Age of Mythology: Retold's developers are going 'way beyond' the definitive editions for Age of Empires: 'We want to build the game in your head'

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 80 points –
Age of Mythology: Retold's developers are going 'way beyond' the definitive editions for Age of Empires: 'We want to build the game in your head'
pcgamer.com
18

Build the game elsewhere, please. I have other plans with my head.

Honestly, I wanted to like the og one, but I'm so burnt out on games using the same three pantheons when there's a genuine trove of them out there.

I hope it does well and maybe they can do more than the same three, especially considering the one dlc it got wasn't what I'd call good either, but at least it was different.

I'm so burnt out on games using the same three pantheons when there's a genuine trove of them out there

Based on that can I recommend Dominions to you? It's like civ and battle simulator had a baby, but the civilizations are based around fictionalizations of actual lore from a wide variety of cultures. And you get to create a god to lead them in each game.

Dominions 6 is the newest one, but 5 is just as good, cheaper and has a more sprawling mod scene.

Fair warning though, it's an incredibly complex game and definitely has a learning curve.

The game was super jank but I remember it really fondly. I play the GOG version at least once a year. I am really excited to hear this news, but I will keep my expectations in check.

Worst case scenario this will follow the same path as SimCity. They release a new game and people keep playing the original one 😂😂

It's really a win-win either way. My guess is it'll be a really pretty game worth playing, which might or might not become the definitive AoM to play long-term. If it's not, I'll pick up the original those couple times a year I need my fix

which might or might not become the definitive AoM to play long-term

AoE2 DE and AoE3 DE definitely supplanted their predecessors pretty much entirely. In the case of AoE2, it even managed to unify the two disparate playerbases of those who stuck to the old OG game and used Voobly and those who were playing on the HD Steam release. World's Edge has done an incredible job stewarding the franchise up until now, and with the exception of how terrible Age of Empires Mobile seems like it's going to be, I have every faith in them to continue doing that in the future, including with AoM Retold.

I was disappointed to see that they seem to have opted not to include the Chinese in Retold. In an interview a year or two ago Adam Isgreen specifically mentioned that they would find a way to include them. The same interview where he first publicly floated the idea of making god-powers reuseable.

Obviously the Tale of the Dragon DLC was extremely poorly-received, but that was down to bad design decisions when designing the Chinese civ, as well as some poor balance changes to the core civs that came out at the same time as the DLC (Greeks getting a healer, Norse getting an archer, etc.) wich fundamentally broke the most basic design decisions at the core of the civs. The fan community had basically assumed we were getting a revamped Chinese civ, and were additionally hoping to see another new civ in addition to that—possibly the Aztecs, given the popularity of a fan-made mod for that civ. So getting fewer civs than we were expecting is a pretty big disappointment.

Hopefully the Chinese are coming in a future DLC down the line, and they just decided they needed more time to be able to spend coming up with a new civ design and new campaign for them. And hopefully it's a big enough success to spur on further DLCs like Aztecs in the future. Given the quality of work being done on AoE2, 3, and 4, I certainly have faith that they could do it if they set their minds to it.

It's probably going to be a dlc, that way they can have time to fix things and double dip money wise, if the game doesn't sell well they might not bother to. Though I think the game is perfect as it was, I didn't even play with the titans on the extended edition in aom or the new civ. Maybe I should go back and check it out.

Personally I never played it without The Titans. I first played it in probably 2005 on the Gold Edition. I loved it in that version; it was probably my most-played game for a long time. The campaign was a brilliant sequel to the original, and some of the multiplayer custom scenarios were incredible. I must have played dozens of hours of escape scenarios alone.

I was absolutely gutted when my disk got a scratch and no longer worked, back at a time before I was aware of no-CD patches. I went searching all over the place until I could find a store that still sold Age of Mythology. I was so excited, until...on the bus back I read the back of the box. This was an edition published by Ubisoft, which did not support online play. From then until EE came out, I basically completely stopped playing. EE brought me back in, mostly playing casual multiplayer with friends against each other or against AI, or the occasional custom scenario made by one of my friends.

I basically stopped playing the game within a month or two of Tales of the Dragon being released. The DLC itself, and the 'balance' changes to the other civs that came out at the same time, just killed my motivation and that of my gaming group.

Huh I really should check out the new campaign, the original was such a ride. I didn't even know it had a dlc with Titans before it came out on steam and I saw they added those and a new civ. Hope the game works on linux like aoe2 de does.

a dlc with Titans

Well, not so much a DLC back in the day! Just an old-school expansion.

Not sure about Linux. I know that the original game had an official Mac version which could do multiplayer cross-play, but The Titans was never released for Mac, and unlike the modern DLCs, back in the day you couldn't do multiplayer between Titans and OG players.

The changes to unit and god powers worries me a bit. Hopefully there'll be some way to change those back to the old system for those who perfer it. The old system, IMO, was a really interesting approach to unit micro that was great for newbies and still had a lot of depth.

I suspect myth units will be toggleable to auto-use powers. Like you say, it's a really handy crutch for newbies (and we are talking about the game that had an "auto-queue villagers" button). But I doubt god powers will be able to be switched back to the OG design. If you want that, EE is still out there, but being able to reuse god powers is inevitably going to be something that figures into their balance going forward, so disabling that would have larger ramifications.