Total War: Medieval 2’s matched combat animations were brought to us by Spartan: Total Warrior

Creative Assembly is currently celebrating 25 years of Total War before revealing its plans for the next Total War games at the end of 2025. As part of the ongoing festivities, the studio has been publishing retrospectives on its past titles and the episode on Total War: Medieval 2 has unveiled some interesting synergies between the beloved strategy game and a hack ‘n slash spin-off title called Spartan: Total Warrior.

Greg Alston, the director of the art team for Total War, remembered that members of the team doing the animations for the hack ‘n slash title moved over to the Medieval 2 following after the conclusion of their previous project, bringing lots of valuable knowhow with them.

“That was where we started doing these matched animations and we started to understand more about the readability of animations,” he said.

The combat animations in Total War: Rome were still created based on the methods CA had employed for its older sports games, namely “just mo-cap it and do a few tweaks.” However, Spartan: Total Warrior taught the team a great deal about making things “a bit more theatrical.”

The team fondly remembered the infantry charge animation that had the soldier leaping off the ground, reminiscing about using it for one of the game’s trailers.

Medieval 2’s more fluid animations were also helped along by the fact that the devs added more bones to the virtual skeletons of the soldiers. Troops in Rome were apparently lacking shoulder bones, which is why their attacks looked rather stiff.

So while Spartan: Total Warrior, an aborted attempt at making a Total War game for consoles that ended up being transformed into an action game instead, is mostly forgotten today, fans might want to pour one out for the title next time they boot up Medieval 2, which is among the most popular strategy games of all time.

More news on DBLTAP: