This quote from McKinlay's statement is my favorite: "My view is that the continued success of the franchise is better explained by the patience and goodwill of its players than it is by the stewardship of Total War’s management."

The removal of war speeches was a HUGE downgrade for Total War games. The quotes during the loading screen as well.

10 years later… smells like some sort of signed NDA when he walked out

We can see where CA is going by looking at Warhammer Total War. Three of the same games in a row and all of the games lacking in AI, full of bugs and no further development to a game, just releasing a new game at a higher price with the exact same things.

Is it really 10 years ago now!!? Jesus Christ mate, you didn't have to make me feel that old.

The idea that the company that brought out Medieval 2 could bring out a turkey like this is entirely unshocking. CA have been acting like they're owned by venture capitalists for a long long time now. I went from religiously buying their titles to not even looking at them, over time, and I still don't feel drawn to try any of their latest offerings. It's a shame, they had so much going for them, and then they got greedy.

"Because of great sales, they took most devs off the game before they could patch it" Remember, ultimately we can only blame ourselves as consumers; just like dlc culture, pay to win, loot-crates, etc. Don't buy games just because you like the franchise because this is how they treat us.

Want to correct you that the siege AI was only coded for *large* city maps, so that when siege battles happen on the newly rushed small city maps (pretty much any player's first siege battle), the AI would not work since it wasn't coded for them yet.

I've given up on CA at this point - Will never support them again. Unless or course in the unlikely scenario that they get their shit together.

The Absolute State of Creative Assembly these days

I actually remember talking to some of the guys who worked on the game on the TWC forums back before release. They actually seemed really sincere. Makes you wonder if they were sincere in what they knew but a lot wasn't communicated to them from above.

I think I'll be waiting for Medieval Total War 2 remastered or Medieval Total War 3 until I'm 80 years old... It's sad because that's what so many people who play Total War are asking for... But gotta make that Games Workshop money right?

Button stat modifiers and health bars was the nail in the coffin for me. The soilders you command don't feel like individual mortals anymore.

Few designers are aware of the difficulty of implrementing features this is why cross project meetings are necessary. Some resent the grounded opinions of developers and often stop inviting them to these meetings with the inevitable outcome! This is common in all sectors of software engineering.

They pushed me into the arms of paradox and I’m not looking back

This was my first and last pre-order.

Ill never forget the Siege of Carthage gameplay demo. Simply the best of what was supposed to come of total war. Instead we went to china and never came back.

I have low expectations for CA...but holly fire this low. Hople people see, read and stop buy CA products.

This is a really interesting insight into what happened behind the scenes. However my main issue with R2 was the overall design philosophy. In the leadup we were promised an immersive experience. What did we get instead? Idiot mechanics like (I think it was called) "Imperium", where you could not garrison troops at critical positions on the map... the way you could in R1, because during the Roman period, as we know, troops (especially in small units) were never, ever commanded by junior officers. You had counter-intuitive, brain dead development dynamics like the way a fishing dock (which provides both food and jobs) would increase unhappiness in a settlement, because, sure, that makes... no logical sense whatsoever. And worst of all, we ended up with "Champions" and "Spies" and whatever the other one was which were so unrealistic that the only type of "immersion" it provided was if you wanted to be part of a Marvel movie. Then when people raised this on the TW forums they would be shut down for fabricated reasons by the fanboy moderators. I'm not at all sure whether CA management understands how much that can make people detest a company. Anyway, that was me, who had followed and bought the TW franchise religiously until then, done with it. I haven't bought a TW game since, I haven't played R2 since. I've played a bit of R1 occasionally, but for me CA burnt their bridges in multiple ways. I can't see a cent of mine ever darkening their doorstep again.

I have sunk so many hours into this game over the years. It may never have been the game we wanted in full but in the end there was still a fun game here, well for me anyway.

It usually lower and mid tier managers who got the best grasp on operations and have to deal with both upper management, tight budgets and keep employees satisfied whilst still having to get good products out.

I'd prefer to hear from a programmer about a game than a corporate PR bullshitter any day.

I can forgive No Man's Sky for having a messy release , and a gradual patching to turn into an actual game I cannot forgive CA , a AAA game , to have a disastrous , rushed , messy , unorganized crap that was Rome 2 , and then CONTINUE to refuse to learn

Seriously, this is 'eckin insane! A camera that buffs your unit, just because _management_ wanted the game to look _cinematic_ !?!? WHAT IN THE NINE HELLS OF BAATOR IS GOING ON?!??!?

