This really excites me

[Eric]

This is a really exciting development on this game for me. Do you notice what is different with these pikemen. Oh yeah! They hold their pikes with TWO HANDS BABY! That's right TWO HANDS, they've got TWO HANDS and they use them! No more impossible, super wrists. Yeah!


Yeah! Check out those TWO HANDS

[DavidtheDuke]

the next step is what they look like as they do it, and if they can move pikes through solid walls and layers of the enemy and themselves

[thomonkey]

i thought the consensus was that we didnt care about eye candy?

[Space Voyager]

That's true and we prefer other things. But if it's here already we're allowed to get excited.

[Giurza]

That's true and we prefer other things. But if it's here already we're allowed to get excited.

yeah. well even if WE are against eye candies, DA CA is not. and so, we are left to discuss whatever they throw at us.

[Kscott]

i thought the consensus was that we didnt care about eye candy?

Its all lies...

[hellheaven1987]

Ya, next you would see an arrow pass through the archer's body without kill the archer...

[Giurza]

Its all lies...

the fifferrence is that we care more for good AI, good historical accuracy and prefer that over eye candy, but we never said that we don't care for eye candy

[sunsmountain]

notice the bow strings

"I said a bow-string, not a G... *sigh* Nevermind."
"My release date's been changed!"
"I'm not just some plucky girl you can string along."

[Hansa]

What I noticed about this picture was that not all the pikemen seem ready to take on the charging knights, they are not in formation. This almost never happens in Rome (unless you charge from behind or the sides). Could the pikemen have been taken completely by surprise? If so this opens a new world of ambush tactics.

[hsimoorb]

Correct animations is not eye candy. Incorrect jumping/fencing hollywoodstyle fight animations is eyecandy. Two-handed pike animations are...heaven...

[DEMETRIOUS II]

Screw the 2 handed pikes dude.... look at the freaking vegetation. Awesome!!!

[swabian]

Screw the 2 handed pikes dude.... look at the freaking vegetation. Awesome!!!

let alone the sky

[RZZZA]

Interesting....

Now show me archers whose bows' strings actually move as theyre drawing and loosing their arrows.

[Space Voyager]

Correct animations is not eye candy. Incorrect jumping/fencing hollywoodstyle fight animations is eyecandy. Two-handed pike animations are...heaven...

Oh come on - ofcourse it's eye candy. Everything that has no effect on the result of the battle is eye candy. I'll definitely agree that it looks great though...

[sunsmountain]

More of what this game doesn't need: Eye candy.

A game has:

1. Graphics/Sounds
2. Playability
3. Lastability

The Total War series is beginning to score more and more points in the first category, staying roughly the same in the second, while losing points in the third.
Sure the pikes look nice, but you know the AI will use them in a not-so-cleaver way, exposing its flanks, setting up pikes in a direction that isn't facing your army. Lastability is typically raised by increasing development time and spending it on AI... the balance is getting lost from what i can see so far..

[Tadajon]

Unless the demo is out, all we have to talk about is eye-candy and maybe a little bit about game mechanics.
We saw the diplomatic screen and now we know how diplomacy will work in MTW2 but not HOW GOOD diplomacy will work

Cant wait for the demo...

[shenmueguru]

Nice bow-stringy bow-strings at that.

[swabian]

people, i think we can realistically expect a really awsome MTW2 and nothing lesser.

[RZZZA]

Awright, bow strings, now thats what I call leaps in graphical technology.