2023 will be a terrible year for totalwars

MrSim#8353

It's fun to watch people bicker on this forum. But it's time to put an end to these funny speculations.
I think 2023 will be a terrible year for totalwars.

First of all, no major totalwar will be released this year because it would have already been announced. When you see how slowly CA is supporting WH3, it's totally unlikely that a major game will be released before December. Does one seriously believe that CA would give up on the hype on a Med 3 or a WH40K at least a year before launch ?
That leaves us with a Saga at best (and it's not even certain) plus Heynas (yeah) and a secret title that may actually be Alien Isolation 2 (https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/alien-games-new-2023-ps5-xbox-pc-report/).

But so far the Saga series has been very very disappointing and that's an understatement.
Instead of taking advantage of saga titles to really innovate and make their games evolve on their most critical aspects such as the AI, graphic engine or the number of units on the battlefield, dynamic environnement, they were content to deliver low cost versions sprinkled with tiny improvements.
The problem is that the competition is out the door. Which brings me to my second point:

After a long lean period for strategy games, during which totalwars and paradox games (and a few others) were almost without competition, some white-collar realized that the public of these games had aged and was no longer interested in the real-time aspect requiring an insane amount of APM (hello Starcraft) turning these games into real sports. CA had been a pioneer in this concept of casual yet challenging strategy games.

But nowadays things are changing, we are seeing a constellation of new strategy games blooming, some of which are really approaching the total war model but also evolving it to brand new horizons. And as with freshness comes real ideas, some of these games are more appealing to me than any of the totalwar released in the last few years (i.e. western front which tackles trenches war and Manor lords mixing city building and grand strategy with real time battles). Of course, these games still do not benefit from the maturity of a TW but they eventually will.

I've been a totalwar fan for a long time. Even though I would keep an eye on CA news just in case, I don't expect much from CA anymore. Their recent productions, their management and their disastrous communication as well as the path they are taking with their ridiculous FPS should alert everyone here...
I frankly advise you to seek elsewhere rather than feeding your frustration on the forums of a company that doesn't want to (or cannot) evolve its own concept game anymore.

Sincerely,

P.S.: Apparently, I can't post this topic on the reddit. It's being banned on birth...

Commisar#2307

They've previously announced titles and planned to release them that year. As we're only 10 days in to this year that leaves plenty of time for them to announce one and release it. A long drawn out announcement doesn't really do much for them, hype can be generated in a quick period if it is such a long awaited game like M3. Wont be 40K as Fantasy title has only just released anyway.

None of those things are the specific goal of the Sagas and instead is what the series does in general over time. With Sagas being smaller scale and smaller budget it's not practical to make such big changes on them rather than the grand titles as seen with 3K.

TheWittyWatermelom#2492

Agree with OP. I've loved TW games since I first played Rome 1. However, the games have become poor over time. The last amazing historical total war was Shogun 2 back in 2011. There hasn't been a single good historical TW game after that. Its been over as decade now. Rome 2 was a horrific experience. Even though it was patched into a decent game, the terrible release left such a bad impression that I can never enjoy it properly.

Over time they've also removed core features from the games such as road upgrades in each region etc. I've shared my thoughts here over the years but long ago I accepted that CA and TW that I knew are gone. For me TW is dead. Sure, i come here after a long time just to see if they've announced a good historical title but even then I know its just going to be a trash game catered for casual gamers. It will be dumbed down and will be just trash. Three Kingdoms and Troy are perfect examples of this. Troy was so bad. Felt like a mobile game not a PC game. Three Kingdoms should have been called Total War: Name Tags. Because that's all you saw on the campaign map. War of the labels LOL.