I for one, forgive him. Given the more and more I learn about CA since it was bought by Sega the more all of this makes sense. He didnt know and then when asked by the higher ups to talk about his part in it, he did what any of us would have, talked up the part he knew was good and how it is technically supposed to work together with the other features. I sat for hours in utter disbelief on release day of Rome II. Absolutely stupefied at the clown show I was watching unfold. Still think it is a dumpster fire and only play older CA games. They have since lost themselves in fantasy land where they dont even use animations that fit the units. Gunners no longer reload. Collision and individual soldiers finding themselves in any number of situations is long gone... Hope Mr McKinlay, despite my curses and calls for his proverbial head at the time, is doing very well. Maybe designing his own game from the ground up.

Shogun 2 and Napoleon are some of my favourite TW games to play without mods, so it's always interesting to hear more about how and why CA then went so badly wrong with Rome 2.

He should have released this during the Shadows of Change debacle

Sean Murray is an absolute exemplar for game developers, launch was terrible granted but he stuck by his product rather than just taking the money and running like everyone else does, now look at the sheer amount of content in NMS and he's never asked for another penny.... the games been financed all these years by sales of the game and the content updates are insane.

Everyone needs to apologise for the vitriol directed at Julian.

Software developer for 40 years, 13 years in management. When Rome 2 came out I figured that there was a real management mess at CA. But the post by McKinlay is beyond anything I've seen. And I've seen some REAL doozies. I feel sad for the programmers/artists/QA working there. They deserve a LOT better! As with most things, when you see a software release disaster, you don't have to look far for who to blame. It is always management. Most folks I've worked with want to do a good job and communicate issues. But when management ignores that, it is at the entire company's peril.

I'm glad that the competition for CA is rising, be that games like Knights of Honor II or Ultimate General: American Revolution.

I’ve got a personal soft spot for Rome 2 as it’s the reason why I’m now a PC gamer, I did wait year so I did miss the god awful launch but Rome 2 gave me 500+ hours of fun

This is one of my favorite games. I did wait for a bundle with all the DLC 3 years after launch. When he says "It is possible to ship a title while not knowing the state of it". I can absolutly believe that, game company managers and execs are freaking shady. You may work there and your only job is to make art assets. You create your art assets, than the manager tells you to send them to him, and HE will put them into the game. You have no idea what the game looks like you just keep getting told to create the assets and send them up the chain.

The idea that No Man's Sky was not the game the developer promised is a myth, and it is complete nonsense. Sean Murray tried to warn people that NMS was not the game people were hyping it up to be. Public hype destroyed the NMS launch: the developers had nothing to do with it, and actively tried to curb it. Many people were even convinced that it was going to be a multiplayer game at launch, and Sean Murray made multiple statements to the effect that it wasn't, all to no avail.

I have been trying to get back into this one. But, it doesn't scratch the itch of the original.

I personally loved this game when I played it. I'm still hooked on Atilla at the moment and have like 2000 hours of campaign modes.

Looks more the problem were huge socoal differnces at creative , upper class snobs brougth up in NY or london that dont have a clue and wants only the next fix or party

Anyone looking for a new Total War game should check out Total Resistance: Conflict set in the modern era. The indie devs are putting CA to shame, but they need more support & awareness.

this is very typical particularly when there are a lot of "management" hires, everyone is a manager and everyone has its own silos. The other model is to put everything on a big bucket and let people sort it out themselves. Finding the right or latest information around is next to impossible.

For traditional total wars i prefer attila and shogun 2. what suprise me total wars rome 2 lose against shogun 2and attila especially main campaign

Creative Assembly's managers care only about money. In the entire field of engineering in general, everyone knows that if you give engineers enough time and resources, they will create spectacular things. It's pretty much almost managers that limit these people. In gaming this is even a bigger issue

At the end of the day, that Dev was knowingly lying when he spoke those words about the AI. Even if it is industry standard, that still doesn't absolve him. I bought a product based on false advertising.

I really love Pharao (timeperiod is exactly my alley) and love the mechanics in it. But even then i can see that that direction for the historical titles is just bad. And then it feels like they want to throw the sofia team under the bus by completely overwhelming them with work and later blaming the games state on them.

