The Endless War to Replace Total Annihilation

to some people total Annihilation ranks as the greatest realtime strategy game of all time eventually under a newly formed Studio Supreme Commander emerged as the natural successor to TA after financial difficulties and a number of ciled projects the studio was sadly closed down following the closure some of the key people Behind These legendary RTS titles were then scattered across the industry to various development houses and the picture was very unclear as to where the possible successor could come from thankfully the situation has improved dramatically over the past several years and we have some very credible fan projects in addition to some exciting Studio releases to look forward to join me as we explore the games which are trying to continue the Legacy started by the Fantastic tot Annihilation I think it's probably worth quickly getting up to speed in terms of the story so far and the games which have brought us to this stage The Story begins with a small studio called Cave Dog entertainment who in 1997 released their first game to huge critical Acclaim and reasonable Commercial Success that was total Annihilation the game's impact on the RTS genre was instantaneous introducing several features which become Staples of the genre from that point onwards this included patrols command queing and being fully 3D the game's approach to construction and resource management was also Innovative and something that really resonated with me the following year we were treated to a successful expansion pack called The Core contingency continuing the single player campaign and expanding the unit base unfortunately this is where things start to go wrong original creator of ta Chris Taylor left to create his own studio called gasped games and there was a sequel called totem isation kingdoms which was poorly received by fans and critics couple of years later midst some general difficulties across the industry Cave Dog was eventually closed as a studio and many of the key people made the hop over to Chris Taylor's gas power games with all the key people now reunited the stage was set for gasped games to carry on the Legacy started with ta the studio was ultimately owned by Microsoft and seeing the massive success of Diablo I at the time they were tasked with creating their own action RPG the end result was the absolutely fantastic Dungeon Siege and its sequels and honestly it's one of the best single player arp GS of the time it really is a fantastic play feels very much like a torch light of today and I'm very glad they made it after around 5 years had passed and they'd finished creating sequels for Dungeon Siege they finally turned their hand to making the spiritual successor to Toton Annihilation and this was Supreme Commander this game really followed the the blueprint of Toton anation and just turn things up to 11 unit counts were massively expanded the fully 3D element was really utilized properly with the Tactical Zoom we able to go all the way out for a top down view all the way into the most minut of zoomed in details projectiles modeled in real time and you could Terror form you could destroy the terrain it would change line of sight and everything else it really was the real successor to ti so Supreme Commander or SubCom as some people know was a success commercially and critically as was its expansion pack and and things look promising gasow games had basically come out with two fantastic Smash Hit franchises in two different genres I'm sorry to say that things deteriorated for the studio after this first of all they tried to make space Siege which was an arpg trying to continue the Dungeon Siege formula in space which was poorly received by critics and fans alike there was then demigod which was a sort of battle arena Style game similar to World of Warcraft Arena PVP but I think it was uh hampered by poor neet guard and purly received by critics as a result then they really had a make or break moment where they decided to launch Supreme Commander 2 the sequel to The perhaps most valuable IP at that point now the story of Supreme Commander 2 kind of mirrors the story of totan anation Kingdoms as a sequel to totan anation in the sense that to fans it was seen as a dumbing down of the original they tried to make the game more accessible and as a result they oversimplified it and made it less enjoyable less nuanced and it was not panned by critics but it received sort of mildly favorable reviews so it was not the Smash Hit they were hoping for one interesting fact about this sequel is that it received a number of really important gameplay patches in the months following its launch and later reviews were much more favorable as a result saying that if the game had launched in this state it would have received 90 plus out of 100 and I think the is one of the most early examples thinking of modern games such as no man's sky and cyber punk where the game has been patched into a much better state after launch but sadly I think it was too early for people to recognize the importance of this what followed after this for gasp games was a largely forgettable Age of Empires Online project that they were roped into working on followed by two cancelled games and eventually the studio was acquired by wargaming and then merged into the broader wargaming Studio so it ceased to exist as an independent Studio after 2013 so that's basically the story up till a few years ago people that wanted the TA experience tended to be playing the expansion pack of Supreme Commander with a few Quality of Life mods and third party tools for online matchmaking now as I've been promising since the start of this video the situation does look a lot better now and I'm happy to share the first of the potential new titles with you several old gasped games alumni gathered at a new studio and they launched a title called Planetary Annihilation which very much set itself as a potential successor to the TA style sub genre of RTS game so this was a really ambitious kind of expansion on the TA formula it was looking to really focus on the macro side of things and expand things as the name would suggest to planetary combat so not just