Yesterday I talked about the upside of Creative Assembly returning to Japan in their Total War series.

Today, five reasons why this idea gives me pause.

1) Homogeneity: Though I’m sure that CA will manufacture reasons to mix up the factions a little (even the first Shogun had some differences in costs and unit types), for the most part you will have very similar armies fighting in very similar terrain. Since the first engine, CA games have done well with giving you varied experiences depending on the side you took. So they either abandon that or shoehorn in a bunch of very stupid distinctions.

2) Sun Tzu: Creative Assembly says that it will build an AI for Shogun 2 that inspired by the maxims of the great Chinese warrior thinker Sun Tzu, the patron saint of bad business and management books that try to turn often vague, contradictory or context dependent ancient sayings into some sort of general practice. This is a little like designing a game’s personalty matrix based on the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a bullet point that sounds good but really means nothing when it comes to game play – a pattern that some CA fans have been noticing a lot in the last few games.

3) Lack of Ambition: You could say that moving to a simpler, war focused setting is a good thing since it means that CA can play to its strengths. You could also make the case that this means they are giving up on ever making the strategic AI much better than it already is. As resources are diverted from the design stuff that makes the strategic level work, I fear that we will have to settle for the strategic computer opponent we already have. CA is tossing a lot of systems overboard in this back to basics move; I would almost rather they stumbled forward and fixed some of their good ideas.

4) No Obvious Quest Giver: Rome: Total War introduced the Senate, a body that would dole out rewards and prestige for whenever you fulfilled a quest. The pope and merchant guilds did this in Medieval 2, and Empire had this as well, though more poorly implemented. This was a great design decision since it gave the player goals that both structured play and could sometimes impede player ambitions. If you are an all powerful warlord, who gives you your quests? The Emperor can’t – he’s a puppet you need to legitimize your claim to the Shogunate. You don’t really have a cabinet, do you? And why would you listen? There needs to be a way to keep this mechanic in that does not do violence to the setting.

5) Been There, Done That: I love the return to melee combat, but let’s not fool ourselves. This will be the same sword/spear/horse/archer circuit we’ve seen before in a setting that we’ve seen before. This is a setting that CA did not think was worth revisiting for ten years, despite churning out two Medieval themed games, an ancient one with two additions and a gunpowder one with two additions. Is there something here that CA has been avoiding? Is the samurai setting just not a winner for a Western audience? (Recall that the first Shogun was a hit because the mere idea of the game mechanics was so thrilling.)

I’ll report what I see at E3.

So this is a thing. There are teaser trailers all over, and I’ll probably be seeing something at E3.

Top Five Reasons Why This Might Be A Good Idea:

1) Simple Diplomacy: You have a bunch of clans fighting each other to be the top dog. There will be less need for fancy alliances and trade pacts, which is fine because Creative Assembly is never quite sure how to handle the velvet glove.

2) Similar Armies: As much as I love Rome: Total War, you could see CA kind of go off the tracks a little by trying to add so much flavor to every nation. You have a lot of mostly identical armies in early modern Japan. This should mean less stupid stuff or cheesy tactics dominating the battlefield.

3) Return to Melee: Yes, there will be the usual bows and muskets, but the Total War system doesn’t work as well for gunfire as it does for beating on people with cold steel. One of the great charms of the game system is charging in and seeing your enemy break before you even arrive. When they just turn and shoot you in the face? Less fun.

4) Clear Goal: Accumulating prestige or winning specific territories is all well and good, but Shogun will be about domination – a clear count of who is winning what should be enough. I imagine you will need to hold Kyoto, of course.

5) Navies Are Nowhere: When I saw the Empire: Total War naval battle stuff at E3 a couple of years ago, I was both impressed and concerned. Sure, it look good, but how would this slow moving morass of ships work in a game? It never really did, at least not well enough to recommend all the money and time put into it. Shogunate Japan? No major naval engagements so they throw that stuff aside and focus on the land battles.

Tomorrow, why this game might be a bad idea. Until then, don’t miss Rob Zacny’s paean to the game in our decade series that we keep forgetting to update.