliders and multiple options for everything from texture quality to the quality of trees is the name of the game here, you also get a selection of well chosen pre-sets.

The Prologue, unlike that found in Rome II is a masterclass in old school video game design for the strategy genre which so often becomes bogged down in the details which are frankly best reserved for later in the game. The game will drop you straight into a defensive lineout, controlling a crowd of Visigothic locals defending Olbia from an encroaching Ostrogoth attack.

"Perhaps one of the more surprising things about Total War: Attila, is how well the game runs. Performance was brilliant, even on the higher settings I rarely saw performance drops."

Both sides rush forth as you’re advised to take hold of the high ground and use it to your advantage. Naturally any seasoned armchair general knows to take the hill but save a unit to send in from the rear to prevent the enemy from escaping your swords and spears. We arrived just in time to line out before our units crashed together. Fighting ensued before a thrusting attack from the flank saw us draw our forces back to Olbia to defend it.

It was at this time that I realised that this already feels more dynamic than Rome II. We had defenders in the town loosing arrows toward the new horse borne attackers and every rider we hit went down lack a sack of stones. No arrow sponges here it would seem. The battle went as you would expect and we successfully repelled the attackers before being introduced to the campaign map which ran me through the usual rigmarole of unit recruitment and city building which all rolls out much in the same way it did in Rome II. But the inclusion of faster moving units on the campaign map alongside a rather beautiful landscape made the whole ordeal, which is normally quite uninteresting, worth working through.

Perhaps the largest complaint that can be levelled at the recent entries into Total War is the poorly handled manner in which armies and cities are maintained. At one point, I had some trebuchets that were low on ammunition. Six months later and they still hadn’t gathered more stones to throw, despite having raised a number of buildings  and expanded our borders which would have resulted in plenty of stone being available to my people.

Unit attrition, something that is often complained about, makes a return and is still bothersome. My people were well fed, my forces happy, we had constant profits and excess food, yet still my men left the army in droves. While it is of course realistic to have units leave an army in the real world, this is a game, and this is my army. I should be able to lay down decrees of execution for deserters or rewards for those who serve a certain amount of time, but we are instead told to tend to sanitation levels and the allocation of governors.

Perhaps one of the more surprising things about Total War: Attila, is how well the game runs. Performance was brilliant, even on the higher settings I rarely saw performance drops. It wasn’t until I laid siege to the home of the invading force that I saw a dip in frame rate. Later, at the larger siege of Apulum the frame rate dropped quite a bit, but it stayed playable throughout.

"Total War: Attila is a great example of modern day war games set in an ancient setting done right. Few other games felt this fresh despite being based on an already existing model of gameplay, so I was genuinely surprised to find it as enthralling as I did."

Moving units and making use of their special abilities remains the same as ever with your general fielding a number of units buffs and morale maintaining abilities whereas your normal swordsman can only muster the sense to spread out when they come under arrow fire. The flow of combat seems faster than that of previous Total War games.

Your units in Attila are less armoured, with the exception of course being the more developed empires or late game units, and so they die a little bit easier than you may expect. If you leave the flanks of your line open, the enemy can roll up your force with a well placed cavalry charge and crush great numbers of your men.

The flow of the battles also seems more realistic, perhaps not a 1:1 replication because I still had units of peasants fighting to the last man, but it has a visible ebb and flow that you can see in both the press of bodies and from the overhead tactical view. The enemy will adapt to your battlefield tactics and try to wear you down. They will spread ranks and run in and out to exhaust your arrows, but if you’re hitting them with artillery, they will sprint in and close the distance to remove the threat of bombardment.

When playing a Skirmish as the Western Roman Empire I rolled out in the Triplex acies, ready to repel an oncoming army of Huns. The strength of the triple line out comes in the ability to cycle fresh units to the front, giving your exhausted men time to rest. Seemingly aware of this the Huns ran parallel to my line causing me to turn my army. With the triple line out being so broad, this is a huge movement to make. When I turned right, they forced me to turn left until I overextended my men. The Huns rode down my first line and delivered heavy casualties, but ultimately lost the day to my spears which were hidden in the rear echelons of my force.

Total War: Attila is a great example of modern day war games set in an ancient setting done right. Few other games felt this fresh despite being based on an already existing model of gameplay, so I was genuinely surprised to find it as enthralling as I did. I’ve expressed criticism towards The Creative Assembly before and I went into Attila expecting a re textured build of Rome II, but I was surprised and drawn in by this elaborate sequel that improves on many facets of the established format.

Total War: Attila is one of the best strategy games you can find on the market right now if the historic world is your field of interest and I strongly recommend it to you.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

The Creative Assembly are a subsidiary of Sega Corporation who are currently set to publish the game when it launches. In the Total War series, Total War: Attila is the ninth entry into the franchise that is a full standalone game.

Currently scheduled to released on February 17th of 2015, the game is currently only confirmed to be a PC exclusive title only for Microsoft Windows. The game will be available at retail and via digital download with pre-orders already being made available through numerous online stores.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Factions

Development

The development process for Total War: Attila has been (at time of writing) kept somewhat under wraps. What we know thus far is that the game seems to be running on a modified version of the Warscape engine that was found in The Creative Assembly’s last game, Total War: Rome 2.

