14 minutes gameplay of Definitive Edition

Game looks gorgeous

How did they manage to create such amazing water on a 2d engine :open_mouth:

I see IGN published this their Youtube channel, nice exposure!

Very nice, Im glad to see MS gave IGN the go ahead to posting this, looks awesome.

NOOOOO!! They changed all land-units icons!! :’( :’( :’( :’( And re-used Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II building icons too… shame!!

In addition, when ships destroy that tower, there is not improved demolition animation as we saw in the last trailer… what happened??

Rest of things looks awesome… gorgeous graphics and combat sounds.

@the_choson_one said:
NOOOOO!! They changed all land-units icons!! :‘( :’( :‘( :’( And re-used Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II building icons too… shame!!

In addition, when ships destroy that tower, there is not improved demolition animation as we saw in the last trailer… what happened??

Rest of things looks awesome… gorgeous graphics and combat sounds.

These are clearly placeholders until they finish up the icon assets. At least the AoE2 and AoM ones for sure. Chill out.
Also, the tooltips are toggle-able in the games options (start of video) so chill guys :slight_smile:
Looks AMAZING.

Yeah that’s what I played but I didn’t get to destroy the red wonder in time, hard for an RMer to be given so many resources :slight_smile:

Looks very nice, wanna play it too :slight_smile:

Seems no formation. Barbarian playstyle xD

Old catapult sound seems lost. At first sight I like the old catapult sound more than the new one. No horse dead sound? Some old dead sounds seems better than news.

I don’t like much the orchestra violin sound in an ancient or medieval game. Better make electronic sounds feeling ancient.

Finally the first good look at what DE has to offer. It looks beautiful. Nice to see the different shader options. Animation is top notch. I noticed some things right away that should be changed though, starting with the ridiculous small instruction text field. Should be made bigger vertically. Old original bitmaps won’t blend in with the background. Also the minimap cliff colors are still brown. Why in the world are the wood and food resource counters switched around? That will really confuse players! Same thing for the command and status screens.

Very eager to see the AI in action, in this gamescom demo it does absolutely nothing lol. Passive .per I assume. I hope the AI is improved since I read/heard nothing about it.

That’s awesome, but I would preffer something from the beginning… Showing us how would be to build and evolve from the Stone Age for example xD

Can’t wait to see the map editor! workshop on steam please!!!

looks great!!!

Wow looks smooth! Can’t wait!

This sound effects is what I was trying to achieve when I modded the RoR ones.

I noticed that some buildings didn’t collapse, but simply vanished. Maybe they aren’t finished? All the Babylonian ones had the improved destruction. Shame on the player for going to build more units just when the wonder was about to go down! We missed that graphic :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, something needs to be done about the elephant attack animation, it looks ridiculous! Probably glitched at the moment. I also saw at least 1 elephant carcass graphic missing, leaving just blood.

Blood - looked a bit same-ish and like a flat piece of plastic.

Units attacking buildings from 10m away (wonder). Doesn’t look right! Also I did see one facing sideways to a building while attacking (near an enemy TC).

Fire from tower behind a wall was shown through the wall, making it look like the wall is on fire.

Pathfinding, at the wonder chokepoint, they didn’t get endlessly stuck like they used to. Still a traffic jam though.

Looks very good otherwise, can’t wait to play it :slight_smile:

Sound Effects:
The sound effects need work–ships in particular sound like splintering wood, not the sea-like noises of the original. The sword clashing also needs a lot of work; it’s distracting from the otherwise nice presentation.

Blood:
I will say I didn’t like the bloodied corpses at the end–lacks the visceral look of the original corpses, and frankly looks like the blood is just paint or something, distractingly unrealistic. What’s worse, the blood forms a pattern of what looks like a cross or an eagle every time; not realistic.

Water:
The water is distractingly like that of the shallow end of a kid’s swimming pool–we need deep blue water please.

Animation Cycle:
Finally, the animation walk cycles do not look realistic–watch carefully that priest at the 3:20 mark for an example of a way too clipped walk cycle. Also, the elephants jerk back in robotic fashion when smacking the town center at the 5:45 mark.

Rubble
Looks like crushed candy, not the smoking ruin of a city laid waste.

Not sure whether I’m disappointed or slightly optimistic. Mix of both. Don’t know why they couldn’t just leave the original sound effects well enough alone–the new ones are not very good.

There’s always classic mode. And someone is bound to make a “mod” that will give classic sounds in DE mode.

Blood looks plastic indeed, and forms weird eagle/cross patterns.

Water doesn’t look deep blue enough. Building ruins look like crushed candy, not the smoking ruin of buildings laid waste.

The animation cycles (priest and elephant in particular) look robotic and clipped off too soon–a more naturalistic, longer animation cycle would have helped.

Not sure why the sound effects are altered so much either–some of the ones they kept from the original are great and solid, crunchy to hear; the newer ones seem unpleasant (the sound of splintering wood with the ships and siege weapons especially).

A long way to go overall, though I do like some of the building and tree graphics.

Yer i noticed the elephants don’t have corpses atm. As well as some weird animations.

I also agree with the blood always making the same puddle a bit underwhelming but I really like the way it forms under the corpse and wasn’t instantly there once the body was still.

I hope they polish it off by fixing these sort of minor details.

Looking really good imo wish the video showed what close zoom looked like so we could see the detail.

Ah this is looking really good!

I think I figured out the problem with units not being the correct distance from buildings and attacking at odd angles - the building hit square is treated as if it is on no elevation, while the graphics and the attack units follow the elevation.

It would seem to make sense given the elephant at around 5:30 attacking the house is attacking a house that “is on elevation 1” while the graphic is at elevation 0. (1 is the default, 0 is the only option that “goes down” from that).

Meanwhile, at the wonder attack near the end, you can see all the units attacking the wonder at a position it would be at elevation 1, but it is at 7 graphically. This is further confirmed by checking it while it is in fog, there is plenty of space at the front of the wonder while the wonder itself is almost lost up the back (top) of the fog.

And finally, you can see the swordsman on the top left attacking that side of the wonder despite the wonder graphic not being in that spot.

Note: Screenshots from IGN GamesCon demo video