Blood and Gore Pack now available! AND Halloween Special~

[Trish CA]

Hello fellow ghouls and goblins,
Once again, it is my favourite event of the year: Halloween! Makes me miss dressing up my house like a haunted house back in Canada... -ponder- so if you have any cool Halloween stories (feel free to make up a story) or costumes, be sure to share them with me! I may have some treats to giveaway... ;)

As many of you already know, we have now released the ROME II: Blood and Gore pack. You can check the trailer out for that (here) - the voice in this one gives me straight up chills! Afterwards, you can check out more information on the DLC (here).

Thanks!

[Myth]

Wow... Who would have thought a simple blood & gore pack would turn Tetuborg Forest into a terror filled, hectic massacre (as it actually was)! And though military historians report of loosened bladders and... worse on the field of battle, I think blood is quite enough to make me feel sorry for my troops.

Can't wait to impale some horses on my Spartan pike wall.

p.s. No horses were harmed in the conquest of Magna Graecia. That is to say, no true free Greek horses, raised on strong Greek democratic values.

[Beskar]

A very nice trailer! Thank you for sharing that with us, Trish.

[Hooahguy]

Nice! And for those who haven't seen it already, Trish has graciously given us an exclusive wallpaper!

[MadKow]

I am probably going to buy it, but from my experience i probably shoudn't. I rarely zoom in on battles, for one, and i fear the performance impact (recent patches appear to have caused more performance problems than solve them on my side). Also, im sure when i go and look at all the gory details, i wont notice my 6 year old stepson looking over my shoulder... But that's Murphy law for you.

[Bramborough]

I'm a little on the fence with this one. I'm perfectly happy with the way R2 is running on my machine right now, and am a little reluctant to do anything which might throw it off, or cause me to have to lower some of the graphics settings.

On the other hand, the gory enhancements this will add to my AAR screenies just sounds too good to pass up.....

[Veho Nex]

I havent seen a performance hit in 0-5000 man battles. Considering thats the most that I fight I'm perfectly fine with it.

Also, I <3 teutoburg with this dlc.

[Myth]

I'm a little on the fence with this one. I'm perfectly happy with the way R2 is running on my machine right now, and am a little reluctant to do anything which might throw it off, or cause me to have to lower some of the graphics settings.

On the other hand, the gory enhancements this will add to my AAR screenies just sounds too good to pass up.....

Blood & Gore features new visual and sound effects including:

• New blood-spattered front end
• Graphics option for turning on/off blood
• Blood VFX on arrow/pilum/javelin impacts
• Blood VFX on rock/stone impacts
• Blood VFX on death animations
• Blood shader on death animations and attackers
• Decapitation on selected death animations
• Dismemberment on selected death animations
• Blood decals on terrain
• Sound effects for all blood animations

Additional Minimum System Requirement:
Note that the Unit Detail option in the graphics setting menu must be set to Medium or above in order for dismemberment effects to be seen. Blood effects will display at all settings.


You can turn it off. It costs as much as a pint of Guiness, so I don't see a reason not to get it.

[Mhantra]

You can turn it off. It costs as much as a pint of Guiness, so I don't see a reason not to get it.

Because CA has conspired against me, specifically, knowing how much I want to love the game. CA is criminals and purposefully fleecing me of all my monies and we need to band together and let them know...we're not gonna take it anymore!!

[Hooahguy]

I played a quick custom battle with the blood pack. No drop in FPS with a battle with 6,000 men.

I noticed that the blood effects seem to be pretty random, nowhere near as crazy as it was in Shogun 2. I like it, though I wish it was bit easier to see.

Also, cool change to the main menu:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Myth]

Blood is added also to the campaign map animations when two armies collide.

[FesterShinetop]

I noticed that the blood effects seem to be pretty random, nowhere near as crazy as it was in Shogun 2.

Good, the blood effects in Shogun 2 were a bit too much over the top for me. If it is not that ridiculous I might get it.
Nice trailer, the voice over reminded me of the voice over in Michael Jackson's Thriller!

[Myth]

With love, from Sparta:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[The Outsider]

Dear Trish,

Hello, I hope that you are doing fine and having a good halloween. I dont know if you will ever see this message or will ever be able to reply but here it goes. On the release date I bought a collectors edition copy of Rome 2 in UK (Since it was only available from GAME). I normally live in North Cyprus and tried to install the game. However the steam would not let me to install it saying that the regions do not match. After doing a bit of research I found out that the games are region specific. Although Cyprus is part of Europe and not Turkey, the internet providers in North Cyprus get that services through Turkey hence my problem. I tried contacting steam and they dont care. I tried contacting CA and Sega but I never received a reply. Now I am stuck with a game that I paid 120 quid and I cant even install it. It would be great if you can give me some advice or direct me in the right direction. Thanks a lot.

