As Michael Mann, also of World’s Edge, puts it: “We were experimenting, to see how far we could push Age Of Empires before it stopped feeling like Age Of Empires” Ever since development on AoE4 kicked off in 2017, the studios have enlisted a group of long-time players - not just of AoE2, but of all four Age games - to feed back on design decisions as they’re made, and help identify where to innovate, and where to leave the familiar intact.
“We’ve had a tremendous number of discussions over the years,” says Adam Isgreen, creative director at World’s Edge, “looking to define exactly what makes Age Of Empires… Age Of Empires.” It’s a study that’s gone beyond studio discussion, too. Also, the languages they speak in (all real) change throughout the four ages, to reflect the evolution of real dialects.
One thing I love: units whisper their acknowledgement sounds when they're waiting in ambush within a forest.
They’re approaching Age Of Empires with the caution of hazmat-clad 1950s air force engineers, dismantling a crashed UFO under a tarp in New Mexico. The end result is a team with a very deliberate, circumspect approach to their work. But they also know what happens when you drop the test tube, and get a Dawn Of War 3. They’ve made some of their own, famously with Homeworld, Company Of Heroes and Dawn Of War. They’re also a studio with a lot of practical experience when it comes to winning formulas for RTS games. Relic, by contrast, have the benefit of outside perspective on the AoE formula, as well as a wealth of hindsight and player data, given that they’re working on AoE4 with Microsoft franchising studio World’s Edge. Both Age Of Empires 3 and Age Of Mythology, for all their independent merits, suffered a little from a development team who clearly wanted to do something new, and changed perhaps a few too many of their central ingredients at once. And yet, after watching the footage from today’s Fan Preview event, and speaking with the folks at Relic, they look well in reach of pulling it off.Īs odd as it sounds, given that I’m an obsessive AoE2 player, perhaps the biggest boost for my confidence in AoE4, is that it’s not being made by the same team as its predecessors. It’s a hell of a balancing act, for sure. Change too little, on the other hand, and you’ll be castigated for not fixing the broken bits. How do you supplant a game whose star still seems to be rising? Change too much, and you’ll be beasted for fixing what wasn’t broken.
Launching a new Age game now has the air of a prince giving a nervous funeral speech, where he promises to exceed the glories of his father’s reign, even as the king’s body casually bench-presses a horse from the coffin next to him. But thanks to a belting remaster of AoE2 in 2019, the old bruiser is somehow once again the RTS of the day, complete with brand new expansions, lashings of fresh esports, and the largest player base it has ever had.
AGE OF EMPIRES 4 DELUXE EDITION VS STANDARD SERIES
Just the twenty-year fug of strategy dad nostalgia surrounding the series would have been a significant enough headwind for AoE4 developers Relic Entertainment to release into. But it was AoE2 that would be enshrined as one of the all-time RTS greats, and it’s the inevitable benchmark against which AoE4 will be measured, when it launches later this year. The first and third Age titles were both fine games, of course, as was their stoner cousin Age Of Mythology. Despite being the fifth main game in its series, the only way of looking at Age Of Empires 4 is as a sequel to Age Of Empires 2.
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