Earlier this week, Sega released a supposedly ‘enhanced’ version of classic strategy game Total War: Shogun 2 whichin reality was a lazy, haphazard and ultimately pointless release, being worse in pretty much every regard to the 2011 original it was supposedly enhancing. Now, making things even worse, Sega has decided to pull the game from sale.
A huge bummer
AftermathLuke Plunkett
In a statement postedto social media earlier today, Sega say:
We’re aware that Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards. We’ve seen your feedback, comments, and reviews. We agree that the current experience is not where it needs to be.
As a result we are working with platform holders to temporarily remove the game from sale and to reinstate the original game while we investigate the issues. Existing owners will still be able to access and play the game.
We are working closely with our development partner to identify the causes of these problems, deliver improvements, and ensure Shogun 2 – Complete Edition meets the quality standards players expect from Total War.
Interestingly, the statement is signed by Sega and series developers Creative Assembly, but not Polish studio Mataboo, who alsoworked on the remake, and who have previously been accused of using AI-generated assets in their releases.
I am incredibly mad about this. It took paying customers around half a second to clock everything wrong with this remake, from bugs to shoddy textures to the AI-generated portrait images. Why, then, did Sega think it was fit for release in the first place? How did this pass every stage of QA, every milestone assessment, every analysis of the “finished” project? And what was pushing Sega to release a remake of a 15 year-old Total War game now, in the kind of state you’d expect of something unreasonably rushing to meet a deadline?
This could have come out at any point! And it’s a Shogun 2 remake, it was never going to do the kind of business that would make a company need to push it out to make a difference to a fiscal quarter. This whole thing just makes Sega look so careless, so inept. The idea you can just dump this shit on your most loyal fans, in the state it’s in, and only be aware that it has “fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards” after you released it and charged people money for it is just astounding.
One thing you’re never supposed to do as a games journalist or critic is to call something lazy, because quite often the actual cause for a shortfall or frustration with a game was down to stuff like timing or reo say when it comes to Sega’s responsibility as publisher? Releasing this game in the state it was in was either lazy or reckless, neither of which seems ideal
Maybe next time, Sega, you can ‘work closely with your development partner to identify the causes of these problems’ beforeyou release it.
