Total War Is Dying And This Is Why

wow this this game actually looks pretty good going back to the Bronze Age look at his cool hairstyle I will think I should copy that I think I need a bit of a change boy I cannot wait to go back to this Rome era oh my yes yes death Egyptians pharaohs death this is total war this is total war in a nutshell it's looking is oh [Music] what let them bicker amongst themselves oh my God it's Daenerys we've had a Game of Thrones crossover finally the Falon eyes there could be actually some potential with this game though I'm kind of looking forward interesting hold on we should talk is this a surprise really is this something creative assembly didn't expect or was it just pure desperation that made a chain of actions that have rewarded the company with nothing but discontent from their fans I mean they did The Impossible creative assembly aligned the fantasy and historical fans to one noble cause trying to C correct a company that have taken advantage of long-term Goodwill and arguably their Monopoly on the RTS genre as much as it's now come to ahead with Total War Pharaoh this actually started back at around 2018 a tiller had been a massive success just 3 years before and the franchise was at an all-time high but creative assembly decided to move the franchise in a bit of a different way expand into a new era and some Prem medieval stuff exciting and push forward into a new spin-off Series this was Total War sagas it was supposed to be a chance to look into a new more focused period in time smaller scale titles but giving players some of the tidbits that they wanted from other games in the franchise at least that's how it started unfortunately Thrones of Britannia their first Saga game was not a hit it didn't really go down well with the players whilst it wasn't a disaster the lack of content means that even now the longevity was almost non-existent people are not playing that game and it has not lasted the test of time the time ER and the setting made it very difficult to make some fast-paced gameplay in any sense of the word very infantry focused based combat led to grindy battles making it way slower than many other Total War Games reversing back to The Campaign which is a segment that a lot of people adore it just didn't have the amount of depth and content that people expected from the total war series even saying all this about thr of battania I and I know a lot of people still kind of don't hate it maybe even like it I think this is mostly because it was the last Total War that had that classic Rome era feel you know the Rome 2s and atillas all on the same engine and it had that dark gritty more muddy feel of the total war titles but then 2019 rolled around and history was about to leave the franchise for good Three Kingdoms is actually one of my favorite in the modern era it felt satisfying huge scale and the campaign itself was well paced enough for more of a droing Dropout kind of player like I've become these days but with the romance mode adding in these hero units from the Warhammer franchise it seemed that this fantasy success that came across from games workshops IP was now starting to leak over into the historical side of Total War and that that didn't sit right with a lot of people and then came Troy Total War Troy was an interesting release it was all set up to be a return to form maybe even one of the best in the series I love the era and it's clear by the reviews and player numbers for Rome 2 that many of the fan base also love the Ancients and they want to see more so how could they have messed it up so bad because don't get me wrong they did on the runup the trailers that they were releasing were not exactly the same dark gritty vibe that Rome do and a Tilla gave off even something like the Thrones of batania managed to Grapple with the more realistic side of warfare yet Troy looked like it was going in the same direction of that of three kingdoms or even further even Warhammer they chose to go down the Saga route to focus on a smaller scale mediteranian front with this came a look at the heroes much like three kingdoms the fantasy element played the game bringing characters like Paris Hector Achilles into the fry fighting Jewels incredibly powerful units that could take on hundreds of men in the their own okay it wasn't quite the same as Warhammer at least not just yet the big tagline that ran up to the releaseing all the trailers and developer commentary were the truth behind the myth that would be a line that they would soon come to regret it turns out the way to appease both fantasy and historical fans is not to blend them together in a half-ass way making it too mythological for history but too historical for Fantasy enthusiasts fanty and historical fans aren't two set camps I think most total war players are happy with either or both but they just want a good game with strong intentions and a committed effort to make the title mechanically sound and not diluting the structure in order to appease everyone and then there's epic for the first time ever creative assembly sold their franchise to the highest bidder releasing free on the epic game store of course it was a win-win for for Creative assembly at the time well at least in the short term it would have been a confirmed few Millie in the