fighting on one map but simultaneous battles been conducted on various planets at the same time which obviously sounds really exciting in principle sadly in reality there were very many difficulties that kind of hampered the whole experience the UI was frustrating it was very hard to actually control these various planetary combats that were taking place and it kind of just received mediocre reviews I really wanted to love this game because it was trying to continue the legacy of my favorite RTS game sorry to say it kind of left me a bit cold and I think that was the case with many fans and it was seen as kind of an opportunity missed now you may have noticed a sub genre of RTS which has really become popular lately and that is the factory simulation genre and the most obvious example would be Factoria so essentially the focuses on very large scale macro having an automated Factory style economy the people behind planetry Annihilation are returning soon with a new title called industrial Annihilation and it very much leans into this Factory simulation style of game playay while it's very much early days and details are quite light on the ground what we do know is that they're attempting to marry the RTS elements of ta Supreme Commander with the factory automation elements of a game like factorio so we're expecting macro on on an epic scale some elements of Automation and then a real focus on gigantic armies crashing into each other so what I think industrial Annihilation represents is again an ambitious attempt to move the it genre forward to combine new elements together to create something Innovative and new so I really hope it's a good game and I'll be following it with great interest next up we have a standalone game which has the blessing of ta and SubCom Creator Chris Taylor while potentially not as Innovative as industrial Annihilation Sanctuary shattered sun has been described by Chris Taylor as a possible successor to the games which they created at gas powered games the game is on Steam and it's also planning to launch a Kickstarter soon and what we do know at this point is that we can expect an epic scale RTS with up to 10,000 units on what they describe as large and Visually impressive Maps one feature they really are leaning into which is something explored in the later sort of ta style games is the idea of terraforming the terrain so destroying the terrain they're also leaning into weather effects so changing the weather for strategic reasons such as freezing water and then Crossing it on land units so you can sort of circumnavigate different obstacles and take advantage of the terrain some other Main Stays of this sub genre are also present so we're expecting to have physically simul ated projectiles IE every missile every artillery shot will be modeled in real time and will be affected by terrain and line of sight and also we'll have the Strategic Zoom which you should be familiar with from games like Supreme Commander which is where you can zoom in to the smallest of skirmishes all the way out to see the entire map from a very strategic top down view so there'll be many familiar features so while this game is perhaps not taking any great risks in terms of stepping outside of the mold of previous titles it does promise to be a highly polished and modern version of the genre and it has Chris Taylor's blessing so if he thinks it has potential then who are we to argue as time went by and people still enjoyed playing ta but they found themselves increasingly hampered by the game engine limitations they started to create an open source project which became the spring engine while spring initially was intended just to be a direct Port of Ta on a new engine free from the shackles of unit caps and the inability to add new types of units it gradually took on a life of its own over time we saw various projects on Spring which tried to move away from being merely a clone of ta these were known as forks and probably the most famous of these is 0k which uh replaced all the propriety content from ta with its own features and has really been trying to develop as a standalone title ever since one of the key attractions to zerk is the fact that it has extensive multiplayer matchmaking support and it also has taken a departure from being a TA clone and over the over the years it's introduced its own proprietary features some of these have been very well received such as the technology tree and maybe 5 years ago now it launched on Steam which I think represents the developers reaching a stage where they believe that the game is suitably polished that it can now be marketed to a wider audience so many fans of the sub genre will recommend to you that if you want to get started and have a genuine experience then 0k is a fantastic place to begin it really does have all the features you come to expect so massive armies hundreds of different unit types destructible terrain massively powerful weaponry and all backed up by an engine and matchmaking system which makes it much more accessible than the Legacy titles of ta and SubCom when it comes to these so-called spring Forks beyond all reason AKA bar is the big rival to ZK and it's perhaps uh a more recent project or has come to prominence more recently I did an entire video which really showcased V and my experiences with the game so if you were interested I'd highly recommend that you check that out but to summarize essentially it's a modern ta style experience with lots of quality of life features which makes it a lot more accessible and just really you can pick it up and play very quickly I think it's fair to say that relative to 0k B is less far along its development cycle but in the two to three years I've been following the game I've been really impressed by the progress which has been made and it really is now in a state where I found it to be very polished and very playable currently the game exists within its own Standalone launcher which you can download from the website but the team has set out what it calls it steam road map which is a list of features they feel are required before the game is suitably polished that they'll then publish it on Steam so while some could argue that B