Creative Assembly believes that their real-time strategy (RTS) game is easy to play.
Kids who grew up playing StarCraft on the Nintendo 64 surely have steel-like thumbs. However, with the exception of a few games designed specifically for consoles (e.g., Herzog Zwei, Halo Wars), RTS isn’t a genre that plays well with a controller. It remains the domain of the mouse and keyboard. Nevertheless, Creative Assembly, the developer of Total War, is committed to releasing Total War: Warhammer 40,000 on consoles. At Gamescom, Dave Petry, the studio’s product manager for combat games, told TechRadar that he believes the idea that controller support doesn’t work in the RTS genre is a myth. He said that they’ve developed something that actually works.
Creative Assembly contributed to the development of Halo Wars 2, which Petry cited as an example of strong controller integration in the RTS genre. However, this is also due to the game’s simplicity. When Age of Empires 2, a more complex game, was released on Xbox, automated villagers were needed to gather resources and build farms based on preset preferences because micromanaging with two analog sticks is cumbersome. Of course, the Total War games leave construction and tech trees to the campaign’s turn-based segments, with only the battles taking place in real time. While the finer details, such as cyclical reloading or drawing rocket fire by marching the lord back and forth, might not feel as satisfying with a controller, it is certainly possible.
“Obviously, controllers are the primary method for using consoles, but they’re just an input method. They’re accessibility tools. It’s about how you want to play, and we’ve always wanted to bring that experience to people who want to use a gamepad. We’re learning how to do this right, and we’re definitely keen to keep evolving it as we ship and work on it. I think we’ve landed in a really solid spot. We’re quite proud of where we are with the technical side of things,” Petry said.
Let’s hope they really do have something to be proud of!
