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I like a lot of what I’m seeing, but I do want to say that its disappointing they won’t bring these to console.
Maybe it says more about the PC community than anything else, but the narrative that they have to focus on PC only for it to be a legit hardcore strategy game seems so unnecessary.
A lot of the reasoning seems to be centered on the fact that a console adaptation has to have controller support, but it really doesn’t. I don’t even want it to, Halo Wars works on console, but I wouldn’t want AoE IV to follow that same path. If Sony can sell PSVR only games on their store and the Switch can sell games that are unplayable in either docked or undocked modes; Xbox can sell their hardcore PC games as K&M only on console if it would impact the game to include controller support. Walling off games like this unnecessarily is antithetical to the future Xbox wants.
Maybe they think a game with that restriction wouldn’t sell well, but at least try it with AoE II or III. They’re adding co-op, new civs, and new game types; on the next expansion just announce one of those are coming to console and see how it performs. There are a lot of people who don’t invest in their PCs but would be more than willing to plug in a keyboard to play this on their console.
Hope one day this happens, and it isn’t seen as making the game simpler, but rather just porting the hardcore RTS series we all love to Series X and S - I’m sure they can run it just fine.
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I’m torn on the graphics and animations for Age of Empires 4. The rest of what I’ve seen looks splendid. Sure, I would’ve liked some blur cutscenes in the campaign, but a BBC-style 3 hour documentary is a very interesting idea in a history focused game. The gameplay could’ve been a little more revolutionary for my tastes, but I think they are striking a good balance between copying Age of Empires 2 and adding new features. (Such as archers on walls, assymetrical civilizations, stealth mechanics).
The last segment where they revealed naval combat was strange. A) the water and the ships didn’t look great and could use some work and B) every Age of Empires has had naval combat. Why is this some kind of cool reveal? The mass Wololo was a much bigger deal, LOL.
I really expect Age of Empires 4 to be on consoles before 2023 to be honest.
I hope so, bringing over Flight Simulator makes it a little more likely IMO, but those Definitive Editions are just sitting there. Maybe waiting to debut with IV will make it more of an event.
The graphics don’t bother me too much, honestly I think readability is pretty important and an area for improvement over prior games. The lighting and artistic approach are a little different, but I think they’ll still look good when its finished. As you mentioned the naval tease and the water physics there were probably the oddest part of the whole thing. I just assumed we would have boats, and it looked pretty early. Again, there are scenes where I find it to look beautiful, and the approaches to all the different civilizations is appreciated.
The mass Wololo was very funny, I want to see it edited so the priests are green and have red and blue charging them before the conversion turns them all green, and the Xbox logo slowly sublimated in the circle as it happens.
Question: One of the things that I took note of about the Age of Empires IV gameplay you’ve shown off is that the game’s visual direction seems to really take inspiration from Age of Empires II, but it’s also modern in its own way. Could you talk about how you struck the balance between a modern look and a throwback visual style?
Zach Schlappi — Art Director: It was taking the best elements of the previous Age of Empires games. When I joined Relic about four years ago, one of the things that was said to me was, “we’re really taking our spiritual inspiration from Age of Empires II.”
So I looked at that and looked at all the colours, did sampling of the colours, took those colours, and we couldn’t do what we did with Age of Empires II. We had to really give it a little more sophistication and more depth in terms of colour. For me, it was really about bringing in a broader audience. We wanted to open it up so that it was easier to read the battlefield, it’s a lot more fun to build. You can really see the investment into the amount of detail in the buildings and the evolution of your towns from Age of Empires to Age Empires IV. There’s a lot more attention paid to the building aspects of the game. And taking those colours, those palettes and applying them to the team colors, as opposed to the entire environment. We really used those accent colours to build the look and feel of the game.
For example, we reduced the amount of detail for small items like soldiers and units and stuff like that for better readability from your camera. We also allow for painterly type detail for the buildings and things like that. We made sure that we kept the buildings in a sort of a what I would consider the coffee-table book-tourist-town-style that’s very colourful; there’s flowers, it’s still historical, but it’s not old and rundown. It’s maintaining the celebratory view of history the franchise is known for.
Age of Empires IV wants to appeal to both casual and hardcore players (mobilesyrup.com)
Tha lack of Xbox version is pretty lame. Xbox supports mouse and keyboard for a reason
Play anywherer seems to only work from Xbox to PC. Gears Tactics worked with a controller at the launch of the PC and arrived months later on the console without any hype. AOE could be ported to play with mouse and keyboard. All Xbox games arrive on the PC, but the opposite does not happen. The xbox community is starting to get bothered by this. Microsoft needs to change.
I think regarding Gears Tactics this is fair. That game should’ve just launched on PC/Xbox in November as a launch title.
In regards to Age of Empires I disagree. I’m not against putting it on console, but the series is older than Xbox and has a pc legacy. It’s the first game in 13 years coming to the series in a dead genre. Relic needs to get this right for PC. And the core AoE audience would get very angry if they had announced a controller version this week. Everyone would call it a ‘dumbed down’ game.
A console port is going to be a lot of work if they have to add controller support. They have to get the pc experience right first. If it’s a decent game then they can look at a port.
Making RTS games is hard.
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I agree with this take. I am honestly surprised why Age of Empires being only on PC has become a big issue among a section of the Xbox community, because the game has a very long lineage on PC and has a very dedicated fan base, and with that comes caveats. It is not just that though, the RTS genre is not in a good way atm and this is Microsoft’s chance to breathe new life into it, so they have to get it right and that means focusing on PC.
In regards to Gears Tactics I completely agree that there was no reason why the console version was not developed at the same time. The genre has been shown that it works well on consoles and that a fan base resides on it.
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