Total War: Arena - Livestream Gameplay (Impressions)

Hey, what's up guys? This is Oakley, and I'm here to do an overview of the Total War Arena live event that happened this past weekend in Cologne, Germany. I have to say, from a presentation standpoint, this was amazing. It was hosted by Sean Charles, the people at ESL, the booths, the computer setups, the cast, everyone they brought here was just amazing. I've never seen this vibe around Total War, and it was just so refreshing. The sort of theme for the weekend was you had two teams of ten. One is Germanicus, one is Leonidas, playing across three different maps. Then you had the developers, Elliot Locke and others, come through in these sort of interview sides of things that they had on the side. They talked about sort of the analysis of the game in the pre-game. They analyzed what happened in the post-game. And then they had conversations with the team captains sort of between the battles. And they had Lee Smith and James Gibbon as commentators throughout the entire event. Their banter was great. I felt the vibe was great. What they did talking about the battles was very entertaining. I was just sucked into this. And then I think just coming from the Total War community and then seeing community people on the game, playing it, and the players. You had Prince of Madison, you had all sorts of other YouTubers committed to this thing. Lionheart was one of the team captains for Germanicus, for the Roman team. He was heading that up. They had him in an interview, of course, after one of the rounds. Then you had Jesse Cox leading the other team. Obviously, he's a big YouTuber as well. And so it was just a refreshing vibe to see Total War portrayed in this light. To see players, YouTubers from the community come in and play this. And it was just tons of fun. I was totally drawn in. And this was just a really fresh breath of fresh air. So the two teams here start off in Thermopylae. Team Germanicus, the Romans, led by Lionheart. A bunch of other players on there. Team Leonidas, led by Jesse Cox. And each team has ten players. Each player then controls three separate units. And those units can be selected from a variety of different ones. You want to usually bring a mix for your whole army. But each specific soldier is kind of an officer in your army. And he can only bring three troops. So, for instance, perhaps someone on the left. For instance, you can see here all the player names. But you can also see what troops they brought here. They all started at Tier 5. So, for example, Rambler here brought three cavalrymen. Baron brought three line infantry. And then you can see Malekith brought one skirmisher. And two... I don't know what that is. I think skirmishers and then just light troops that he brought with him. And then you have different deployment zones. So you want to separate out your teams to have different roles. And each individual player can't just command the battlefield himself. You have to rely on your player. Now, in terms of the mechanics of this game, I loved it. Line of sight is the first thing that you notice. You can see that as the players move forward, you start to get line of sight. And this is a huge mechanic in the game that is just awesome. We've had line of sight in the recent Total Wars. But it's nothing like this. Line of sight in this game is so much more important. On top of that, you also have the terrain has been vastly differentiated. Because you're only commanding three units, they can put much more focus on each individual unit and the way they interact with the terrain. So, for instance, being on the road here gives you noticeable advantages to speed. See the center unit there is accelerating so much quicker than the other ones. You have bonuses being in different terrain. Being in the mud will slow you down. Being on the hill will give you more mass for downward charges. Because they're focused so much closer on just three units, you can accentuate that so much more. Take a look at the units that he has selected here. They went down this corridor in the hot gates. They took some damage from skirmishers. They're trying to pull out and retreat. The health bar is the blue on the bottom. The top with the white bars is going to be their morale. All of a sudden, artillery comes, strikes a massive cluster. And so, they were caught by surprise by the ambush in the hot gates. Again, that's line of sight coming into effect. So, just very, very beautiful play. The line of sight mechanism in this game truly brought it to life. But also the fact that this is an entirely huge battlefield with ten different players on each side. Each with three units. Even though it fits going bad in the hot gates, you have perhaps the center or the top of the hill that you can push. So, for example, here, Duck and Malekith pushing up through the top center. All of them having their different personalities and units. And you can see some players in the game sneaking around. The cavalry especially is important for early scouting. Getting an idea of where your opponent is. Keep in mind also for controlling your units. It's different than traditional Total Wars. You only have three units. But you have to be very hyperactive in terms of controlling these units. Getting the line of sight you need. Positioning you want. Each unit actually will run. So, there's no walking. I don't believe there's fatigues. You can run your units everywhere. It's supposed to be fast paced. But here you can see these troops doing some scouting up on the top of the hill. They have some units out in the open in shield. Testudo formation absorbing fire. And then more units on the left trying to absorb some of the fire in the woods. They're pushing forward trying to see what they're going to encounter. So, scouting again, like I said, is very important. Here it turns out they ran into a huge army. So, just because you're, you know, it seems like they're going to lose here. In a traditional Total War game, that's it. You'd be done. You lose. But because this is such a massive battlefield, they are able to relay onto their team. Saying, hey, there's four players up here. Let's push in the center. And that's where the rest of the team decided, okay. You know, the enemy force is too strong on the hill. Now you can see here. Okay, maybe red team is winning here. But then Lionheart and his team is able to push through the center. So, line of sight and communicating where