Troy: A Total War Saga looks to Greek history as it will see the retelling of the Trojan War from both sides of the war. There is a challenge there, however, as what he know about the Trojan War is deeply rooted in Greek myth since most of what we know about Troy comes from Homer’s The Illiad (there was, at one point, a dispute about whether Troy even existed though it’s now mostly accepted it was a city discovered in modern day Turkey). The Total War franchise has largely stayed away from mythology, keeping a mostly straight take on history. Troy will be a little different, as it’ll mix fact and fiction.
In an interview with CGMagazine, Lead Designer Todor Nikolov said they did what they could to be as historical as possible through the few records we do have of Troy, but there will be some mixing of myth in a ‘realisitic way,’ such as centaurs being cavalry men and Minotaurs being burly guys in costume.
“Well, for example, the Minotaur that you saw [in the Gamescom presentation] resembles a hero character, because he’s a single entity unit. He is big and powerful and has a couple of events that are available only to him. His strength can be compared to a level hero. So he’s more of a mid- to late-game unit, and it gives him an edge in combat.
But there are other types of mythological related entities in the game. Some of those are actually not single entities, but their whole units. For example, we’ve got a lack of cavalry units, because this was the Bronze Age and heavy calvary was not acceptable back then because people use chariots. So we have introduced to the game units of centaurs to the game — they’re basically horsemen. We have put them on the map in places which are mythological related to where centaurs live. If you manage to come to those regions and build certain buildings over there, you are able to recruit centaurs. They are unique in the game because there are horsemen, and at that time, armies wouldn’t expect that. Nobody would expect cavalry charges at that time, like heavily armoured Knights just smashing into enemy units. Now there’s a cavalry that is used to flank and harass and chase down stragglers. But they’re also the centaurs.”
Troy: A Total War Saga will release for PC sometime in 2020. We’ll keep you updated as more details come in.