My first Total War Game was Shogun released June 2000. I played thousands of hours from then through Shogun II. Rome II was IMO the first Total War that I considered the campaign to be unplayable and every TW game released since was just as unplayable for exactly the same reasons.

I have read the letter yesterday and I encourage everyone to take the time to read it

I remember that dude. HE said on video that the games AI was the best it’s every been.

The ai still dont work

Great video. When you work in a hierarchy responsibility *always* flows upwards. Leadership is always responsible for the work of their team. and upper management is always responsible for the final quality of the product. If you find yourself blaming an individual outside of management they're more than likely a patsy.

it's NOT the "coders" fault if the company is too dumb to send out a PR guy to do the interviews----or too lax to COORDINATE the message with the coder doing the interview.... He HAD to have had SOME Kind of input as to what the game was Supposed to be before giving the interview and he HAD to have had SOME Kind of permission to do said interviews from the people in charge.... It seems the public has a hard time understanding that these games are something like a Movie production, All Kinds of things are shot during production but in Editing, characters can be cut almost entirely out of the film....ENTIRE SCENES are cut out.... An actor does all his work for the movie but doesn't actually know which scenes will be used or which shots or takes will be used At All..... Notice when actors give interviews about about their latest movie, they talk in these Totally Vague terms and if asked, they often say, "I haven't seen it yet"....they understand that in editing the movie can change quite a bit. At least the movie studios have enough sense to Coordinate the message

I enjoyed this game, but the AI really kept me from getting the most out of it. It was just another 50 hour AA game instead of a massive rts sandbox experience with hundreds of hours of gameplay. Because the AI was so fucking frustrating.

Crazy since Rome 2 I think still has my most hours played. Shoutout to everyone involved with its creation

Joey Berry joined at this time.

Total war needs to go back to more historical games. I feel like people would enjoy an empire 2. Or maybe even a wwi or wwii type game.

I don't think you can compare this guy to Sean Murray except for the presumed lack of pr knowledge.

Are these past bugs or present ones? Rome 2 is my favourite game. I think things are ironed out now. In the case of Empire Total War, it was indeed very buggy when i first bought it in 2009, crashing all the time, I think because of the Large Area Addressing bug, but that was resolved.

I feel bad for this guy, at least he was TRYING to fix stuff, but I'm not really playing any Creative Assembly games outside of Medieval II and the original Rome: Total War game. I am having a blast over in Manor Lords.

This makes me glad I did it play it till years after its release.

hey bro its maybe a disaster but its make lot of good memories for me

Hopefully ca puts out another good historical game, I don't think I can handle 40k. All this demon demon bullshit . I'm a totalwar war die hard fan I'm reaching the limit of being sick of warhammer...

as long as they don't completely change the engine they are using, not much will change. dunno why they even went with that stupid ass rome 2 engine with all it's shortcomings compared to the previous engine to begin with.

Wow. Explains a lot about Empire as well.

I've spent money on this game when I hadn't a lot of it. I was really disappointed.

Someone just needs to buy the whole company, shake up the management and go back to the core, making good games.

Slavic magic has proven to do way better

His statements are alarming, and I do believe there is serious issues going on with trust and working relationships within CA. However, I would like to hear leadership’s point of view on things because I’m sure it’s not as simple as “greedy leadership was too pushy, and then blamed everyone else.”

What a throwback. I watched that angry Joe review so many times loool

I never purchased a CA game after Rome 2. Im still a bit raw about it my favorite time period totally F up. Played the mods but still core issues mods can't fix.

in over 10 years, no man's sky is the only game steam ever refunded me. xD

I honestly don't fully believe what he says. He has the incentive to downplay his mistakes and shift the blame to the company, but one thing for sure, CA is really a mess.

Rome 2 now is working game, but that's it, when I was little I imagined how great Rome 2 will look like and how many improvements they are going to make which never happened.

It was everything. We all knew it was not just crap AI, they stripped everything down and nothing was better than its predecessor

I'd like to see Angry Joe's reaction to this. His reaction vid to Rome 2, which I think became pretty well known, was one of the most hilarious videos I've ever watched. And this guy featured in it prominently.

if he was "low level programmer" then why would leadership be talking to him. his bosses would talk to other bosses.

