Yeah, AoE4 is really lacking in this respect.
From what I played of AoE4, it felt like it was treated mainly (by a wide margin) as a pure chess/technical/tactical/strategy game. Like that was the big focus, and the surrounding game world was just a necessary evil to do the bare minimum on; as if the only reason we all play AoE is to just have chess matches. (In other words, it feels like the extra graphical ‘fluff’ was minimized (not a big priority) and possibly deemed not very important.)
I don’t know if that is how it was meant, but that is how it felt, for better or worse. Maybe the majority of people don’t care to have all the little graphical touches? Not sure.
For me, the AoE1 and AoE2 worlds always transported my mind to that time and place. They felt like living, breathing worlds. Subtle environmental and graphical details added up and combined with the strategic/tactical gameplay to make an off-the-charts overall fantastic gaming experience. The graphical touches have always been very important to me with AoE. Even though by today’s standards they’re not magnificent touches, they offered enough for the their time to be believable and immersive.
Little things like hawks/birds flying over, a wide variety of fauna, water features, plant life, etc. was nice.
Being that it’s the year we’re in, I thought AoE4 would’ve blown the lid off this type of thing. Instead, the game world we play in disappoints me quite a bit. It has some awesome features and good potential, but it’s currently lacking in several respects.
- I remember the ground underneath water felt like generic cookie-cutter repeating texture stamps, for example. (Maybe they’ve fixed that, I don’t know.)
There’s a lot of potential with AoE4, imo. But it needs to turn the corner from feeling like a “chessboard game with a fairly sterile environment and UI,” to a game that actually embraces the map/world/time and tries to transport you there. (Yes, the clinical/sterile UI also adds to the strong chess game/tactical vibe, imo.)
I still hope and plan to buy AoE4, but only after it gets more love and care