[Jarmam]

You can turn it off. It costs as much as a pint of Guiness, so I don't see a reason not to get it.

You are a blessed man to have Guinness at such prices. An area worth... visiting?

[Beskar]

It would be great if you can give me some advice or direct me in the right direction. Thanks a lot.

Using an English proxy, should fix it for you.

[Hooahguy]

So are other people getting the blood on the ground, like I see in Myth's pictures? I dont seem to get any in mine, and Im running high/very high graphics so I dont know why I dont see it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

EDIT: Im getting blood on the ground, but it disappears after a few seconds, mildly disappointing I must say. Also, still no dismemberment even after playing a number of 1v1 custom battles specifically to test this out.

[Sp4]

Maybe it needs a few patches before anything actually starts working

-E- You need terrain settings on at least very high to see blood on the ground but I think it disappears occasionally.

On a totally unrelated note... can we have another DLC that gives us this guy from the video as a battlefield announcer? ^^

[Hooahguy]

It actually started working. Strange.

[Empire*Of*Media]

only adds blood?!
a DLC ONLY for Blood ?!!!!!
modders could do that for free !

[Hooahguy]

Well if they could it would have already been done. Which it hasn't. And there is gore it's just not widespread.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

only adds blood?!
a DLC ONLY for Blood ?!!!!!
modders could do that for free !

The modding angle remains to be seen, but the DLC only blood *from CA* is to circumvent ratings boards. The price is higher than it was for Shogun 2 though, which is... something.

[Myth]

only adds blood?!
a DLC ONLY for Blood ?!!!!!
modders could do that for free !

It's so cheap it's practically for free. If someone doesn't have 3 euro in their pocket they should probably not own a computer... And also if you bothered to research what the DLC adds you'd see there are new animations, textures, decals and effects which CANNOT be modded in the game. Especially the animation.

Also, soldier banter has been added to reflect the blood, as well as campaign map animations. I doubt this can be modded into the wrascape engine.

[Veho Nex]

isnt 3 euro like 6$ american?

I got it for 3 bucks americano, which is like 1.5euro

Then again my knowledge of currency exchange rates is far from perfect

[Jarmam]

It's roughly 1,3 US dollars per euro atm. So yeah, a little steeper, but we're used to this happening now and then by now.

Edit: And its 2,5 euro for the DLC, so joke's on me

[Sp4]

It's so cheap it's practically for free. If someone doesn't have 3 euro in their pocket they should probably not own a computer... And also if you bothered to research what the DLC adds you'd see there are new animations, textures, decals and effects which CANNOT be modded in the game. Especially the animation.

Also, soldier banter has been added to reflect the blood, as well as campaign map animations. I doubt this can be modded into the wrascape engine.

I don't have 3 Euro in my pocket =(

-E- Again, totally unrelated. I was going to take a look at these blood effects and came across this:

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...6C6A8DDD0514C/

It seems like they got the whole pike phalanx the wrong way around. Someone needs to take these guys back to phalanx school

-More edit-

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...r-Blood-DLC%29

That mod makes the blood a bit more betterer and bloodier, I guess? Anyways, it makes it stay on the ground, so yay.

[dge1]

Thanks for the update Trish!

[komnenos]

Really great DLC! now this game has been alive and hot by it.

[BroskiDerpman]

It's so cheap it's practically for free. If someone doesn't have 3 euro in their pocket they should probably not own a computer... And also if you bothered to research what the DLC adds you'd see there are new animations, textures, decals and effects which CANNOT be modded in the game. Especially the animation.

Also, soldier banter has been added to reflect the blood, as well as campaign map animations. I doubt this can be modded into the wrascape engine.

There's a reason why modders can't. It's just like why modders couldn't unlock factions on release with the necessary tools. CA hardcoded things or makes it hard to mod in some stuff so they can actually sell dlc. There's no conspiracy with it and I'm fine with it as long as the content is good and doesn't make me feel like it's a rip off. If it was a good dlc I wouldn't care what price the thing is even if it costed me 400$ (If it costed 1 billion it better be worth it) as long as the content is good and gives you the feeling of how the dlc is worth your money and time.

Animations are possible, there's this software in which you can use a xbox 360 kinetic to do mo cap, not too sufficient but nevertheless interesting and who knows what can be used in the future.

Don't think of the price tag solely, think of the content and the reason behind it.

My opinion? I'm ok with the dlc except that when Shogun 2 first had the blood dlc it was cheaper than Rome 2's.

[AntiDamascus]

Now that it's passed Halloween, the gore is just weird now.