GamesBeat: Did you think about putting actual gods on the battlefield? It’s more like a period of 20 or 30 years of turmoil, which perhaps culminated in taking the greatest city, but it’s not just a single war. The Greek expeditions would go across the sea, sack cities, and stay there for a very long time. Just the siege of Troy supposedly took that long.
Even the Iliad presents this as a conflict of 10 or 20 years. They’re more of the opinion that it’s probably an account of a bigger conflict, maybe spanning many years. Historians don’t think that there was just one Trojan War. They’re using these same materials to uncover the actual history. The way we’re approaching the subject, those legends and myths hold a kernel of truth that inspired them, and that kernel is there for us to try to understand, and for historical researchers, and we’ve talked with a few of them. It’s not just retelling the legends that everybody already knows. Our approach, what we called “behind the myth,” is our intention to visit the historical period that inspired the legends. It did seem like the armies came from all over the place to fight at Troy, but in this case you also have a lot of fighting elsewhere. The region size is much bigger than just the city itself. GamesBeat: It seems like the scope is as wide as it can be. The Iliad gives us the names, their relationships, their characteristics, all the things we’re using to breathe life into the campaign at Troy. Based solely on archaeology, we don’t even know what these kingdoms were called or who ruled them at the time. We wouldn’t be able to make, for example, a historical Total War about this period in that same region without using the legendary accounts. In the case of Troy, we don’t have any choice in the matter, because the historical record is just not complete for this era. Introducing these romantic accounts of history in Three Kingdoms definitely helped us. Before that, our historical titles were strictly historical, and Warhammer was strictly fantasy. Georgieva: It definitely helped, at least by communicating this sort of idea to the community. GamesBeat: It probably helped that Three Kingdoms took this turn into myth and legend, with the leaders and that style of combat.
Total War Saga is a bit of a smaller title, but it still takes a lot of time.
TOTAL WAR SAGA TROY EPIC GAMES FULL
We’ve been doing this full time for two years. But I came back for the production phase. I wasn’t available throughout the whole of it, because I was away from work on maternity leave. Maybe a little bit longer, two years and eight months. Georgieva: It was more than two years ago, about two and a half. GamesBeat: What did you come off of in order to do this? How long ago did you get started on it? It was quite interesting to end up in this setting eventually. They called themselves immortal heroes, or at least semi-mortal. When people think of Greece, they think about the polis and democracy, but this is an era where kings ruled, and all of them claimed to be descended from gods. You see those plumed helmets, those striking designs. When you look into it, it’s quite different. The idea of going as far back as possible led us to Troy, and to the idea of making a game in the Bronze Age. The Romans believed that Aeneas, one of the leaders on the Trojan side, fled Troy after its destruction and ended up in Italy, where he founded a dynasty that eventually led to Romulus and Remus. If you follow the mythological and legendary accounts, though, it leads you back to Troy. But the idea stuck with us, how far back we could go with Rome. It was the wrong kind of material for just a campaign.
We figured out during the research that it’s actually a quite different era. We ended up not being able to do that as a campaign. It took place in the 3rd century, which was almost on the edge of the next installment, Attila.Īfter that, I wanted us to go back and make a game about the founding of Rome, a game about Romulus and Remus, the mythical origins of Rome. The first thing we did was stretching the capabilities of the game by going forward in the future. That was where we cut our teeth on Total War as a team. We were doing a lot of content for Rome II. Maya Georgieva: Honestly, the story of how we ended up with this setting and this idea for a game is probably a bit funny. I always wanted something like this, ever since I read The Iliad. GamesBeat: I’m glad you’re doing this game. Image Credit: GamesBeat/Creative Assembly
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