Blood? Gore?

[therifleman]

I know this will probally never happen, but would it be so much to ask if we could get more blood in the upcoming Empire Total War? MTW 2 took it a step further by adding some blood splashes with arrows and such, and even showed soldiers to be drenched in blood while in battle. However, I think it would be cool if there would be some blood on the ground when a soldier falls.

Also, cannon balls anyone? Am I the only person that would like to see troops get shredded limb from limb after taking a direct hit from a cannon ball?

[rajpoot]

A bit on the ground and the grass might be good, it'll add to the realism.......they can have an option to turn it on and off ofcourse.

[Martok]

Welcome to the Org, therifleman.

I'm only guessing, but I have a feeling that CA doesn't want to add too much "blood & guts" to Empire (or indeed, the Total War series in general). Doing so could easily push the game's rating from "T" to "M", which would greatly limit the size of their target market.

[Megas Methuselah]

You speak the truth, Martok. Besides, keeping the blood and gore at the current level is good enough for me....



...Unless they make it an optional effect in the graphics menu! That'd be cool, but then the rating would still go up, all the same. Shame.

[Celtic_Punk]

perhaps it could be modded in? best of both worlds if you ask me... personally id like to see a bit more blood to convey the reality a bit better. But i dont need my troops to be dismembered from cannon fire.. id be fine with it, but realistically speaking (in a game making sense, not trying to attempt a simulation) CA would lose money with such a small addon. Please do step the blood effects up a bit more, especially when you get to bayonet range.

on the naval trailer i saw puffs of blood from cannon and musket fire.. so i think my wishes are going to be fufilled :P

[Polemists]

Yea, while there may be puffs or tuffs the idea of full out blood or gore I highly doubt. CA and Sega have worked hard over years to keep that T, so I assume they'll keep it that way. You can always dream or hope for a mod, however I remeber the same *rumors* of massive blood shed people thought they glimpsed in Rome Total War trailers. Just way it is, CA does not go all out for blood.

[Nelson]

I don’t see any reason for blood at all given the scale of these games. Even a bit would be too Itchy and Scratchy.

[Martok]

I don’t see any reason for blood at all given the scale of these games. Even a bit would be too Itchy and Scratchy.

[Martok suddenly has a mental image of riflemen whacking each other with giant mallets, cartoon-style....]

Hmm, yeah that probably wouldn't work so well.

[Megas Methuselah]

Blood and gore is for shooter games and the like. I believe Nelson hit the spot with his post.

[Mailman653]

I think something similar to what was seen in MTW2 is appropriate, especially after a melee brawl. As for cannons, again....something along the lines of MTW2, maybe a puff of red from the initial impact, but that's it.

If you want blood and body parts flying around, play Red Orchestra.

[Megas Methuselah]

Yeah, M2TW was/is suitable.

[PBI]

I seem to recall reading a similar question put to CA, I believe way back in the run up to Rome. If I recall their reasons for not adding realistic blood and gore to the game went along the lines:

*It would require a lot of extra processing power without really adding anything tactically.
*It would raise the age rating and thus lose them potential customers.

Which is pretty much what people have said here.

I would tend to agree that the M2TW level of gore is sufficient; it is graphically simple and not too explicit, but still nicely gives the sense of your troops having been in a really messy and grueling melee scrap.

Welcome to the Org, therifleman, I'm sorry we all seem to have poured cold water on your first post! I would agree with you on the cannonballs though, it does look quite ridiculous in M2TW when a cannonball rips through a unit and the men all calmly fall down one after the other as though they are synchronized swimmers. I believe ETW is going to address this, CA have said they are using ragdoll physics so soldiers hit by cannonballs should get thrown around in a suitably sickening manner.

[Pantsalot]

I believe I recall them mentioning that they were adding a new feature
which would allow what you are requesting, they said that now limbs could
be blown away by cannon fire & blood would be better. Though watching
the land battles trailer I couldn't see any blood, though that may be because
they disabled it for censorship reasons.

[Owen Glyndwr]

Meh, I think it would be pretty cool. However first thought went to: if they added that, would my computer be able to handle that? To which my brain immediately answered hell no!

In all actuality, I'd be happy simply to have the M2 level. I liked it because I was able to tell how close my general (not the mention the enemy's ) was damaged, and when I should get them the hell out. However, hopefully that won't matter too much because that era seemed to be slightly more 1-hit KO.

[Caliburn]

Gore in Total War games... I don't think it's necessary.

Already the games depict battles pretty gruesomely at times. For example, in M1 the "Butcher button" during battles is pretty gruesome.

Light cavalry riding down fleeing enemies (albeit they're "captured"... To be executed later!)... Even bloodless corpses littering the battlefields are still corpses.

I don't think seeing tiny musketeers go splat is that important. The sound scape is at times pretty disgusting, even though after playing hundreds of battles it's hard to notice. Especially in M1, with random screams of pain, anger and fear, I was shocked when I first started playing.

Funny thing, though... The more details there are on the battlefield, the more clinical it appears. Those sprite men have always given me a better feeling of controlling living forces, unlike those highly detailed clone armies of Rome kind of sliding at each other at warp speed.

[Megas Methuselah]

...I was shocked when I first started playing.

You were shocked?




I wasn't!

[Caliburn]

Well I'm happy for you then, Metuselah!

Maybe shocked is a bit too strong, but it seemed like the closest "realistic" depiction of violence in games at that time. The scope of the things was different than in other games, and there didn't seem (at that exact moment) to be fantasy elements inherent in other strategic games of the time.

Somehow exploding Ogres or dismembered zombies didn't ever seem that gory to me, but the guttural death screams of the peasants when a Feudal Knight unit mows them down... How utterly cynical to incorporate something like that in a game! That moved something inside of me, and had me say: "I want moarr!"

That's one reason why I'm not thrilled about "what if a flintlock-minigun-toting elephant gets hit with a rocket? Will there be a crescendo of flying intestines, that will make the infantry walking alongside the elephant covered in blood, and maybe even cover their faces with their little arms, as a fifty-kilogram hunk of dead elephaunt is about to fall on him?" type of details... Not that I'd mind, I've found Elephants merely annoying and superfluous since M2, so taking a bit of revenge on them might be nice.

Of course there were other things that seemed like a huge improvement over other strategic games: the boardgame-styled game map, the "high-brow" -feel of the game when you first look at it, and the realistic-looking tactical battle, actual battle lines, flanking moves that actually made those battle lines buckle...

Since then I've been addicted to this *darn* game series!

On a side note, there should be a feature in which you could turn captured (virtual) elephants into pies and feed them to other (virtual) elephants. As long as they aren't from Rome: Total War, because there they actually fit pretty nicely.

[hoom]

Its utterly bizzare how a game based on the premise of the player going on a megalomaniacal conquering spree, killing hundreds of thousands of people, ordering assassinations and even genocide would only be restricted to older players if they put some blood & guts in it
People should be shocked by the sorts of things you do in the Total War games.