your opponent is strong or weak. Can allow you to pull off these maneuvers. So, here comes Lionheart. They're moving forward. He then tells his artillery commander to clear the way in front of them. You're going to see artillery barrages coming and starting to weaken up the opponents. As these opponents start to get, you know, forced back into the central defensive fort back there. The, yeah, here comes the artillery strike. You can see on the right, the forces out of Thermopylae are going to be able to push out through there. So, it was a very dynamic battlefield is, I think, the best way to describe it. With each player only involving himself in three units. Each unit is doing, like, stuff. No unit is being stationary. For instance, here, this was a really good counterattack. So, you saw that Lionheart was pushing up the center. The artillery from the defenders then goes ahead and hits one of the units. The cavalry commander follows up with this because that unit was disorganized. He comes in and he's going to go straight for the skirmishers. Meanwhile, artillery is peppering Lionheart's units up here. So, this counterassault is going to stop the assault through the center. And another important thing to note is cavalry charges as they come in. It's not the same as just right-clicking and letting your unit go. When you click charge, it's almost like a skill shot. You choose the direction of your charge and the cavalry will charge there. So, you can very much miss your cavalry charges. Enemy skirmishers can duck out of the way if you mistime your charge. So, I thought that was very interesting. The cavalry here skirmishing in front of the attackers. So, a lot of back and forth. And like I was trying to say, when you only have three units, you see each individual unit behaving much more dynamically because they're controlled. Unlike Total War, where you have a lot of units just standing there. In this one, the total battlefield is almost like an anthill disturbed where everything is moving according to its own small intelligence of that player. And sometimes, it results in chaos. But sometimes, with a good commander, you can pull off massive strategies where all those little ants are working in unison. But other times, it can be chaos. So, I think that's one of the great things that this game brings up. Now, you can see players are going for the capture point. Over here, some other players move through using the line of sight up on the cliffs. Sort of on the bottom of this camera. And now, they're attacking from the top of the hill. They're sort of herding those archers on the left towards cavalry who come out of the line of sight. So, lots of opportunities for pincer movements. Exploitation in the line of sight. This is all super intriguing for someone who's been playing Total War Multiplayer in the past. I've never had an experience to play a game like this. And I think it is very, very promising. Now, of course, I haven't played too much of this game. So, I can't commentate too much on what it's like to play the game. But I watched the whole livestream. I've heard from people. And they're telling me that this game definitely plays and feels differently. And I think that's just demonstrable. Now, the next map is going to be Salernum that they played on. Different maps call for different tactics because there's different things to do. So, for example, on this map on the left, you can see the city itself. It's a big slogging fight. But you can get a lot of flanking through the center into the city. So, put your heavy infantry in here. And again, line of sight makes the early game very, very interesting. Cavalry are going to start pushing up. They don't know where to move the artillery. Very important to place these in a way where they can control certain areas of the battlefield. But then, you also want to put them in a place where it's not predictable. You saw a lot of times in the stream where artillery were placed in a predictable location. And so, enemy cavalry could just come and attack them without line of sight. Knowing kind of roughly where they were. So, a lot of these higher-minded thoughts that never came into previous Total War games were showing themselves. Watchtowers are a cool mechanic where you gain that line of sight. And they see a huge cavalry charge coming in. They're trying to come out of there. And this is the point in time where you would want to coordinate with your artillery commander. Saying, hey, fire some shots in support here. Cover my retreat. Lionheart, for example, is in the center. And he's hiding in the low grass here where normally he couldn't be visible. But because that tower was taken, he's going to start taking shots. So, combination of line of sight plus artillery allows you to push opponents out of defensive positions. So, here that artillery strike is going to force Lionheart to move forward. But because he doesn't have line of sight, he doesn't know where he's going. He's kind of just moving forward. Meanwhile, the red team here knows exactly where Lionheart is. And they're going to already have a force there to block him. They have archers. They're going to start peppering him. You can see Hugo is going to try and push around the right flank. But again, because he doesn't have line of sight and the other team does, you're going to see that they're going to run into infantry preformed in that location. The red team on the right, Mecha, is actually going to be sending cavalry. They knew that the opponents were out of position. Those cavalry are going to start to move in here. Perhaps go after some of the skirmishers. You can see them actually here already dipping out of the line of sight. Coming after them. Perhaps striking at that force. So, the line of sight was just mind-blowing. And the type of gameplay that it brought about in this game was amazing. And meanwhile, the distraction in one part of the battlefield. Maybe you might win your part of the battlefield. But if you don't have a general sense of the total battlefield, you can have units slip through and take the enemy capture point. As may have been mentioned before, the way Total War works, Total War Arena works, is it's either, you know, you get the most amount of points. And here's an example of cavalry finding the artillery in a pretty predictable spot and just taking them out. And you'll see actually the horses here as they try and engage. He's going to press the charge move