It’s quite obvious that I’m a rogue deep down, but like pretty much everyone else, I’m fond of video games more generally. Outside of roguelikes, one of my favourite genres is grand strategy. I’ve played a bunch of Paradox Interactive stuff over the years, Civ has been a mainstay in my gaming life since my dad got the first family PC, and the third big franchise I’ve returned to repeatedly is Total War.
I name-dropped Total War last because Master of Command, the upcoming strategy game from The Armchair Historian (or Armchair History Interactive), is a game that hopes to channel much of what I love about the Creative Assembly series, but with a roguelike-inspired twist that should keep tacticians on their proverbial toes.
Who is The Armchair Historian?
If you’re not familiar with The Armchair Historian, I highly recommend you head over to YouTube, where you’ll find a channel stuffed full of historical documentaries that cover all manner of topics and time periods. Founded by Griffin Johnsen, this history platform has, over time, evolved into much more, including a game development studio by the name of Armchair History Interactive.
Armchair History’s first game, Fire & Maneuver, was a turn-based game steeped in military history. Master of Command is the team’s second outing, and it’s a more ambitious project, but I think also one with potential to connect with more people. People like me, I daresay.
It was Griffin that I spoke to this week, as the studio prepares to release Master of Command on PC (Win) in just a few days, on September 17th to be precise. During our chat, the main features of the game were explained to me, and as I’ll relay to you now, I think the mixture of ingredients going into this cake has real potential.
What is Master of Command, then?
I’ve mentioned Total War already, and as you can see from the screenshots, both this game and Creative Assembly’s series are all about smashing huge armies into one another. Except where Total War’s real-time battles are bookended by a grand strategy campaign, Master of Command’s combat is encased in a roguelike framework that will attempt to keep things fresh and less predictable.
(An interesting aside, the game’s original name was Master of Command: The Seven Years’ War – but they cut the suffix to streamline the intent of the game, and lessen the link that people might subconsciously make to Total War simply because of the similarities of the title structure.)
One of the things that I found most interesting during my chat with Griffin was how the studio is looking to balance procedural elements with historical accuracy. This is a genre with a certain amount of expectation when it comes to authenticity.
Master of Command, as you may have guessed, is set during the Seven Years’ War, chosen because of the richness of the period. However, your experience of the game is never going to be a blow-for-blow retelling of the event. In this sense, it’s not at all like Ultimate General, another series that was mentioned in our call, where you go from region to region during the American Civil War and follow the timeline provided to us by history.
In MoC, aspects of the scenario are procedurally-generated, so it should take much less time for you to feel like you’re fighting your own version of the war. The main map of Europe is correct, but you don’t need a firm grasp of which armies fought where because your game will play out in your own procedurally-generated regions. You’ll notice the correct place names, but the proc-gen should mix up their placements on the terrain.
History with personality
Another tantalising prospect is how they are exploring the more individual aspects of war. There’s going to be more of a focus on the leaders who take units into battle. Mount & Blade and its focus on RPG adventuring is another thing that was mentioned more than once during our call, and I think this aspect of the game’s design might be one of the things that resonates strongly with the roguelike and roguelite crowds.
It’s easy to get lost in the spectacle of history and maybe even forget that the units under your charge were once real flesh-and-blood people. During our call, Griffin explained how the campaign in MoC hopes to foster a more personal connection between player and troops. Rather than simply using them as tools to perform a function in part of a more expansive experience, you’ll evolve your fighting force over time.
Some of this will be done by RPG-like gear allocation. The system described to me instantly made me recall the one in the XCOM reboots, where adding equipment to units (single soldiers in that instance, in MoC we are talking about regiments) felt like a truly impactful part of your decision-making.
You’ll be able to make slight cosmetic changes to your units, but there’ll also be a fair degree of historical accuracy at play here, too. I’m really interested to see how this mixture of realism and creative expression will be received more generally, but I personally think the RPG elements sound exciting.
A roguelike if you want it
While Master of Command isn’t being promoted as a roguelike, it contains all of the ingredients required to be considered part of the new wave of strategy-infused rogues, with Against the Storm bringing the Warcraft vibes, 9 Kings repping the addictive auto-battlers, and MoC promising to bring some grand strategy flavour to the table.
There’s an Ironman mode, adding the permadeath element to the proc gen for a the more rogueish angle, which Griffin told me is the intended experience, even if it is optional. I suspect a number of generals out there will prefer to save scum their way to glory (I’m not judging), but for those of us who like the added high stakes of perma-death, you can opt-in for that here.
I’ve mentioned already how regional maps will be procedurally generated, and unit recruitment will also be individualised for each play-through. The adoption of proc-gen has allowed Griffin and his team to focus on other areas, for example, making sure unit behaviours and AI-controlled movements look and feel natural, which is easier said than done.
This is a game set during a time where using cover truly matters, guns are still clunky and inaccurate, and we’re still close enough to medieval warfare that a cavalry charge still has the potential to be a devastating and effective way to turn the tide of battle.
The run-time of a campaign is going to be more roguish, too. It’s a war game so we’re still talking three to six hours rather than 40-odd minutes, but this is a game intended to be played over a day or two, not across weeks and weeks. I certainly appreciate strategy campaigns that respect your time, but it also sounds like there are enough moving parts and intersecting elements here to ensure a fair amount of long-term replayability.
Another interesting thing that I want to mention before signing off, is the potential scale of the battles. As you can see in the screenshot below, you can take a lot of units into battle. However, the size of these battles can potentially be throttled by the capability of your hardware. As far as I understood it, the better your PC, the more troops it can handle.
Anyway, I’ll wrap this one up by noting that Master of Command is coming to PC (Win) in October, and as you’ve no doubt guessed based on my enthusiasm thus far, I’m looking forward to taking this one out for a spin. Stay tuned for my thoughts in due course!
