Damn, so they're going to have Steamworks in all their games from now on?

"It's the pirates' fault!"

I'd be sad as hell if they do that. "Shogun: Total War" , the first one of course, was one of the best strategy games ever in my opinion. As far as the new one goes, as long as it has the same features (give or take a few tweaks, I.E. Geisha) as the original and they Don't Remove Any Features I'll be happy.

If you compare the original Shogun:TW to Empire:TW, Empire definitely is far more complex. That how-ever, doesn't make the original Shogun any less of a masterpiece of strategy gaming. If they don't gimp up the game-play of the original I'll most likely buy it. If they radically change it and dumb it down I'll avoid it like the plague. At this point it's just something to "keep an eye on". Hopefully it'll turn out great like it's forefather and namesake.

Supreme Commander flashbacks?? I think you are right to worry...

Japan tried to invade Korea in the 1590s and this isn't too far outside the scope of the game for it to be included as an expansion. Also, China tried to help Korea militarily in the invasion so Chinese and Japanese troops did fight during this time.

Empire tried to do too many things and so it over-extended itself. Shogun and Medieval were great at the time because they worked well. Napoleon succeeds in both areas because gameplay, dipomacy and AI were focused on at the expense of scale and this is a good thing. Shogun is clearly moving in the same direction and for that, I'm glad.

The first game i ever played was Shogan: Total War and i honestly dont think they have topped that so far. Sure ive bought them all but napoleon and with the exception of Empire i have loved playing them all for a long long amount of time all up. The only and i repeat only reason i didnt think Napoleon was worth buying after Empire is that i heard that like Empire the game worked in other areas at the sacrifice of the actual battles themselves. Thats where the multiplayer is now, and the whole reason you build your forces and diplomacy is to get in there and command your army!

This is not true at all. The only things someone could complain about in Napoleon is that there is no mod support (this makes no difference since fantastic mods like Napoleon Order of War are being made anyway), a few balance problems still exist and the unit editor is still not released! I wouldn't be surprised if it is only released in time for Shogun 2.

As i thought from reading the last few posts, I heard wrong, you just nailed it home for me. Hype can go two ways i guess. This time i might have missed out on a great game for the sake of the one before. Im definetely considering doing some research on Napoleon now, might end up buying it on steam. 

Hm....it seems like that the devs will spend lot of time on creating a decent AI for Shogun 2. Nice stuff!

It will require Steamworks. 

Campaign will probably an unnecessary resource hog with lots of pointless 3D. Afraid they'll imbalance it over the elegant simplicity the original had. Hmm!

After their recent forays, I will wait and see.

Oh and being able to choose our general's traits? What is this, genetic engineering come early? The feature sounds gamey.

*facepalm*

I paid full price for all the Total War games up until Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War. I was right to do that, as in both cases, as within 6 weeks of the release of both games, I was able to buy the Special Editions for less than 1/3 the full price. Given that the Medieval II Total War expansion Kingdoms had more content than both Empire Total War AND Napoleon Total War COMBINED, shows how for Creative, just like Valve, Bethesda and Bioware, its become all about the money.

An interesting statistic I found was in a 1997 games magazine I still have it said 50% of all PC titles lost money. Today that figure is 85% (Games Industry News). If publishers went back to making games for the love of it then, paradoxically, the more money they would make.

Also, don;t believe the hype. Bethesda was happy to tell you Fallout 3 had sold more units than Fallout 1 and 2 combined. Of course, what they didn't mention was that Fallout 1 and 2 only came out on PC. So when you look deeper and see that Fallout 1 and 2 TRIPLED the sales of the PC version of Fallout 3 you learn something. That in this multiformat world it's a lot easier for publishers to hide the truth, and as as long as the gaming media cow-tows to the industry it will only get worse. Eventually leading to 100% of AAA games from the major publishers making a loss.

The way Bioware have gone from Baldur's Gate to Mass Effect and Bethesda have gone from Daggerfall to Oblivion, i think the direction of gaming is obvious, and it's not up.

Down diggity DAOWN!!

They figured, why should we give all these content away after the stock price, when we can charge for it bit by bit online!!!??  It was the case with dedicated servers, now it's the era of the DLC.

I would like to give Creative Assembly another look, but a Steam-exclusive Shogun II would be a no-buy for me.