Originally Posted by
perifanosEllinas
That's exactly what CA did. They promised a historical game, but now they're delivering a fantasy game.
No, no, no. It's a fantasy game. It's primarily based on a fantasy novel, it has a fantasy mode as the default campaign, it has fantasy weapons like the ginormous mace of XU Chu (which will probably persist in the classic mode as well, as I don't think CA will bother to equip the characters with different weapons in the two modes) and its mechanics and features are built based primarily on fantasy and not on history, the one hero units and the hero duels are major examples. And let's be completely honest here, they're bringing this concept in from warhammer, a typical fantasy setting.
And here is further evidence that they're going full fantasy with this game (full warhammer style): these are photos of the campaign map, taken by people who were there at the E3 presentation
[pics snipped]
Undoubtedly, the warhammer is strong in this one.
As eXistenz correctly said, it's not only nonhuman races that make a game fantasy. Having it primarily derived from a fantasy novel is often enough, but when you also throw fantasy weapons, fantasy mechanics and fantasy visuals in the mix, there's no doubt it's a fantasy game.
There are no fantasy units in RTW. Head hurlers are not a fantasy unit, they're a historical unit just portrayed totally inaccurately. In reality they were not head hurlers, but head hunters, which means that they didn't throw the heads on their enemies, but collected them as battle trophies and decorated their houses with them instead. The only unit that could possibly be considered fictional (not fantasy) in RTW is wardogs, and whether dogs were actually used in battle in real life is still debatable among professional historians.
But here is the problem with such strong character focus in this game: this is a TW game which just uses the 3K setting, not a generic 3K game which just borrows some TW mechanics. The game is called: "Total War: Three Kingdoms". Total War comes first, Three Kingdoms comes second. This is not an RPG, so it's not supposed to have as its primary driving forces characters and story. This is a strategy game, so it's supposed to have as its primary driving forces strategy and tactics. Characters are supposed to only compliment and reinforce strategy, not to supplant it. Otherwise, it's not a strategy game anymore.
And don't get me wrong here, back in the days when TW:W had just been released, I wrote a very detailed review of the game here in TWC in which I actually praised CA for giving more attention to characters and bringing in more RPG-like elements for them. But it seems like they're taking the concept way overboard this time, to the detriment of strategy, which is supposed to be the first and foremost focus of any TW game, including the fantasy ones.
Plus, the records don't have that much focus on characters. The romance is a novel, so it had to add a lot of focus on characters and their relationships to add drama to the narrative. And most of it is fictional anyway.
No, we don't. Unless I missed it, CA hasn't confirmed yet if there will be duels in the classic mode or not. Having bodyguard units doesn't mean you can't duel, it just means the duel will be bodyguard unit vs bodyguard unit instead of hero vs hero. We can't assume things like that, it's CA.
Having said that though, I really hope there won't be any duels in the classic mode.