I have often said the Total War series is one of the reasons I’m a PC gamer. The first time I commanded my armies in Shogun: Total War was transformative, and I would spend hours moving my units around the battlefield, taking enemy armies in the flank, seeing how broken the Kensai was at slaughtering whole battalions on their own. What a time to be alive.
Total War has flourished since then, and it’s a formula I’ve often wondered if anyone else could pull off at the scale Creative Assembly has all these years.
Well, one studio is keen to not only build on that formula, but do so in a way that takes not only the real time strategy elements of commanding an army, but putting you right there on the battlefield yourself, weapon in hand to implement the strategy that brought you to this point with the rest of your troops.
Enter Chronicles: Medieval, a new RTS/RPG hybrid by the developers over at Raw Power Games debuted today during Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest. The new studio, a team of industry veterans with credits including The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, the Grand Theft Auto series, and much more.
Chronicles is set in medieval Europe, as the name would suggest, during the 14th and 15th centuries, with the team at Raw Power Games aiming to bring a vibrant, medieval sandbox to life. Players will create their own character, whether starting from a lowly craftsman, or taking the role of a noble knight, destined to serve their Lord. I do find it interesting that you can also simply start as a bandit or mercenary, shaking things up from your standard “rags to riches” story.
Chronicles: Medieval is one part real-time battle strategy game and one part management sim. You’ll build alliances, create trade routes, forge your name in the annals of time through tournaments, and more. Do you want to become a wealthy trade baron? Looks like Chronicles will allow for that. Feel like donning the robes of a warlord, bent on dominating rivals? You can seemingly do that too.
I think for me, the most intriguing bit of this is that you’re not simply commanding armies from above, Total War style, but your character is also down there, in the ranks, leading units and fighting for their own life. You’ll take on the role of your character in battle, juggling the tactical situation from above while commanding from the ground.
The team is even so dedicated to the realism of these tactics and combat techniques that they brought in a Historical European Martial Arts expert to help inform the combat techniques on the ground.
I will say it’s disappointing that this will only be available in co-op gameplay if you want to share your world with a friend. I’d love to have seen multiplayer opened up to more people simply because of the chaos it could spawn as players forge alliances, betray others, set up trade and more. But with everything going on under the hood, it likely wasn’t technically possible to run at the fidelity and scale it seems Raw Power Games is after.
Either way, I’m definitely eager to check it out once it hits early access on PC next year.
