We then worked to apply this style to every part of the game.ĭIG: How important was balancing the beauty with realism? We completely immersed ourselves in Japanese culture, with its music, its artwork, its literature, its language and its people. One of our artists literally learned how to paint with Japanese brushes, in the Edo style. M.O.: Our dedicated art team basically did a hell of a lot of training. How did you go about bringing traditional Japanese art into the digital world? Total War features a turn-based campaign experience involving exploration, diplomacy, city management, economics, and army building, coupled with real-time battles on an epic scale.ĭIG: The game is very beautiful. M.O.: The Total War games have evolved in an enormous number of ways over the years, but the core mechanics have remained the same. We aimed for depth rather than breadth.ĭIG: Can you give us a rundown of the basics of the series? We felt a need to reduce this and focus more on the core values of the series. The number of people who play Total War games has of course grown considerably in the last 10 years, and it feels good to bring the intrigue and military challenges of the period to new players as well as old.Īlso, Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War were vast in scale. We’ve always harbored a longing to revisit it and apply everything we’ve learned through the evolution of the Total War series. Mark O’Connell: The Sengoku period of Japanese history was a fascinating time, from both a political and a martial perspective. DIG spoke to Mark O’Connell of The Creative Assembly, the developers of Shogun 2, about bringing the world of feudal Japan to life with art and technology.ĭigital Innovation Gazette: Shogun: Total War was an offbeat game with a devoted, but relatively small, following. Released on March 15 to almost universal acclaim, the PC-only strategy game is a visual feast. The way of the samurai, with its violence and pageantry, is one of the most romanticized martial traditions in the world - and no video game has done it quite the justice that Total War: Shogun 2 has. Interview with Mark O’Connell on The Art of War: Shogun 2 by Stu Horvath Interview with Mark O’Connell on The Art of War: Shogun 2

Shogun 2 total war art