And that has been partly linked to keeping the original engine, and also respecting the original source of the animations when we are adding either additional animations or polishing the existing ones."Įven with this kind of careful process, though, there is a need to make a lot of judgment calls about what's essential to the original experience versus what needs some updating or a reconsideration from that "quality of life" perspective. And so we've kind of been very careful to ensure that any edits that we make or any modernization that we do to the game, we've kept that feeling.
And you see various different bodies go flying, in maybe a slightly exaggerated way! But that is everybody's memory of Rome. There's that kind of visceral feeling where two formations clash with one another. And we haven't wanted to get away from that.
And that is very much led by the animations, as you've mentioned. But: we've always been mindful of the fact that the thing that gives combat in Rome: Total War its kind of identity is the weight of the units. We have sought to improve animations where possible. And we've been very aware that game status is in some way controlled by the animation state. "So if I'm correct, I think they were animated at 24, or 26 frames all hand animated with keyframes," said Feral production head Tom Massey in the same interview with Smith. It made Rome a trickier game to rebalance in its own day, because small tweaks to unit behavior had to be executed through animations rather than on a stat sheet, but it also gave Rome a distinctive feel, and keeping things like that has been a priority for the team doing Rome Remastered. When I spoke to Creative Assembly's Kevin McDowell, art director on the original game, on Three Moves Ahead, he mentioned that one of the quirks of Rome was that unit animations controlled movement and combat rather than the other way around. So how can Rome Remastered balance people's love for the original game against the undeniable reality that its a much simpler game than its modern descendants, and with some real odd decisions and flaws that have been ironed-out of the system in the intervening years? A lot has been built on those foundations, and while there have been hits and definite misses in the history of the franchise, generally the games have improved a lot since Rome.
Because while Rome might be the foundation for all subsequent Total War games, we've had several generations of those games since the original's 2004 release. Nostalgia and obsolescence are joined at the hip when it comes to Rome, and that poses the big challenge for port-specialist Feral Interactive's new version, Total War: Rome Remastered.
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