On January 10, 2018, many friends became members of Station B that night, waiting for the premiere of "Human Bible" "Violet Evergarden" in the early morning of the 11th. However, before 12 o'clock, friends in the group stopped I was playing Jingzi without thinking, and suddenly started shouting "Sega is awesome!"
A game trailer brought us all back to our childhood, completing a "Renaissance" for us before "Violet Evergarden" – Sega UK announced a new game in the "Total War" series "Total War: Three Kingdoms" ( (hereinafter referred to as "Total War: Three Kingdoms") will bring "Total War" to the battlefield of ancient China for the first time. Several eldest brothers in the group who once said harshly, "If Total War comes out of China, I will eat shit!" can't wait to cry on the spot! Keep your promise to the toilet.
As a result, everyone shouted that Jingzi was the best in the world while repeatedly watching the trailer of Total War Three Kingdoms that night. Behind this craziness was the expectation and persistence of Chinese players for more than 20 years of real-time strategy Three Kingdoms-themed games.
The Startup Era: The Japanese Strategy Game
In fact, not many people in China have come into contact with the works of the early Three Kingdoms.
"Three Kingdoms" themed games have been strategy games almost since their birth. In 1985, the Japanese manufacturer Koei released the first generation of the classic strategy game "Three Kingdoms". As the highest-level strategy game on the market at the time, "Three Kingdoms" continued the basic gameplay of "Nobunaga's Ambition" before Koei. Players can play the role of lords in the Three Kingdoms era, starting from the princess through internal affairs, diplomacy, military and other strategies. Give instructions, manage your own power, and finally achieve the result of "the general trend of the world will inevitably unite after a long period of separation".
Although the game in 1985 could only use small pixels to represent armies, and data and text to represent battles and events, "Three Kingdoms" is still a very well-made strategy game. The character avatars produced by Guangrong for the game made extensive reference to literature and materials such as line drawings and embroidery portraits of characters from the Three Kingdoms in the Ming and Qing dynasties of China, and also strived for excellence in terms of names and geography. "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" received widespread acclaim immediately after its release, and won the Japan BHS Award and the Most Popular Readers Product Award that year.
With the success of "Three Kingdoms", Glorious established Tianjin Glorious Software Co., Ltd. in China in 1989 and began to produce "Three Kingdoms 2". Although the second generation failed due to little progress, the subsequent three generations have undergone earth-shaking evolution. , it was this work released in 1993 that many domestic players first came into contact with "Three Kingdoms".
The ZTE Era: The Chinese’s Own Three Kingdoms Game
In 1998, Aoting, a game company in Taiwan Province of China, produced a Chinese version of the Three Kingdoms-themed game – "The Heroes of the Three Kingdoms".
Although the game and the glorious "Three Kingdoms" also have the turn-based parts of SLG game standards such as internal affairs and diplomacy, the biggest difference between the two games is the real-time mode used in the battle of "Three Kingdoms Heroes". Players will personally transform themselves into generals and lead them. The armies of different types of arms (the arms are incompatible) that you have trained in the SLG mode will fight together in a horizontal version of the field in an ACT-style battle. Generals can not only charge into battle and command the army to fight, but can also use special generals' special moves. After the battle, the general will also receive experience points for upgrading. Once you reach a certain level, you can also change jobs and acquire new special skills.
In those days, if you were good at this, it would be really impressive!
"Heroes of the Three Kingdoms" quickly became a success in the domestic market. Although Otin's income was not high because piracy was still rampant in the mainland video game market at that time, almost all computer game players at the time must play "The Heroes of the Three Kingdoms" .
Era of self-improvement: Mainland China’s first game to participate in E3
Events have reached the turn of the millennium. This year, "Three Kingdoms" was released in its seventh generation. It was hailed as a "masterpiece" by many players. However, when we talk about the Three Kingdoms-themed real-time strategy game, we have to mention that there was an important domestically produced game this year. ——"Contempt the Three Kingdoms".
In May 2000, the shadow of a mainland Chinese game appeared on the E3 booth of European game publisher Eidos. This real-time strategy game based on the Three Kingdoms seemed very similar to the popular "Age of Empires 2" at first glance. But once you get started, you will find that the game system is much more complex than that of "Empire 2", and it has an oriental charm.
