As some of you may know, I cary a BA in History and a MA in American History. It was games like Civ and Nobunaga's Ambition that got me partly interested in history in the first place. One of my favorite groups of games to play are historical games, weather they are war games, strategy based, online, or anything else in between.
Recently the History Channel has started working with Acitivision to produce a line of history games with their name on it. I watch the channel a lot cause they have good programing, but the games have been bargin titles and, quite frankly, fair at best.
But it seems the History Channel got the better end of the deal.
Tonight I happened to catch a new episode of Decisive Battles, one of their staple programs that focuses on critical battles that happened during ancient times. This one specificly delt with the BAttle of Cannae in 216 BC, when Hannibal of Carthage destroyed a superior Roman army through a carefull trap.
What really impressed me was that they used video game graphics all through the 30 minute show to explain and follow the battle. They even said a few times that it they were using 'video game graphics'. It wa sa very cool tough and made eveything very easy to follow, and the graphics were REALLY sharp.
There was only one game engine that I knew off that was even close to being good enough for the show, the Total War Engine that Activision made for their Shogun: Total War and Medevil: Total War games. But the graphics were even better then anything I had seen on my high end system.
It seemed confirmed when they mentioned in the show's credits that they thanked a company called 'Total War Entertainment'.
So the engine must be a improved one of the one we're going to see in the third Total War game, Rome: Total War when it comes out later this year.
I just thought it was a very nice example of two companies working together and helping to give respect for video game graphics.