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Rob Zacny

Episode 434: Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia

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Three Moves Ahead 434:

Three Moves Ahead 434


Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia
Rob, T.J., and Fraser sharpen their berserker axes and talk about Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia. This new offshoot of the main series changes the scope by zooming in on the British isles at the time of Viking invasions. While the game has its high points, Thrones of Britannia misses the mark quite often, not unlike the hordes of anonymous archers found within. It's not necessarily that-first-episode-we-did-on-Rome-2 bad, but apparently it's all the same to Fraser.

Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia

 

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Entertaining.

I hoped for Sagas to be small scaled campaigns. Maybe set of scenarios. Like those campaign DLCs. Because you know what was my best TW experience? Rome 2 Tutorial. You have some freedom there, it's just several turns, but each battle feels special. You are not allowed to autoresolve and you don't see small armies you'd want to autoresolve. Of course it's very easy but it works. So when I hear about simplified campaign mechanics I am optimistic. But then you say it turns into a sandbox map painting again. That is sad.

WIth Warhammer they came very close to return to a good formula: simple economics, straightforward happiness and internal politics, strong RPG elements with generals and governors spilling into diplomacy. But they didn't give any proper traits to characters and places so it didn't repeat the success of Rome 1. Maybe they'll do that in Three Kingdoms, but if they failed to do that for more than 10 years since Empire then I don't have much hope.

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I think Fraser should recuse himself from future historical Total War episodes, given  his Warhammer-centric outburst about unit variety in a game covering 10th century Britain. And for his original TWR2 take. :P

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ToB feels like they had an art team that had nothing to do between projects and gave them a chance to make a game.

 

So they had access to mod all sorts of values and make a bunch of art but don't have access to the programmers to make something actually different.

 

The fact that they couldn't just make a Vikings or Last Kingdom knock off seems more like a lack of capacity than desire. All everyone wanted was shield walls... but the Atilla engine doesn't have shield walls, and the ToB team doesn't have access to the resources to make this happen. So it doesn't happen.

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