bank yet an impending disaster for the long term was on its way it was clear after Thrones of battania that the Saga series was not in force swing it proved that CA didn't have as much hope for Troy since they were selling it off and releasing it for pretty much free so did this new groundbreaking deal with epic games work for CA no not even slightly the game was reportedly downloaded 7.5 million times and to put that into perspective Three Kingdoms sold a reportedly 2.2 million copies yet as we can see from longevity Troy's numbers were highly inflated at the beginning with its free release and almost instantly died a sorry death yet I think it comes down to a lot more than just the way it's promoted and sold to a different company the aesthetic of Total War started to change as mentioned we went from the Rome 2 in a tiller dark pretty muddy feeling of warfare fighting in ancients or early medieval and it was loved by so many because it was a massive Improvement on the graphics and it felt like it was going down that realistic route yet for some reason Three Kingdoms started to delve into it a bit but they really nailed it down in Troy this more cartoony look yeah it was more bright and vibrant it looked good on YouTube thumbnails you get some cool cinematics but it felt less intense it felt less immersive and I think players therefore started to take the games less seriously I do like the UI that they went for with Troy however the general look and feel of units and some of the characters looks like it's from a comic book this was definitely the intention to try and make it look more like the myths of Achilles and hum as Iliad but I don't think it worked for the franchise in the fan base a little bit earlier I mentioned that they went and lent towards Three Kingdoms and eventually towards Warhammer and this is what came with the Mythos DLC putting to the side the truth behind the myth and going full mythology with hydra's beasts flying units and gods within the campaign map and actually it worked out pretty well it lent into that fancy element and many people enjoyed this DLC but it was just too little too late and that's leaving the fact that it was incredibly expensive needing to own the base game on top of this Mythos DLC if you wanted to get the full Choy experience you were going to be handing out a lot of money to a game that has pretty much been forgotten by its fan base you would think that that was it for Total War that that was enough for them to change their ways and to up their game but it would seem that it wasn't and that's when we break back into Warhammer 3 the Warhammer Series has been very successful and Total Wars shine in glory at least in modern day but when Warhammer 3 released its Shadows of change DLC that's when the fan base started to fight back the price was increased hugely 150% price increase from their normal just Lord DLCs adding not even half the amount of content for that kind of price this caused a huge backlash the DLC was reviewed bomb to hell and along with Warhammer 3 so creative assembly had to respond what was their answer we need money so we had to do it okay sure makes sense business savvy yet that is not the fan base's problem that was never going to be a smart move and in fact it's the repercussions of what's been going on with the last few years the decline of the total war franchise and the fan base that is starting to linger away this means the income will be less sure you also had your most expensive game ever hyenas be cancelled that would probably cause it as well but how is that the fan base's problem so why do the players deserve to be punished for your bad business decisions that doesn't mean the creative assembly cannot raise their prices in order to justify them bringing out more content that does not mean that they can do some drastic things to try and save the losses that they've had in the last half a decade but what it does mean is the player base have all their right to talk about it and this brings me on to my final Point creative assembly cannot take criticism this is nothing new for the fan base and I'm not leaking anything that nobody's heard before but assembly for its longest time has never been able to handle people that talk against it that even give constructive criticism or say anything that isn't of the most positive terms not towards the old games I might add but specifically their newest releases first of all creative assembly are famous for having a spotty relationship with YouTubers if anybody doesn't know they have a Crea a partner program that you can join pretty much anyone can join their first tier where you might get some free stuff a code every now and then but they are very selective at who gets into the version that gets Early Access that gets invited to event so on and so forth I as a YouTuber was invited to the Three Kingdoms event for example I went down to The Shard in London all pay by creative assembly it was great and I really enjoyed the game loads of YouTubers do this and loads of YouTubers get involved it is a great thing until you don't do what creative assembly says if you don't talk incredibly positive about their newest titles they will kick you out in a heartbeat if you don't play their newest titles enough on your channel they will kick you out in a