Shogun 2 Complete Edition — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] It's the ultimate Shogun Tour experience. It's everything. It looked fantastic 15 years ago. It looks even better now.

[00:14] Shogun 2 was one of our most popular Total War titles. It was brilliantly won awards,

[00:33] including the BAFTA, and won our so many people know Shogun 2 as one of our favourite Total more titles. With the complete edition you get everything Total War Shogun 2 in one package.

[00:46] It's everything. It's Shogun 2 plus all the DLCs including Rise of the Samurai and Horn of the Samurai as well as a series of improvements that make the game so much better to play on newer hardware. It is the best version of one of our most beloved titles.

[01:02] We all have a kind of nostalgic memory of what the game was like and seeing it fresh in this edition just brings it back to life.

[01:15] Everything just feels up to date now. There is now UI scaling at 1440p and 4k. We've modernized the strategic overlay on the campaign map, which will make it look and feel more similar to more recent Total War titles.

[01:29] There has been some quality of life improvements including quick deal and diplomacy. Wow, I will listen to your words for a time. Do not waste this chance I give you.

[01:41] We've also tweaked the round divide mechanic. So what we've done is we've added in a slider to tweak the difficulty of this mechanic. If you love it, it can stay exactly the same, but you can now choose when round divide kicks in, or even turn it off entirely.

[01:54] We've also updated all of the cinematics into the iconic woodblock style of Japanese art. We think these look fantastic and really capture so much of what we love from the original Shogun 2.

[02:07] When we decided to do the later editorial art style, they just made the game feel so coherent, so consistent. One of our artists trains to actually develop his skills in that style

[02:21] so he can really kind of bring the world to life. We do know there's a lot of people who love the visual agent cinematics, especially the ninja movies, so if you have a toggle you can switch back to the classic movies if you

[02:34] want. Authenticity has always been important to Total War We know that people often choose to jump into Total War games because they love the setting with Shogun 2 being one of our most popular games and keen to make sure people could immerse themselves in that authenticity if they wished

[02:54] Although Shogun 2 has been available in Japan for a good few years now, there wasn't a localised version of it available to those players, and it was really important for us to include full Japanese and Chinese text and voice acting localisation for the first time.

[03:07] Not only can this now be enjoyed by new players, being able to play a game set in Japan in full Japanese makes it much more immersive and authentic.

[03:37] It's been a real pleasure working with Matabu.

[03:53] They've been really enthusiastic about the project. They've improved a number of things on their own suggestions, including rivers and the parchment map. They added lots of lovely little tweaks to make sure that in certain places, such as settlements,

[04:05] Sheldon felt probably insulated in strain. But the great people to work with fully understood what Sheldon 2 is. We are Mataboos. We are like potent alchemists who mix clever solutions from titles of the past

[04:19] and combine them with modern techniques to bring back to life games we all thank him. The key to success, in my opinion, that would be the deep understanding of the original title. But I think also the feedback of the players, what the title was cherished about, which parts should never ever be touched.

[04:37] But also we needed to find the parts that could be reworked, refurbished or, like, enhanced. We knew from the start that people remember exactly how it looked and felt.

[04:49] The job was bringing it up to modern standards without losing what makes it Shogun 2. The campaign and battle maps were improved, we went through all the units across the board,

[05:01] along with buildings, terrain, vegetation, water, powerfix and lightning. Our biggest initial goal was to upgrade the game to 64-bit, and that was a massive task that basically forced us to touch every single core system for the game and its editors.

[05:18] We knew we wanted to update the graphics, so almost from day one, a dedicated team had been completely reworking the rendering pipeline We went through countless iterations to bring a modern lighting system to the game The complete change of the renderer means the complete change of technical specification

[05:37] regarding the textures and the lighting. That means that we have to redo all the textures, not only up-res the resolution, but also provide new data that wasn't there originally, the roughness, the metalness.

[05:51] One of the things that we were able to upgrade visually is the terrain, because we have more memory and we have more force power on our computers, that means that we can introduce a lot more trees, a lot more rocks and new meshes and take care of these further planes, so they look really convincing.

[06:10] One of the changes that we are most proud of actually are cutscenes. The cutscenes provided in the original source was a bit outdated, we thought, so we took a bold decision to provide new animated cutscenes.

[06:24] The main idea behind the style of the new cutscenes was to immerse the player in the historical setting by creating an art style based on the art movements popular in medieval Japan, such as Yamatoe and Kano School.

[06:37] We combined with the style of 2D textures from the original games to keep the link between and create the best environment for the cut-out animations.

[06:52] Basically, we wanted to create an illusion of moving art and moving ink, telling a story, as if the players were looking at old scrolls from the time period and feel immersed in the game. I think what I'm most proud of is our close collaboration with the team at Creative Assembly.

[07:08] Thanks to that partnership we managed to introduce many quality of life improvements and new features both bigger and smaller ones. For example, a new battle camera mode was added.

[07:20] Now players can switch to the aerial view in a battle. It's a great new perspective for watching the battlefield. Moreover, by holding the space bar players can now adjust some of the visual battle settings

[07:32] like unit outlines or hiding the vegetation. We also introduced an auto-army setup button for the custom battles. This is something especially useful for those who want to play a quick custom battle without

[07:44] getting into the army selection too much. Basically one button and your army is ready to go. Some smaller things like in-game shortcuts for army selection, diplomacy and character

[07:56] panels, support for borderless fullscreen mode and updated accessibility settings. Quick deal? A tab mutiter. this is a very convenient way for quick diplomacy I really hope that the players will see that this is the same game but the whole quality of life improvements that we managed to put there

[08:17] and also the new rendering that is more modern and I think more that people expect nowadays, this is something that they will like.

[08:29] I'm really excited to see new players just load up the campaign map for the first time, and see it sort of refreshed and enhanced. Just the texture of the ocean, the topping of the colours, it looked so much fresher.

[08:43] So I was never really into modding, so I don't know what was available there, but for me, being able to bring in all of these new tiny little factions that I've never played before has offered a really cool new experience. One of them in particular, stuck just on their own on a little island,

[08:56] I can just sail around and start the campaign from wherever I want. Being able to play in the way I want to play has been fantastic. My favourite update to the complete edition is just how natural the controls feel.

[09:10] There's no longer that awkwardness of having to go back and remember how to play an older game, or having your key bindings being off, or having units control differently from how you're used to in more modern, total war games. It's the addition of alt-drag. It's no longer having spacebar to make units move faster in battle campaigns.

[09:26] campaign. It makes going back to this classic a seamless experience. I'm really most excited about our players discovering Shogun 2 for the first time and

[09:38] existing players rediscovering this beloved game. Especially for new players I think it's the joy of experiencing that period from start to finish, all the way from the rise of the samurai through to the fall of the samurai, was the most modern setting we've ever had in a Total War game.

[09:51] Yes sir, the Shogun will have to watch his castle burn. I think for Shogun 2 it is the flavour and the immersion in that game. You can see it in all of the panel art, in even the way people speak when you click on them.

[10:04] All of it really feeds into this incredibly authentic feeling experience. You really do just get swept up in it all. And every piece of UI, music, dialogue, it all kind of serves the same purpose of just drawing you into the world.

[10:17] Shogun 2 was created with a lot of care and attention to detail and I'm excited for new fans to discover it and for the community of Total fans to experience it again with the exclusive issue.

[10:47] The End