Shogun 2 "multiplayer is absolutely massive," modding out of the box "better than Empire," says dev

Total War: Shogun 2's senior community manager, Craig Laycock, has offered up some nice details on the game, especially pertaining to the game's multiplayer, map and modding possibilities.

Speaking in an interview with Armchair General, Laycock said a lot of effort was put into the multiplayer in Shogun 2.

"The multiplayer is absolutely massive," he said. "I have said it before, that saying Shogun 2’s multiplayer is extensive is like saying Neptune is far away. We have new features like cooperative multiplayer campaign, we've got the avatar progress map, the clan competition, the head-to-head campaign, plus the standard 1 v 1, 2 v 2, 3 v 3, 4 v 4 for the land and naval battles. We actually have so many new features that it is hard for us to explain the amount of new stuff in the multiplayer because of its wide range.

"Multiplayer has definitely been a focus, and we hope people play it, and live it... the clan competition in particular has the potential to be absolutely massive. We will wait and see how multiplayer goes and then adjust and balance it from what we observe, but we have had immense feedback so far on the balancing, and we will keep critiquing in an effort to reach perfection."

Religion and the game's map were also touched upon, with Laycock stating that Korea was included in the map for aesthetic purposes only, and folks shouldn't "read too much into that," for the time being. "Extra stuff," will be added in the future so don't "rule that out," just yet. Players will also have to keep a close eye on how the spread of Christianity will affect the game. The religion will provide players will "easier access to gunpowder and units like the missionary," but it will also cause unrest, so watch the spread of it wisely.

When it comes to being able to create mods for the game, Laycock said Creative Assembly is considering modding workshops so players will be able to create mods for the game much easier.

"The first thing to remember is that Empire was the first game in the series to be built on the Warscape engine, and the Warscape engine is something we built from the ground up, he said. "Warscape was greatly polished with Napoleon, [and] with Shogun 2, we really refined the engine. During that same time the modding community has been making their own tools from the Warscape engine, so the tool set that the community has developed is really solid now. To the point where modding for Shogun 2 right out of the box will be better than Empire a year after release, there is a lot of possibility there.

"The big names in the modding community seem confident that they can do a lot of retrofit mods right out of the box. We are also possibly planning a modding workshops that will teach people how to more easily mod the game."

You can read the full interview through the link up top.

Shogun 2 is out and you can watch the launch trailer below courtesy of Gamespot.