Answer:

No. They aren't We can come close, but they aren't possible with current technology. Fortunately, light doesn't change - technology does.

Regardless, games will never be able to exactly mimic or copy realistic global illumination. In order to do so, you have to have infinite raytrace bouncing, proper occlusion, proper diffusion, real time global shading for shadows, and a host of other things in 3D that attempt to make up for it. It's possible in big-time rendering engines like LuxRender to obtain similar results, but that's 1 frame. A short video will take days and days to render, if you're lucky and have a spare computer or computers to network together to distribute the rendering load.

The closest we've come, or rather the industry has come, is the Fox engine, which looks pretty darn realistic in controlled, indoor situations. Outdoor, absolutely not, and that is for the very reason I mentioned - global illumination and infinite bounces for the rays.

The end. Anyone who argues with this has utterly no idea.

@SamuraiuMujuru @thermalmotion And if by exceed you mean barely match. Bethesda games may have a lot of "Bugs", but they are still the best western RPGs available. Yes, I do have Witcher 1 and 2 and have played portions of them, not entirety. Also never finished Skyrim, but I can say from their other games and its moddability that its excellent.

@gufberg @Criggie That was fixed long before Emperor Edition. I haven't played the game in 4 months and it was working perfectly fine last time I did. Not sure what all these allegedly bad campaign/game design decisions are people whine about though.

@blutfahne Have always wanted that feature since Rome 1 let you view your cities on the battle map.

@gufberg @grenadehh Absolutely wrong. Sorry. Far more than 6 buildings in Rome 2. EB you're right about insofar as provinces and allied states - which should be a thing in Roem 2 and is a thing but it's not well done - but Rome 1 on it's own is not a complex game, at all.

If you're looking for a literal reproduction of history, go play EU Rome or Grand Ages Rome or any of 57 other pure strategy Rome games. TW can only be so complex while still being a game with full fledged battles and armies - something those games hardly feature.

@DB2538 9:15 is literally focused on a building on fire and units moving as the camera goes by too fast to see.

Try again bro.

@gamingnerd121 @drysprocket Total War was always buggy. People who say otherwise show that they are fake because even Shogun 1 had problems, like the fact that it was literally impossible to assassinate anyone with a ninja.

Torrenting TW guarantees it will be buggy. I know from experience.

@DeKuip @jhonMalcovich You mean like how every game takes a year to patch? Or like how it took Blizzard 8 years before they actually finished the game world in WoW?

@Bobdog52 I find that highly unlikely considering ballistae can hardly kill anything in Rome 2. Maybe if you had 12 of them.

@rfm1420 This isn't a new setting. This is literally the exact same concept as Barbarian Invasion, the expansion for Rome 1. It just focuses now on Attila, allegedly. It's the same campaign map, same Europe. A few different factions to reflect the change over 3 centuries. The Romans will have new, horrible units, too, like comitatenses and mostly cavalry.

Not to mention they are making the same settings because they are the ones people liked. Napoleon and Empire were stupid games. Fall of the Samurai was good but still anything with guns is boring. The only topics they can explore now are fantasy, or China.