Rome II will be ‘Total War’s Saving Private Ryan’

The Creative Assembly wants the next Total War to be more than just a strategy game – it wants to create Spielberg levels of drama.

The developer promised Total War: Rome II will feature more units on screen at any one time fighting across more detailed environments and terrain.

And the studio drew inspiration from the acclaimed Saving Private Ryan to make players care about those soldiers.

"We’ve got naval battle and land battles interacting for the first time, so you can throw ships up beaches and have people ‘Saving Private Ryan-ing’ it up the beach," The Creative Assembly’s brand director Rob Bartholomew told MCV.

"When I say Saving Private Ryan, that’s a phrase we’re using around the office a lot because we’re trying to inject that real feeling of horrific warfare so that the loss of your troops is going to affect you more deeply this time around.

"We’re putting more personality into the troops that you’ll send marching off across the battlefield by using facial motion capture and giving more resources to animation.

"We want to create that level of human strife, drama and character on a very macro-scale amongst these gigantic battles at the same time."

Total War: Rome II will be released for PC in 2013. A full interview with Bartholomew will be published on Develop later this month.