"At one point we were like, we don't wanna sugarcoat it. South America and the Americas just got decimated by these other civilizations coming in. This is where we have to walk a line between what do we think makes sense and what do we think is the right thing to do for a broader spectrum of people? I mean, bad things happened during colonial times. "The age had always been referred to as Age of Discovery or Age of Adventure. "Well, colonialism was a policy," Adam says. The Firepit has now been renamed to the Community Plaza and the dances performed on them are now referred to as ceremonies and have had a visual and animation adjustment. The Discovery Age is now called the Exploration Age, and the Colonial Age is now the Commerce Age – this last change being one of the most controversial. In the Native American tribes, the Sioux have been renamed the Lakota, the Iroquois the Haudenosaunee. Let's look at the representation changes. This was something that the team behind the Definitive Edition felt they needed to address. If you've had the same hotkeys for fifteen years, you don't just relearn them."Īge of Empires 3 also caused controversy with its RTS-style-campaign plot, which ignored dark and shameful aspects of the time period it covered, like the transatlantic slave trade. For every option we added, there was a legacy option. There are accessibility options that allow you to customize colors, especially handy for color blind players.īert Beeckman, co-founder of Forgotten Empires, says: "We wanted to add a lot of things to the game, a lot of new UI options and every time we were like, OK, we have the old version working let's just keep that in and make it an option. In fact, there are "default", "definitive" and "classic" options to choose from when customizing hotkeys and UI. Many of the Definitive Edition's changes can be toggled off. Some feel it did not achieve that, but it didn't mean it wasn't a good game in its own right.ĪoE3 is in fact a great game, but it just didn't feel an authentic enough Age game for some of the fans, and even now is beaten by AoE2 in popularity. Ensemble simply wanted more innovative gameplay, while not losing the core of the game. They felt it made the game easier, while still being unnecessarily complicated. The infinite food and gold meant you could concentrate on military power without having to worry about running out of resources.įor some, it was a turn-off. Military units were different, and the unique civ bonuses along with the specific civ’s content meant you had to learn entirely different approaches to each game based on which one you played. Farms and mines now infinitely produced products without any player input, a feature that would partially make its way to AoE2: Definitive Edition in how it allows you to toggle farms to automatically rebuild after they become fallow. It introduced the Home City, which allowed for more strategy and customization to your civ. However, Age of Empires III had its fair share of controversies upon its original release. (Image credit: Microsoft) Unwelcome changes Everyone loves some of the games, specific games, and it was fun to try to understand what each of them really loved and wanted in a modern Age of Empires." "It's been an amazing journey going through all of the games that we've done so far, really diving into each of the different communities," he told us. We spoke to Adam Isgreen, studio Creative Director for World’s Edge, about the evolution of the franchise. The Definitive Editions are remastered versions of the originals, improving on things like the graphics and UI, as well as adding new content, while maintaining the essence of the classic games that we know and love. Microsoft, through its Xbox Games Studios division, then partnered with Forgotten Empires, Tantalus Media and Microsoft subsidiary World’s Edge Games Studios (formed specifically to focus on AoE) and began work on the franchise.
In 2001 Ensemble Studios was acquired by Microsoft and later disbanded in 2009. (Image credit: Microsoft) Joining Microsoft
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