For example, in addition to health points, all military units in the game also have the concept of physical strength. When military units are in the city, they will automatically consume the player's food resources. When outside the city, they need to set up camps with baggage vehicles, otherwise the soldiers will lose physical strength. value, affecting combat efficiency.
The graphics of Proud of the Three Kingdoms were absolutely top-notch at the time
In the single-player campaign of the Shu camp, the first level requirement is that the three sworn brothers in Taoyuan must produce a large amount of food before preparing their troops. Because food in the game requires farmers to harvest grain from farmland and then send it to workshops to make steamed buns and steamed buns. The form of production is quite complicated, which makes this first level a place where many young and fashionable players get stuck.
"Three Kingdoms" has been developed for two and a half years. As a real-time strategy, the game still retains a lot of SLG elements from the predecessors of Three Kingdoms-themed strategy games. For example, the main source of money is city taxes, and players must follow the population of each city. , economic conditions and public sentiment, reasonably adjust tax rates, pay attention to the degree of food consumption, and promptly deal with random disasters that constantly occur in the game, so as to achieve a mutual balance among the public sentiment, public security, and population in the city.
And it is this game that has become a lingering dream in the hearts of many "Three Kingdoms" themed game players.
Later Three Kingdoms-themed strategy games encountered a period of cold reception, which has a lot to do with the overall development stage of the Chinese game market. WOW ushered in the era of online games, and SLG and RTS began to decline; WOW's "extremely late" and "forgot to start" started an era of domestic online games, and strategy games completely began to become niche.
It’s a pity that this kind of Three Kingdoms-themed game is the only one left in China.
But even during this period, Chinese players did not give up their efforts to play the "Three Kingdoms" theme. Although Japanese games began to be underestimated at that time, Chinese players still produced many European and American hard-core SLG and RTS games of the Three Kingdoms. Theme MOD, for example, the first generation of "Total War" at that time, "Rome: Total War" in 2004, already had a Chinese folk MOD – "Three Kingdoms: Total War".
Having said this, I think everyone can understand the mood of the tearful old man. The game that he wanted to play more than ten years ago but couldn't, so he could only mod it by himself, suddenly became a reality. How? How can you not be excited?
So far, this MOD of "Three Kingdoms Total War" can still be seen in the domestic MOD forum of "Rome: Total War"
Total War: Three Kingdoms: What we know and fear so far
After hearing the news on the evening of January 10, the first thing everyone worried about was whether "Total War: Three Kingdoms" is a legendary series of works from Sega UK (a side product of the "Total War" series, focusing on short-term wars in small areas). Similar to "gaiden" works)? With the promotional release of the legendary series "Lord of Brittany" that night and the absence of the word SAGA after the "Total War: Three Kingdoms" LOGO, we can confirm that night that "Total War: Three Kingdoms" is the latest official work in the series. , this will also be the first time the "Total War" series depicts a war on the land of China.
Judging from "King of Brittany" and "Three Kingdoms", Total War finally returns to historical themes
Although there was no news for a while, with the release of "Total War Legend: King of Brittany" and the arrival of E3, Sega UK began to conduct a lot of promotion of "Total War: Three Kingdoms", including Cao Cao's single The human trailer and Cao Cao's coalition forces besieged Xiapi, Xiahou Dun singled out Lu Bu and other real-life demonstration content. Judging from the trailers and demonstrations, the game has basically dispelled our second worry about "Total War: Three Kingdoms": Will the game be a simple reskin of Sega UK's previous Total War game?
The second worry has been dispelled so far. From the current demonstration, it can be seen that the game not only has very sophisticated troops, equipment, and tactics from the Three Kingdoms period, but also the solo performance of Xiahou Dun challenging Lu Bu is very exciting. It can be seen that it is definitely a Live action captured footage under authentic Chinese martial arts instruction.
Today, Sega UK released the fourth single-player poster of "Total War: Three Kingdoms" general character Dian Wei, but everyone's new worries have also arisen: the four heroes released so far, from Xiahou Dun to Dian Wei, are all characters from Cao Cao's camp. The game screens and content released so far are all demonstrations of the Cao Wei lineup. Could it be that Sega UK is making the old mistake again. The first version of the game is only playable by the Cao Wei camp, while the Shu Wu camp will be included in paid DLC for sale?
Then we can only wait…but shouldn't we buy the DLC once it's released? This is the persistence of Chinese Three Kingdoms themed strategy game players for decades!
Even if it’s DLC hell, how can you not break through it? !