has done less to differentiate itself from ta and indeed some models and units do look very familiar still I do think that the upside is is much rer in terms of this game could continue to improve and could become better than zerk and a true successor to ta so with that in mind I am playing it and I'm following the progress of its development very closely it's also worth pointing out that there's a really really healthy multiplayer tournament scene with lots of community participation and guest casters and pros and everything else including Chris Taylor popping in to commentate on one of the tournaments it's probably worth pointing out that both of these games games bar and 0k which originally spawned from the spring engine are free to play and will continue to be free to play even when launched on Steam and of course there's also the option of just playing the original games thanks to some sites such as good old games.com you can buy ta quite cheaply it runs straight out the box so to speak on the latest versions of Windows and it supports High resolutions in order to really make the most of Internet multiplayer you will need to inst or some sort of third party matchmaking tool but it's not too honorous and if you just want to play the single player or try a local multiplayer then it runs just as it did back in the day I've actually played quite a lot of the original ta recently and I think it holds up fairly well the only thing that became a bit jarring was the left and right click which is not how you expect to see it in modern RTS titles but otherwise I thought it was a very fun experience and some of the limitations from back in the day such as massive slowdown when armies become larger obviously a nonissue nowadays and in terms of a a modern Contender I think the Supreme Commander with his forged Alliance expansion pack and then the forged Alliance forever fan-made project is a real Contender it really holds up well and has many modern features sadly Supreme Commander 2 was not that well received and doesn't really hold up as well as the first so I think the defin the definitive experience I think most fans would tell you is to play forged Alliance forever which is basically the expansion pack with a bunch of quality of life fixes many of which are centered around multiplayer matchmaking and just the user interface and facilitating things more easily so it's definitely a winner I would be remiss to make a video about ta and SubCom and not mention what Chris Taylor is doing nowadays given he is the creator of those legendary titles so Chris has started what he describes as an indie gaming studio and they're working on something called kugi which they describe as a cloud-based gaming platform which runs in a browser and they have grand Ambitions to support Millions if not billions of users so the only thing that I can think of that might be comparable would be when Quake live became a browser game before eventually moving to steam and on this platform they're working on an RTS title called Intergalactic space Empire which may be in a similar vein to TA and Supreme Commander indeed that's what the development updates seem to suggest so they have a Blog where they post sort of uh quarterly or semiannual updates on the progress of development and I think it's fair to say that things have been progressing fairly slowly and this is somewhat deliberate because they are focusing less so on the game content right now and more on kind of the backend infrastructure to support the game so what we do now is that Chris considers there to be three kind of key pillars to the game which are the main focus right now first and foremost it's obviously the browser because that's the technology underpinning everything and then they're very keen on cloud and cloud storage and generative AI so that's really kind of where they think they can uh make some real efficiency gains in terms of automating parts of design things like that creating content audio visuals or just sharpening details of things like that and then of course uh the third piece is obviously the game playay of the game itself and it looks like there's been quite a bit of back and forth pivoting between wanting to have a space fairing game and deciding that wasn't very much fun in actuality and moving much more back to sort of a ground based traditional RTS style of game so at the moment there's not very much to look at but you know it's Chris Taylor and looks like they're taking quite a creative approach to things so it's definitely one to keep an eye on I think a key takeaway for me here has been the fact that in addition to the The Wider RTS genre really coming back to life with a huge number of exciting games on the horizon but the sub genre of the TA style of game has really seen massive activity in recent years and it's a very exciting time to be following the genre we have fan-made projects such as zerk and B are really coming to maturity looking at steam releases and becoming what I would considered highly polished and extremely playable games and then we have a number of professionally produced games which are vying for the title of the TA and SubCom sucessor several of them are taking quite novel approaches and really taking a bit of a risk in trying to innovate the genre so I'm excited to see how those games develop particularly industrial Annihilation I really got a soft spot for that studio and I just wish that Planetary Annihilation had really grabbed our attention a bit more than it did one game that I've been playing a lot recently and really enjoying has been B and I actually made a longer Standalone video just focusing on B and really trying to showcase the the progress the team has made in the past couple of years so if you're considering trying the game then I think this video might be for you

Channel: Ianbus

Views: 60,234

Keywords: ianbus, lanbus, beyond all reason, Replacing Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Forged Alliance, Forged Alliance Forever, Chris Taylor, Gas Powered Games, Cavedog, Sanctuary Shattered Sun, RTS, Spring, Zero-K, Industrial Annihilation, factory games

Id: OjfEvOX6Ji4

Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2024