This includes a number of tweaks and improvements to the overall visual representation of the game. This includes improvement and optimization of the campaign map and in game battle visuals. As well as some mechanics returning from Total War: Rome 2, a number of gameplay elements have been tweaked, but no information has yet been given detailing the tweaks.

Some new inclusions include the “Apocalyptic Destruction Mechanics” which allows the player to make use of fire as a weapon instead of a passive augmentation of weapons such as flaming arrows or flaming trebuchet ammunition etc. The player can make use of fire to burn buildings and territories in an effort to instil a sense of terror in the defenders, presumably hurting moral.

Similar to Sid Meier’s Civlization titles, the player can now choose to Raze a recently captured city and/or region of the game world. Burning it to the ground and removing it from the equation. The new Raze mechanic is, according to Total War Writer Peter Stewart, “the Scorched Earth policy that Attila brings to Total War”, “…this ‘Raze’ option is designed to entirely obliterate a region (not a province), destroying all of the buildings and reducing the entire settlement to a smoking pile of rubble.”

Thus far, a total of 12 factions have been announced to appear in the game. Traditionally these factions are for the most part playable, though 3 of the 12 factions are day one DLC that can be purchased post launch or obtained for free by pre-ordering the game before it launches.

Story

The game is primarily set in the late 300 AD era as the Dark Ages come into being and the Roman Empire collapses in on itself. The Hun’s expansion naturally leads them into conflict with both the Easter and Western Roman Empire as well as other peoples from across the earth.

Gameplay

Whilst the gameplay that we have seen thus far is from a build of the game that is still in development, it is remarkably similar to Total War: Rome 2 in regards to how similar the two are.

The game will feature overhauled gameplay mechanics that will effect politics, family trees, how soldiers battle each other (given that the various peoples of the world had developed somewhat distinct battle systems, factions often fought in different ways), tweaked and improved Ui and the Apocalyptic Destruction Mechanics.

Gameplay is controlled from a mostly aerial point of view. but the camera is easily manipulated to a preferred position, with the player taking control of units and giving them commands via keyboard and mouse inputs which can correspond to movement orders, special abilities (shield walls, spear walls, form ranks etc) attack commands and so on and so forth.

Factions

Thus far, a total of 12 factions have been announced to appear in the game, though 3 of the 12 factions are day one DLC that can be purchased post launch or obtained for free by pre-ordering the game before it launches. They are:

The Western Roman Empire
The Eastern Roman Empire
The Visigoths
The Ostrogoths
The Franks
The Alans
The Vandals
The Saxons
The Jutes
The Geats
The Danes
The Sassanids

The Huns, whom the game is partially referencing in it’s title, are said to be an antagonistic force in the game, though it’s yet to be confirmed if they’re a playable faction.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.

Sega and The Creative Assembly’s Total War: Rome II, the sequel to the seminal game that solidified the franchise’s place in the gaming pantheon back in the day, was ultimately a good game marred by a host of technical issues, bugs and glitches reminiscent of a Bethesda game at launch. The Creative Assembly promised one patch a week till the game was fixed, and so far they seem to be making good on that promise, as they announced that the second patch has now gone live.

This patch includes optimisations for Campaign performance, AI round time improvements, adds additional options and guidance for players in tweaking the settings of their game and over 100 other changes and fixes, and is applied to your game automatically when you boot it up the next time.

The third patch is already in beta testing and will add further gameplay enhancements in addition to optimization for more hardware configurations. Props to The Creative Assembly for at least handling this hot mess.

The original Rome: Total War was a revelation, a game that completely took the strategy game genre by surprise, and its sequel looks to be no different at all. Releasing this year, Total War: Rome II looks to be an incredible next generation realization of what it was that made the original game so great.

For those who are excited about the upcoming game, this new Let’s Play video that has been released should be pretty good at drumming up even more hype for the title. The video shows off some footage from the campaign as it is being played through, and man, the game really does look like a really sweet game. In a year of some really great games released (including some great strategy games, such as Fire Emblem: Awakening, and Civilization V: Brave New World), this one looks like it might just take the cake.

“In the year 146 BC, Scipio Aemilianus is dispatched by Rome to break the three-year-long siege of Carthage, an unforgivable blight on the glory of the growing Empire”. So warfare and ruthless determination mixed with political viciousness will the be key to victory when Total War: Rome II launches for PC in 2013.

Ever wondered why current consoles do not run many PC RTS games? The answer should be pretty simple. You can’t do anything on 512MB RAM for games like these.

Creative Assembly the developers of the Total War series have said the same thing, and they also mention that next gen we could be seeing the series head to the consoles.

“The current generation of consoles just can’t cope – they don’t have enough memory, by a large factor. Those technical reasons are probably the only reasons. A lot of people think that UI’s a problem, because no one’s really done it well before,” Studio director Mike Simpson said to Eurogamer.

“I don’t think that’s a fundamental thing – I just think it’s simply that no one’s really done it very well before. A lot of the games have been ports of PC games without too much thought having gone into it.”

This is a pretty straightforward answer, and hopefully the next gen consoles will pack-in enough RAM so that we could see amazing RTS games reach a bigger audience.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.