![]() ![]() Some of our players didn’t get the experience we wanted them to have and these mixed reviews hurt us on a number of levels, so we need to make sure we avoid that in future. Both the average review score and the user scores on Steam were below what we expected – this is a clear signal that we’ve got something wrong. We’re also looking at how we gather feedback on the game before release. All these aspects need to be analysed, tested, and validated from various perspectives to encompass the full range of different player tastes, preferences, and expectations – underestimate the scale and importance of this challenge at your peril. The design intention, the implementation, the balance, the in-game experience and how it works with other features of the game. Jack: We learnt a lot, but the main thing has to be if you make significant changes, you’ve got to get them exactly right. What did you and the team learn from Thrones of Britannia as a whole? With the faction mechanics, the impact they have on the turn-to-turn gameplay is too subtle so it seems people often ignore them, which is absolutely not what we wanted. For politics, some players seem to find managing loyalty too simple. Jack: Politics – in particular the new Estates system – and the faction mechanics like Heroism and Legitimacy haven’t had the impact we thought they would. ![]() We know we didn’t manage to achieve this for all players, and that was always a risk. This meant that a lot of our time was spent thinking again and again about how the features in Thrones came together as a whole to deliver the experience we wanted. ![]() The execution needs to be as close to perfect as you can get it so that what you deliver feels like an improved experience – players shouldn’t feel like anything is worse or missing. ![]() Total War as a series is beloved by its fans, and any changes to the Total War formula need to be done very carefully. Jack: The big one is the fact we knew that making so many changes was not exactly a “safe” approach. What challenges did you encounter during the design process? That’s obviously disappointing and something that we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at recently. That said, it’s clear from some more negative reactions we’ve seen that the new faction features we added – like Heroism, for example – haven’t resonated with everyone. I’m also really pleased with how characters have become a focus for a lot of bonuses that previously were more spread around. Do you recruit an army in response to a threat and then throw the units in under strength? Or do you wait, probably losing territory, until they’re fully up to strength? It really changes how you have to approach recruiting armies and how to use them. The new recruitment system represents a big change from previous titles in particular. We made a lot of big decisions with Thrones in terms of what features to keep from other Total War titles and where we wanted to change or do something new. Thrones of Britannia represented a chance to make those kinds of changes in a game tailor-made for them.īack when it was announced, you said the game’s design philosophy was “one of re-invention and focus, looking at classic Total War mechanics and consolidating them to deliver more meaningful choices for the player” – do you feel like you achieved what you set out to do? Throughout the work done on new content for ROME II and ATTILA, there were plenty of ideas we had or changes we wanted to do that we couldn’t as they wouldn’t fit with those games. I’ve been a fan of the series for the past 18 years so leading a team as game director on a new type of Total War game was huge! Doing anything new is always daunting, but it’s also an opportunity. Was it daunting taking the Total War series in a new direction like this? Because these titles are hyper focused on one time and place, it allows us to spend time thinking about how the game works and what changes we can make to reflect the time period covered and deliver a new experience. Jack: The Saga series uses more focused periods of time and geography as a basis – moments in history where perhaps there isn’t one character to focus the game around, but that are nonetheless a great setting for the Total War experience. Thrones of Britannia is the very first Total War Saga game – what’s the aim of the Saga series? As the first game in the Total War Saga series, Thrones of Britannia set out to both tread new ground and shake up an established format – but how did it do? We spoke with game director of Thrones of Britannia Jack Lusted about the design process, what worked and what didn’t, and the game’s future including a brand-new update patch – read all about it below. ![]()
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