Total War: Eras - A Total Experience For Strategy Fans

With the Rome: Total War - Alexander expansion having shipped just a couple of weeks ago, The Creative Assembly's franchise now encompasses a total of seven strategy games and add-ons, clearly making it one of the most respected strategy series to date. And soon enough, it will all be available as one single package, titled Total War: Eras. SEGA announced that the compilation will include every currently available Total War [strategy] game, and will be released on 30th June 2006 across Europe, and 25th July in America, exlclusively for the DVD-ROM.

Ever since the first Shogun: Total War game came out in 2000, The Creative Assembly produced an impressive array of follow-ups, starting with the Mongol Invasion expansion pack for Shogun, Medieval: Total War and its Viking Invasion expansion, and finally Rome: Total War with its two add-ons, Barbarian Invasion and Alexander. All of these will be available within the Total War: Eras compilation, along with several other features included in the limited edition:

- "The Total War Story", a 40-minute documentary detailing the past, present and future of the Total War series, featuring exclusive interviews, game footage and discussion of Med II.

- Exclusive preview material for Medieval II: Total War, including a poster, screenshots and artwork.

- Art booklet plucked from the Creative Assembly archives detailing the creation and evolution of the Total War series.

- Glossy A2 poster for Medieval II: Total War.

- Five art cards covering the whole Total War series.

We can't seem to find any mention of a price for the Toltal War: Eras pack in SEGA's press release, so I'll guess we'll just have to wait for the actual release tomorrow (at least here in Europe) to see if it really has an "excellent value", as Matt Woodley, Creative Director of SEGA claims.

Looking ahead at the future of the Total War series, next up is Medieval II: Total War, which The Creative Assembly team hopes to complete by November 2006.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)