When Empire: Total War ships in early February, it will include a new type of mode for the series--the Road to Independence, a story-driven campaign centered entirely around the American Revolutionary War.

At a recent event, I got the chance to speak with developer Creative Assembly's communications manager Kieran Brigden. We went over the new mode, and of course talked about the game in general. The interview also covers how Creative Assembly approaches these projects--and where the studio might go in the future.

Shack: Can you explain what the Road to Independence campaign entails?

Kieran Brigden: Road to Independence is a story-driven campaign that sits alongside the grand campaign. It's another campaign for you to play in the box. It's separated into three chapters, so if you imagine it like, the first timeline, kind of comprises of the foundation of Jamestown by the British, the defense of those new colonies, surviving the winters, and defending your people essentially.

You then go into a second phase, which is the battle to remove other European powers from the sphere. So you've got George Washington fighting on behalf of the British as a Virginia colonist, not as a Brit but as a Virginia colonist, and you've got to get the French and everything else alongside the Brits out of North America. And then finally you move into the last phase of the campaign, which of course is Washington and the revolutionaries kicking the Brits out of North America and establishing the thirteen colonies as an independent nation.

Now what that means in real terms for players: it's a focused, goal-driven campaign. So you've got a number of resources, there are certain options available to you, and you always know what your next move is and why. So you're not going to go, I need to achieve this objective, maybe I'll attack this, defend that, make this treaty or whatever. The point is, that decision is made for me by the timeline in which I'm playing.

So it's a nice introduction for people who haven't yet played Total War games. It's also a really cool way of playing through a very interesting story. So in that respect, we hope it'll offer something new for both parties.

Shack: Is this an attempt to appeal to North American audiences with a game that otherwise would mainly be about Napoleonic, European power? I mean, we're not all exactly history majors over here.

Kieran Brigden: A lot of people are sort of saying, "You're doing it to break into America," and that kind of thing. Yeah, it works, in that it's something familiar to Americans.

But it's also the first Total War game that features America as we know it. So it makes thematic sense to have it in there. Additionally, it's something that we think is a very, very interesting story to tell that fits with the narrative of the period. The period is one of colonization, revolution, independence, and nothing really tells that story as well as the American people's road to independence, starting out as literally a colony, no taxation without representation.

Hopefully it will appeal to Americans, but we know a large number of our fans in Europe are really keen to play the story-driven campaign. They're not like, "Oh, it's only for Americans." It's a story, it's a campaign based in history which they want to play through.

Shack: And the European powers were involved as well.

Kieran Brigden: Exactly, they were involved militarily. So it's one of those things that we think will appeal to a lot of people.

Shack: How much do you guys think of appealing to a wider audience as the series goes on? I know with Rome you made some adjustments to speed up gameplay. How much do you guys struggle with that? Because I know I'm sure you're all fans of historical realism in some sense, but you also have to make concessions for gameplay.

Kieran Brigden: The thing is, we make games, right? We don't do history simulators. So the fundamental thing is, is it fun to play? We never throw history out the window--we are always aware of what the historical constraints and flares are, things that are cool about that period, and the kind of mechanics that introduces.

But at the end of the day, blah blah blah, etc, it's a game. It has to be fun to play. A good example of something that we took out, that we would have otherwise instituted--tacking on ships. When you sail diagonally to the wind. That's true, you do it, it makes your ship faster and so on, but it was a pain in the ass to play. So we were like, you know what, we're not going to do that.

So what I mean from the design perspective--you're saying, as we get bigger and bigger, are we torn between the fact that we have this sort of established, hardcore historical fan base, and at the same time we have this business pressure to make numbers, and so on and so forth?

But I would like to say, on record, that we never "sell out." We never just go, "Oh, we're going to churn out another one, and we're going to make it so broad-brush that it's for everyone, and nevermind our real fans." We've got people that still write to us or email us that have been with us since Shogun, and they're always a key factor in what we do.

Total War is kind of a gameplay mechanic, a concept, you know? The interface we use, the turn-based strategy, the real-time battles. We apply that with modifications and extensions to whatever period we want to do and evolve it every time, so it gets that one step better. And certainly one thing that's really cool about Empire--it's more the subject matter and the achievements we were able to make graphically and gameplay terms that entice new people.

And that's the way it should be--it should be a case of other people looking at that and saying, "Hey, that's pretty cool, I'm gonna pick that up and try that." This is the most accessible Total War game to date. We haven't made it accessible by "dumbing it down." We've made it accessible by removing a lot of the micromanagement.

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