‘A Total War Saga’ substitutes sweeping eras for pivotal points in history

By Steven Petite July 5, 2017

Total War

Creative Assembly revealed it’s creating a new spinoff series for its Total War franchise, dubbed A Total War Saga. The series was announced in a Q&A-style blog post with Jack Lusted, the game director of the first entry in A Total War Saga.

While the Saga entries in the franchise will feature the same turn-based overworld structure and real-time battle system, the games themselves will take place in much shorter intervals of time. Each entry will be a standalone spinoff title primarily set in a time of historical importance, and spanning as little as a few months and as much as a few decades. The mainline series takes place across entire historical eras in a grand, sweeping fashion.

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Think of A Total War Saga as a more focused experience, that will still utilize multiple perspectives, but with a honed-in scope. “They’re a powder keg, where anything can happen and history could have gone in any direction. Sagas are epic stories, and we felt that name described those moments well, and allows us to go into the kind of individual detail we love,” Lusted said.

But don’t think that the nature of the games means that A Total War Saga will be light on content, as Lusted offered that each entry will still feature hundreds of hours of gameplay. Saga entries will however be set inside or near the worlds of previous Total War entries, meaning they could relate to medieval Europe, the Roman Republic, the Napoleonic Wars, or The Industrial Revolution, for example.

If this sounds just a bit familiar, that’s because Creative Assembly has done it before with Fall of the Samurai, the standalone expansion to Total War: Shogun 2. Fall of the Samurai took place during a brief, momentous period in the Boshin War.

While it’s unclear when the first entry in the Saga will be released, Lusted claimed that it won’t be Creative Assembly’s “next major historical release.” Instead, it’s a remix of sorts, spawned from a previous release within the franchise. The only tangible insight provided on the first entry in the Saga was that its map and gameplay scope is comparable to that of Total War: Attila. Lusted also said that like Attila, it will be a spiritual successor to Total War: Rome II.

A Total War Saga‘s maiden voyage will launch prior to the next major game in the mainline series, which was teased in June.

In the meantime, the next entry in Creative Assembly’s fantastical take on Total War, Total War: Warhammer II, lands September 28 on PC.

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