The Bronze Age, it turns out, is not an easy period to turn into a historically accurate, highly detailed video game like Total War. But it does sound fascinating. There are huge gaps in important places, unusual changes to how armies are proportioned, and the small matter of Homer’s Iliad sprinkling myth and magic over everything.
Playing it, I think there’s room for a little more of the mythical stuff – but talking to Total War Saga: Troy’s game director Maya Georgieva and senior game designer Milcho Vasilev, I’m also confident there’s a good deal more to come.
“We wanted to take a direction that has not been taken by any Total War before,” Georgieva told me, “this period of history, which is ancient history, the Bronze Age… I mean no Total War has gone there before us, and there’s a good reason for that! It’s not been missed by accident, it’s really tough for a Total War game to go into this era because the sources that we need to make an on-par experience with the titles that you love are missing, or are scarce in that period.
Troy: A Total War Saga – First Look at the Campaign Watch on YouTube
“So for example, we don’t have a lot of historical records. We have a lot of archaeological evidence, but we don’t have, for example, the names of rulers of countries – the specifics that breathe soul into the historical narrative.” This is where the Iliad comes in: providing detail and inspiration for nation-states, rulers, “the leaders or the heroes or the personas and characters of the military,” as Georgieva puts it. “This basically makes the whole project possible”.