and you'll see them charge. As I said, it's a skill shot. So you can see them charging in the direction you told them, knocking that artillery piece. But back to what I was saying. The way you win this game is through points. So you get those points either through sheer number of kills or by having units in the enemy army's capture point. So, a lot of different strategies that you can take. You know, you're fighting for position between different sub-units. Or you're fighting for line of sight. Or you're fighting for the capture point. All sorts of stuff is running through your head. So even though you're just controlling three units, each unit has so much more micro to it. You have to have, because you're only three units, for example, these guys here are just three skirmishers, you can't defend yourself. So you have to be part of a whole army. So, for example, Lionheart here is going to tell these guys to form up behind the spears on the right. You have to be at all times working with your allies. So, you know, Lionheart telling him, work in coordination with your ally. Hold the hill. So, from a commander standpoint, you have to rally your troops, make them work together. In unison, you can be strong by yourself. You get torn apart. And I think that was a really great thing that I think is going to be a potential huge bonus to this game. I would love to see CA put on more of these live events, especially once the game goes, like, goes live. But this sort of approach to gameplay could also be the demise of this game. It could perhaps be a bit too confusing for new players coming into this game. A lot of the times, and even Total War games, you see people online not doing much in terms of, like, good strategies or tactics. They may just rush out and suicide. And I don't see people really doing too much to work as a team. So, I hope CA works out a way to incentivize people to work together as a team. So, that being said, from what I've heard from people online, is that a lot of the times you see chaos in multiplayer. And chaos does not really make for good gameplay. But what we saw in this live stream was early on. That's kind of what it was like. But as the teams played more and more together, you started to see more cohesion. You started to see more tactics. And by the end of the live stream, it was beautiful to watch. So, I think this game has the potential to be beautiful. If CA fosters the right atmosphere where you want to play together. A lot of people know that in League of Legends and other games like that, if one player really sucks, it can bring down your whole team. So, that's a very viable or very important point for CA to consider. And I'm sure it's one of the things that they have kept in mind. Something to note is that if a player does drop out of the game or quits out early, the units of that specific player will then be given to the commander of the battlefield. Now, the commander of the battlefield, I don't quite know what other abilities they have. So, that's something that they're still developing. But here, I want you to keep in mind. Look how this formation that was lined up perfectly has been stormed. And take a look at these skirmishers. They're not being very heavily supported. And so, the horsemen are going to charge out. And you can see the horsemen here splitting up. Their micro is pretty good. Charging. One of those charges misses. That was a directed assault. He misses. Skirmishers got out on time. But you can see the skirmishers are now getting surrounded. Jesse Cox's infantry on the right, herding them in. And then the cavalry going in for a kill. So, you can get these quick reversals in the game just because of player skill. But at the same time, each individual player's skill can turn one part of the battlefield. But it has to do with overall tactics. And to some degree, which units you select for the fight. So, there's still opportunities for each individual player to bring heroism and skill. But at the same time, it's a big collaborative effort. So, those are my thoughts on the game so far. I think it looks very, very fun. I'm excited to see this go live. And I think CA in this event was very sincere in their approach to wanting to make this game work. The way they hosted it was mind-blowing. The presentation was great. The vibe was great. And I hope it's something that catches on. At the same time, I will end this video by saying I hope CA does not abandon the traditional multiplayer experience in other Total War games. It's dying right now. It is just a brutally... To be brutally honest, it's a terrible, abysmal experience right now. They've stripped out all features that used to be there. Perhaps as a business decision to push people to get their multiplayer out of Arena. Which is, I think, pretty cynical. They're forcing us, people who want to get multiplayer, to go into Total War Arena. So, I hope they do divert back some resources into traditional multiplayer. I think what they need to do in the future for traditional Total War games is bring back the diversity of playlists. We need free-for-all. We need score-to-resolution. We need Last Man Standing for Medieval 2. We then need custom maps from Shogun. And if you bring that all back to Total War traditional multiplayer, I think that is what the community needs right now. At the moment, all of that has been stripped away. And you've been seeing the Total War community die out. And I think in the long run, if CA wants to make Total War Arena work, they're going to have to have some of their Total War multiplayers transition over to that game. And for that to happen, they need to keep that multiplayer community alive. And so, I think, CA, you can't put all your eggs in one basket with Arena. You're going to have to support the whole multiplayer experience across all Total War games. Especially when it comes to Warhammer. When you're expecting to have tabletop players who are used to multiplayer come into your game, once they see that Total War multiplayer for Warhammer is bare-bones, I think you may off-put a lot of your customers. So, please, for the sake of Arena, for the sake of Warhammer, for the sake of the community, please don't abandon multiplayer outside of Arena. That being said, I'm very excited for this game, and I can't wait to see more. Be sure to check out CA's channel for the full video of the stream. I strongly recommend it. It is awesome. So, see you on the next one. Peace out.