Once about people in the aggregate, Total War is increasingly a series about the antics of individuals. There’s something of the slippage from RTS to MOBA in how Creative Assembly has edged towards a more intimate breed of strategy, built around asymmetrical relationships between overdressed oddballs rather than mere economic considerations or the splash of army on army. Total Warhammer is the obvious play-maker there, with its vast archive of Games Workshop celebrities, but in Total War: Three Kingdoms, we may have reached a new tipping point. Where even Twarhammer’s crusty old lords and heroes are more structuring devices or combat specialists than characters, Creative Assembly’s latest often feels like the stabbier kind of daytime TV.
Three hours in Total War: Three Kingdoms, the first Total War soap opera
