Everyone did a bit of everything, which was OK for working on a small-scale game, but not really sustainable for a larger project." "It wasn't uncommon for an artist to be doing a bit of 3D modeling and then come across to do some icon work, then be asked to animate for a couple of days. "It was a much looser, smaller team structure, with less clearly defined roles," Adley says. This somewhat cavalier attitude reflects Creative Assembly's broader attitude toward organization at the time. I thought, 'Oh my god, you can't be showing our game off to journalists without having prepared.'" Feudal far between "And there was a bug where were just floating 100 feet up in the air. "It worried me because he had literally taken a build of the game on a disc, would go out, install it on someone's machine and just randomly load up a battle," he says. Roxburgh recalls one incident that occurred when a studio director showed off Medieval to PC Gamer US. This meant the developers had a lot to learn about the more public-facing, business side of game development. But CA had switched publishers to Activision for Medieval: Total War, and played a more prominent role in selling the game to players. The studio had primarily worked on sports games for EA, which also published Shogun. ![]() "Trying to create these massive sprawling castles and populate them with troops, to be able to get assets to send out to magazines."īefore Medieval, Creative Assembly had little cause to consider marketing its games. "I was kind of playing LEGO with the editor," Roxburgh says. "We already had 3D scenery and 3D buildings from Shogun," Adley says, "So it was really a new pipeline to get destructible, and then doing that in a modular fashion so that walls and towers could be destroyed individually." The sieges were also a crucial element of Medieval's marketing. New to the series, these let players assault looming stone fortifications with a combination of troops and trebuchets. The headline feature of Medieval, however, was its castle sieges. Trying to create these massive sprawling castles and populate them with troops Ian Roxburgh I was kind of playing LEGO with the editor. This system predates a similar one that formed the backbone of the Crusader Kings series, which would become famous for its detailed simulation of character relationships. Virtues includes traits like "Famous Warrior" and "Great Leader", while Vices could include "Murderer" and "Cowardly". “We added some gameplay depth to Medieval." One of these features was a Vices and Virtues system, whereby characters in the game could develop specific traits across the campaign, affecting their overall attributes. "The campaign in Shogun was pretty pared back,” Adley says. "We had the time to go deeper across those multiple cultures, multiple factions within those cultures, and do them justice." Siege the dayĪlongside broadening the scope of Medieval, Creative Assembly also wanted the player's conquest of the world to be a richer, more simulated experience. That was all validated and people liked that," Adley explains. "A lot of the big questions about how the gameplay would fit together, with the two halves had already been answered. But the expansion was made possible because the technology was already in place. It was a massive expansion upon the previous game. And where Shogun's feudal Japanese society was a mostly isolated monoculture, with similar factions fielding similar armies, Medieval had to represent numerous cultures, nation-states, religions, and militaries. Where Shogun took place over a period of 150 years, Medieval charted events over almost four centuries. ![]() Whereas Shogun was restricted to Japan's larger islands, Medieval's map spanned the whole of Europe, a large chunk of the Middle East, and portions of North Africa. The new title also made more sense, better reflecting the greatly expanded scope and cultural diversity of the sequel. We had the time to go deeper across multiple cultures, multiple factions within those cultures, and do them justice Joss Adley And we thought, 'Hang on, we don't want to be associated with this.'" "George Bush came out and started talking about, 'It's a crusade against this, that and the other'. ![]() "Shortly after I joined the company, 9/11 happened," Roxburgh says. This changed midway through development due to a world-changing event. Following on from the warrior-centric naming convention of Shogun, Medieval was originally intended to be titled Crusader: Total War. But the game wasn't known as Medieval at this point. In the end, the studio settled on the medieval era, which shared some feudal themes with Shogun and had broadly similar army construction – yet had enough differences to justify a sequel.
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