Spartan: Total Warrior
| Spartan: Total Warrior | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Creative Assembly |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox |
| Release | October 24, 2005 |
| Genre(s) | Action |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Spartan: Total Warrior is a spin-off action game of the Total War series, developed by Creative Assembly and being published by Sega. It was released on Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube. The game has 14 varied levels, in which you are a lone Spartan warrior, fighting alongside your Greek allies against the Roman Empire, guided by Ares.
The gameplay is similar to Koei's Dynasty Warriors series, with the player character wading through droves of opposing soldiers. Unlike the Total War series, Spartan has many elements of fantasy thrown in; the player can summon "God powers" and do battle with monstrous creatures.
Story
The game takes place in the time of the Roman Empire, during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. The empire has expanded into Greece, conquering the entire country, but one city: Sparta. The Romans, under General Crassus, have besieged the city, and are preparing to attack. The Spartan (controlled by the player) fights alongside the Spartans, with Castor and Pollux, defend the walls. The Romans are repelled, but Crassus sends Talos, a giant bronze man, to attack the walls. The Spartan destroys Talos using ballistas on the walls. That night, Ares instructs the Spartan to enter the Roman camp and recover the Blades of Athena. He succeeds, aided by Castor, and in the process frees Electra and several other prisoners. Electra warns the Spartans that the Romans have a new, powerful weapon. She is proved to be correct when the Romans attack with a weapon powered by Medusa, with the capability to turn entire phalanxes of troops into stone. The Spartan once more enters the Roman camp, kills Crassus, and destroys the weapon, recovering the Medusa shield in the process.
Ares once more speaks to the Spartan, and instructs him to go to Troy and recover the spear of Achilles in order to save Sparta. The Spartan travels through the Badlands north of Greece with Castor, Pollux and Electra, arriving at Troy having saved a village from the barbarian warrior under the control of Beowulf, and recovering his hammer, the Death-Biter. The band of heroes enters the underworld of Troy, and the Spartan fights his way to Achilles' tomb. Along the way encountering Sejanus, the Praetorian Prefect, Tiberius' right-hand man, and necromancer, who resurrects many skeletons and undead Trojan and Greek warriors to fight the Spartan. Upon reaching the tomb, the Spartan is once more met by Sejanus, who makes him fight his nemesis, an exact copy of him who has the same abilities, and knows the Spartan's every move and thought. The Spartan again survives, and takes the spear of Achilles which his nemesis was armed with. The Spartan fights his way out of the underworld, and leaves the city, killing the Hydra along the way. However the Spartans were informed by Sejanus that Sparta fell to the Romans in their absence, as they were not there to protect it.
The Spartan realises that Tiberius must be killed and the empire stopped. He travels to Athens, where he meets the scientist Archimedes, who leads the Athenian resistance against the Romans. The Spartan aids the resistance by protecting Archimedes, saving several resistance members from execution, and using Archimedes' invention, the Eye of Apollo, to activate a lightning gun, which he uses to shoot down Ladon, used by Sejanus as a steed. He then proceeds to kill Sejanus, but not before he killed Pollux.
Leaving Athens, the Spartans travel to Rome, via the Gates of Saturn, a fortress in the Alps, where they encounter an undead Sejanus. The Spartan kills his priestesses, the sources of his power, before finally killing Sejanus, defeating him for the last time. The Spartans then continue to Rome, where they plan to kill Tiberius. The Spartan would go through the Roman sewers and catacombs to get into the city, while the others traveled on the surface to the colosseum, where Tiberius would be attending an event, at which they hope to kill him by blowing up his stand. The Spartan succeeds in navigating the sewers, and reaching the surface, after killing the Minotaur. Unfortunately, the others had been discovered and had to detonate the bombs too early, with the result that Tiberius survived. The Spartan saves Electra and Castor, and makes his way to Tiberius. Tiberius, however, falls off the stand to his death. The Spartan then makes his way to the arena, where he meets the true antagonist of the story: Ares, who reveal the truth to him.
The Spartan, who had never known his identity, was really the son of one of Aphrodite's handmaids, who revealed Ares' affair with the goddess to her husband. Ares killed the handmaid, but was banished by the other gods. The Spartan had all memory of his past removed, and was sent to live with the Spartans, having been granted superhuman powers and abilities. He was hidden from Ares, who wanted to kill him. Ares had helped the Romans conquer Greece purely to find the Spartan and bring him to Rome. Ares and the Spartan duel, and the Spartan emerges victorious, destroying Ares.
Historical accuracy
While the game features many people and creatures from history, and Greek/Roman myths and legend, the game itself is very inaccurate in its history (all of the historic information about Sparta is taken from the well-researched Channel 4 2004 documentary The Spartans). Firstly, the game is set in 300 BC where Imperial Rome is invading Greece. Rome was a republic at this time, and in real life Rome did not invade Greece until around 200 BC, but were not there to stay until 167 BC. By then Sparta was no longer a military threat and was under Macedonian dominance. It was the year 371 BC, the Battle of Leuctra when the Spartan army suffered a particularly bad loss at the hands of the Thebans and their allies, in which many of their Spartiate hoplites were killed, thus sapping their military population. The game also has Rome's Colloseum, but this wasn't built until the latter half of the first century AD. The game shows that Sparta had a huge wall to keep out invaders, but Sparta famously had no walls, as the Spartans did not believe in them until around 200 BC when Nabis built them. The game also shows characters using explosive gunpowder, which was never used by any of the Greeks or the Romans. The Romans and Spartans however, did fight against each other in 195 BC during the Roman-Spartan War which ended in a Roman victory.
