GameShark | PC | Features | Shogun 2: Total War Q&A

Interview by: William Abner

The original Shogun, now ten years old, basically launched an entire genre of strategy game. Did The Creative Assembly always want to come back to this era? What led to the decision to create a sequel rather than tackle a new theater?

Simply, Shogun 2 gives us the opportunity to take ten years of learning – everything we’ve done in the space of graphics, gameplay, AI, and apply it to the game that started it all. A lot of the team joined The Creative Assembly because Shogun: Total War inspired them – so it’s fair to say it’s a game we’ve wanted to make for a while.

Shogun 2 has far fewer “basic” units than what we saw in Empire. Scaling back the number of units: does that help when designing combat AI?

Focus. Empire and Napoleon were epic games, with huge campaigns spanning half the world – but Total War: Shogun 2 focuses all of that gameplay into a space the size of a single country. For the player, the world is the same size – we’ve essentially “zoomed in” on Japan. So you still have that sense of scale, but within a tightly-focused environment.

What unique challenges or potential benefits does setting a game in a more controlled environment such as feudal Japan, unlike the sprawl of a game like Empire, present to developers?

Our AI is designed to react to as many given situations as may arise, so simply altering the number of units in the game doesn’t hugely affect the design. That said, it does help a bit to have clearly defined unit roles.
That’s something we’ve really focused on in Shogun 2 – making the units distinct and clearly defined, so the player at home has fewer things to learn and can concentrate on the things that matter, like his or her strategy on the battlefield.

I love the idea of generals receiving upgrades that are not random. Can you give us some examples of how we can help personalize our leaders? Alternatively can a leader receive or start with a negative trait?

Being able to customize your generals is a big thing this time round – but it works for other characters on the campaign map, too. All of your agents – geisha, monks, ninjas – have their own skill tree, which you can customize as they level up in rank.
Generals have three different “paths” in their skill tree – one focuses solely on skills you’d find desirable on the battlefield, such as ‘Ashigaru Commander’, which will make your general particularly good when commanding peasants.
Having this level of customization means you can really personalize your army – meaning the player can effectively write his or her own story as they progress. That’s what we’re gunning for.