I am holding my Norwegian caviar now

Finally some closure lol

Vouland’s vindication continues

This was the last Total war game I purchased at full price. I think I have only bought one since then at bargain bin price and never really got into it. Not a big fantasy strategy fan so Warhammer fantasy didn't appeal to me. To be honest I probably would have enjoyed an Empire 2 or WH40k much more than what they created.

I never bought a game again from CA after Rome II, and never will.

Games like this make me love mount and blade so much more !

Like AJ says, someone just fired that guy halfway.

I haven't played Rome Total War 2 yet but I love the period. Is the game in a good, playable state now?

People NEED to be FIRED at CA and the company taken over by somebody grown up

I think they got real nervous when screwed the pooch with empire, so when the cut content napoleon went marginally better they got stuck in a loop of denial and refusal to take the ample criticism to heart. Result was an even worse launch for rome2 tw and ever since they just loot the fantasy nerds as it's more money for less effort

why did he wait 10 years to speak out for it?

They need to make Rome 3 and have it led by someone who actually listens to their team.. game could be legendary.

I preordered this...on disc! And can I just say it was very disappointing. Still bummed thinking about it

Everyone knew before Rome 2 that AI will be bad, because CA sacked the only 1 person that new how to create AI on this engine before they started Rome 2. Everyone who interested in Total War knew it. How can you be even surprised lol.

i remember playing rome 2 for the first time....the horrible experience lol...and then the city fights...mid way during the first time doing a city battle I quit and didnt play it for years...tried again with new mods and patches and got a little further...quit again and have never played since then warhammer is cool mp but the campaigns are so linear and like rollercoaster rides...not much room for doing what you really want...youre stuck in your area and stuck having do the same strategy...if you want to do it different play a dif faction...older games didnt have that you could be anyone doing anything... now i play all the older total war games with heavy mods like darth mods...empire, shogun 2, napoleon, rome 1 unmastered with heavy mods, barb invasion with heavy mods....all the new ones just suck horribly

Ah, a classic story that plagues gaming. Execs being out of touch and greedy. I swear the entire industry could use a serious management reshuffle.

AND THEN (I still play Rome 2 by the way) they go and make games for WarCraft 40k.... Pharaoh is kind of meh (a bit upgraded Troy?) I hope they will make Total War Empire 2 :)

What Julian said is almost certainly true. As a former developer myself, I have always hated how 'reviewers' and gamers demonise creative professionals. Development is organised chaos right from the start, to expect otherwise displays supreme ignorance of how developmental complexity scales poorly with time management. Release dates are usually set in stone, because the publisher has committed millions in marketing and will sue the developer if they release late, no you can't just change them. Armchair criticism is easy, but rarely insightful.

he should have started his own company i think many workers from CA would have joined him

I wasn't a huge fan of it when it came out but, later I enjoyed RTW2 alot. The game was too easy on any difficult below very hard but the Ai doesn't really stand up so the only way to make the game harder is give the enemy better resources.

His main mistake was answering the questions in a way that made him sound like he was well aware of the games development and interworking's when he was more of a tester that wasn't totally involved. I was rage posting on the original youtube video a lot cause I wasn't buying his explanation but I just rewatched the interview and now I can kind of see how if anything the interviewer might be more at fault for making him look like a liar. Like they should have explained his involvement better instead of just asking him questions and uploading the interview without a better introduction to who he was.

It's easy to bash CA (deservedly so) but this is one person speaking out blaming everyone else and he has personal interest to do so. It's interesting but I would suggest not believing this to be "the truth". Not without receipts and further investigation.

i adore rome 2, it was my first total war game. after playing shogun 2 i can only imagine how could rome 2 could have been. it must have been frustrating for veterans to see it devolve. although, ill still be playing rome 2 every day😂

That trailer they released was the reason why everyone hated the game. It was too epic in scale and unfortunately the battles don’t play that way.

So, the truth was revealed 10 years later. I still remember the hype when RTW2 was announced. Oh, how times have changed. Still, they fixed the broken game, and it is fun now.

I remember seeing this guy when Rome 2 was released. Specifically the interview about the AI. He looked like a corpse... and that's never good. Overworked and just "Couldn't care less..." attitude thanks to it.

Don't blame any single dev. They don't have much influence nor knowledge over the entire project