Characters
One of the game’s characters is the legendary Spartan King Leonidas, but Leonidas died in 480 BC when he and 300 Spartan warriors made their famous last stand at the Battle Of Thermopylae. The emperor during the game is Tiberus who ruled from 14 AD to 37 AD. There was no Roman Empire at the time but during 300 BC there was only the Roman Republic.
The first boss, Crassus, refers to some gods in their Greek name when in fact; the Romans had their own names for the various gods.
Weapons
The game features Spartans using bows and arrows, but the Spartans never used them, as they considered most weapons that killed from afar weak and womanish. The allied Spartans in the game are seen wearing armour resembling that of other Greek states during the 5th century BC, the linothorax - which the Spartans seem to have never worn. All Spartans in the game also use blue as their army colour, whereas historically they were famous for their red tunics and capes (the capes never seem to have been worn in battle). Spartans of 300 BC, as opposed to the early 5th century BC of which the protagonist appears to be from wore very different uniforms compared to their descendants, mostly inspired by Macedonian costume. The Romans in the game also wear armour invented significantly later. Spartans did not fight individually in combat and neither did the Romans. They fought together in formation; the most famous and often used by the Spartans was the hoplite formation known as the Phalanx.
Population profiles
The game has the Spartans look and act heroic but in real life the Spartans were far from gallant. For example, if male babies born in Sparta were too small, weak or sick (all of which were believed as early signs that they would not be suitable for military life), they were thrown off the slopes of Mt. Taygetos, also known as Apothetae or Place Of Rejection. People such as Adolf Hitler have been quoted for admiring this particular quality. Thus, the idea that the Spartans would take an orphaned infant and raise them is not particularly plausible. The Spartans began military training at age 7, where they would enter the agoge system for the education and training--everything from physical training such as hunting and dancing, to emotional and spiritual training. At that age they would have to go through what was known as the gauntlet. They would have to run around a group of older children, who would flog them continually with whips, sometimes to death. From the age of 13 onward, they would be assorted into groups, and sent into the countryside (with nothing, though some falsely believe they had knives), and forced to survive on their skills and cunning; this was called the Crypteia, believed to be an initiation rite to find and kill members of the enslaved Greek people, the Messenians. Before a Spartan warrior went off to war, his mother would say to him, “Come back with your shield, or come back on it”--in essence, this meant return victorious or return dead, as anything else would be cowardly, and a Spartan could face persecution as such. Also, since Sparta was a militarized state, it hated and distrusted such things as Democracy, which the city of Athens championed.
Roman vs Spartans
There is also the question of whether the Romans would have fought the Spartans (if their army was still around when the Romans invaded) or not, considering that the Spartans were always a threat to the rest of the Greeks. Like Sparta, Rome was a militarized state. The Spartans continued their way of life even after the Roman Conquest of Greece. As an allied city it was exempt from direct taxation, though compelled on occasions to make “voluntary “ presents to Roman generals. Some 400 years after the Spartan army was gone, Augustus Caesar wet to Sparta to honor the city in which Roman had did what you could call; cherry picked many of Spartan ideas. Following the disaster that befell the Roman Imperial Army at the Battle of Adrianople, Spartan phalanxes met and defeated a force of raiding Visigoths in battle. This is considered the last noteworthy deed of the Spartans. But if they had fought, like when the Macedonians fought the Roman legionaries at the Battle of Cynoscephalae and the Battle of Pydna, Sparta would have lost to the greater tactical flexibility and formations of the Roman legion and the weapons of the Romans.
Fantastical characters
Not to mention the inclusion of the fictional Necromancer Sejanus and his hordes of zombies and skeletons. Some may say that the inclusion of Ares in the plot justifies the supernatural goings on, but historically, necromancy was unknown to the Romans. Also, necromancy as an art is not known to even have existed at any point throughout history, and is believed by many to be a work of fiction. Finally, Sejanus himself appears to be wearing black, rounded armour, very similar to that of Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor Space Marines. There is no indication that the Romans ever wore armour remotely like this.
The mechanical man, Talos, could not have existed in 300BC. Firstly, the technology required to craft such a huge machine, with fukky working mechanisms and balancers, would not be developed for millenia. Not to mention that the Romans would have had no way of powering it. Steam power wasn't invented until the Victorian times, and if we exclude the dark magic mentioned before, they would have had no way of animating the collossus.
Developer reaction
The Creative Assembly stated in Nintendo Power (Issue 197, Nov. 2005) "We included the Spartans because they were one of the greatest warrior nations the world has ever seen. Then, for their adversaries, we needed a culture that could hold their own against such men- the Romans seemed like a great choice... Having said that, these two cultures never actually met in reality-there was a gap of about 300 years between them. We just knew that such an awesome fight had to be seen to be believed."
Fan reception
When first announced, it created an uproar among a portion of the fanbase, who believed it was a new direction the Total War franchise was taking. While these fears proved groundless (Spartan was created by a separate team for one) Sega's then recent purchase of Creative Assembly exacerbated the problem.
Facts about Spartan: Total Warrior
Spartan: Total Warrior's levels and missions are built into a five-scene, three-act structure made popular by Ancient Greek plays. The story follows the same pattern, with a doom-laden end to act two as Sparta falls. before building to a glorious third act climax. Also, in the game's first level, The Storm Breaks, the opening cutscene has Castor saying: "The Roman arrows will darken the sun!" and then the Spartan replies "Good, we shall have our battle in the shade", a phrase made famous by the Spartan Dienekes at the Battle of Thermopylae, in reference to the Persian Median archers
Music
The original music soundtrack for the game was composed by Jeff van Dyck. Van Dyck also wrote the music for the games in Creative Assembly's Total War franchise.