heartbeat it doesn't matter the hundreds of thousands if not millions of views that you've had on past toe to war content if you're not playing the newest and greatest that they have to offer they will kick you out of their partner program but not just this they will also try and censor the things that you try and say there are many YouTubers Great Book of grudges pixelated Apollo Vol Prince of Macedon now even Legend of Total War that have noticed this more and more over the years of course they have all the right to send keys and to let whoever they want into the early screenings of any of their titles yet when it comes to flagging or blocking any sort of criticism creative assembly are King Legend of Total War is perhaps one of the greatest Total War YouTubers that is on the platform he's been going for years and especially Champions the most recent Warhammer games I mean what more advertisement could you want with a half a million subscriber Channel having your brand name on their Banner page but on October the 20th Legend of Total War revealed on his Discord hey I just wanted to let you know that I'm fully blacklisted now the total war Twitter team just unfollowed me and I'm completely out of the partner program out of it was a support of another YouTuber called volum who had a false dmca taked down by creative assembly as he has made his name by in his own right being able to criticize a franchise that has been slowly failing for a long time he can do that but creative assembly don't think so not only this but despite how much Legend of Total War could benefit from staying cozy with creative assembly he's been very vocal about the new Total War games that aren't successful that aren't good that aren't doing what the community want because creative assembly would rather have burned a 100 million on their new Esports attempt on hyenas than actually focus on the fan base that they have built their name and wealth from there are even YouTubers that I have spoken to in person and that I know that have talked about creative assembly's treatment of YouTubers people are still with them but have witnessed on the outside creative assembly being incredibly strict harsh and not being able to take any sort of feedback and you see this with the decline of the franchise instead of doing what their customers have asked for they have gone down a route of thinking they know what's best which might well be true in many cases but the evidence is starting to pit up against them showing that sales are going down playing numbers have dropped drastically and their newest titles are going to be losing them money I don't want to end a video on a low cuz Total War is one of my favorite franchises ever yet I have not played Pharaoh I hardly played Troy Thrones of battania had hardly any of my attention and the only reason I played a lot of three kingdoms is because I enjoyed the co-op but seeing my favorite franchise go downhill is more sad than anything and that's why fans are angry CA not because they hate your franchise but because they used to love it the first thing that needs to change is a less pred for response to any of criticism to embrace it and to look at what is serious and what isn't because of course there was always going to be stupid hate out there on any game franchise that is successful but many of this especially the figureheads in the community know what they're talking about your Legends of Total War your pixelated Apollo they are the people that have been playing this for years and that have sold you thousands of copies of the game because the players watching them feel like they're being recommended something good but that's not going to happen anymore these people will stop playing your game and we've seen that and that comes with the downgrading of sales but I think often people forget that these YouTubers are not here to promote it but they are just a mouthpiece for the community they are fans and they've always been fans but creative assembly have neglected to listen to that they need to stop with these yearly releases to try and churn out a game small or large spin-off titles have never really worked we've seen that in the past it just dilutes the franchise you've already had take a step back spend a few is creating your next Mainline total war game maybe play it safe spending 2 or 3 years refining and acting making a medieval 3 an Empire 2 given the right amount of love and Direction and less panicky response to your loss of money is almost a guaranteed home run so why haven't they done that well because they feel the need to release constantly to keep their name in the Limelight but it's proven it's not worked so there is no need to carry on I hope this franch can recover I hope they can do what's needed in order to get them back on the track they were being the biggest RTS game series ever because they do have somewhat of a monopoly on it no one else is trying anything else because creative assembly have their grasp on this fan base but with it they have a responsibility to actually make it good

Channel: Resonant

Views: 174,299

Keywords: total war, total war pharoah, the end of total war, the day total war died, a message to creative assembly

Id: I9KsPJ1z-G0

Length: 16min 21sec (981 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2023