Crazy Idea: Time Travel DLC

Age of Mythology: Retold AoM - Discussion
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Kronos was technically not the god of time, that was Chronos, but they already got mixed up by the ancient Greeks themselves. But the idea is that if he is the god of time, can’t he travel though time or move people from other point in time to the time where AoM takes place?

There is two possible ideas I have with that (that could be both done in the same campaign):

  1. Travelling to prehistoric times and encountering extinct animals like Mammoths or Dinosaurs. Wouldn’t that be cool to have Dinosaurs in AoM?
  2. Travelling into the future into the time of AoE3DE and have a crossover DLC. Maybe explaining how the Fountain of Youth got created. Since both games run in the same engine it would be relatively easy to port over some units like Musketeers into AoM.

There are some unused assets in AoMR that reference AoE3DE like this pirate Cyclops.

It would be kinda funny to see AoMR and AoE3DE pirates team up with each other.

Of course this shouldn’t come at the cost of a traditional AoMR DLC but it would be a good chance for a cross promotion with AoE3DE. Also I just love having some more outlandish Scenario Editor assets.

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I’m not opposed to having time travel shenanigans in the game.

I don’t think dinosaurs would fit Age of Mythology. The vibe of AoM is that you have the basic human faction then spice it up with mythology and it would be weird if dinosaurs were used as that spice because dinosaurs aren’t mythology. At best, if there was going to be a time travel plot campaign a T-Rex easter egg in the corner of a map could be cute, but I would not want dinosaurs to be a focus.

Mammoths were alive recent enough I would be fine with them being in the game in more or less the same way wild elephants are.

I could see a time travel plot as a way to justify a more modern pantheon. Like some people have requested a Lovecraft pantheon and I could see time travel as a way to in universe justify having steamboats/guns/etc. (I personally wouldn’t like a lovecraft pantheon because it’s not a “real” mythos like greeks or egyptians, but I could excuse the modern-ness of them).

Worshipers of Kronos summoning gunpowder units from AoE3 would be really cool to see in a campaign mission or as a blessing for AotG. It would be a crazy plot twist and would certainly get me interested in a new campaign.

Kronos was technically not the god of time, that was Chronos

This might be a nitpick and I don’t want it to distract too much from the main point of your post, but I see this a lot and it’s wrong. The distinction between a primordial god of time and the parent of the gods is a difference between Orphic cults and wider Hellenistic belief. There is not a single primary source that has the two gods existing at the same time, it is two branches of a religion of characterize the same god in different way.

Parent of the gods kronos is a god of time. It literally translates to “time”. Kronos represented the big picture change in time, he was the one that brought about the age of the titans and his defeat represented the change over to their “modern” age of the gods.

The difference in spelling is meaningless. Read enough sources and you can see the Orphic Chronos and the mainstream kronos spelled each spelled starting with a C or K, each spelled with an H for the second letter or not, and each ending with a “nos” or “nus”. Any translation will be a translation of a translation of a translation… from people with different alphabet and unknown accents, the spelling is more vibes based than a hard science. The difference in spelling is handy when comparing and contrasting Orphic vs Mainstream Hellenistic characterizations, but presenting it like there are two separate guys who could meet up and discuss their favorite ways to eat children is not based in history.

The only good source I’ve seen that even attempts to separate them comes is greek dictionaries having separate entries for Κρονος and Χρονος, though they translate to ‘time’ and ‘old fool’ which when being used to refer to god of time and main antagonist of the story they’re a part of they might as well be synonyms. You can find plenty of slightly different spellings of the names of gods, that doesn’t mean each one is a unique god to all the others.

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In theory, AoMR and AoE 3 take place in the same universe, since in AoE 3 you have treasures like Arkantos’s armor and ship. So yes, in principle, traveling to prehistory with dinosaurs would be kind of meh, but traveling to the future would be interesting as a crossover DLC… for example, the Fountain of Youth could be a Healing Spring left by the Norse in the year 1000 CE (or something similar from Kronos after his defeat by Kastor in The Titans and Obsidian Mirror)…perhaps the Osseus Circle could manage to activate it after arriving in America in 1565, causing Alain Magnan to ally with Kronos, while Morgan, Lizzie, and Sahin ally with Arkantos in god mode and Athena (since they are the only ones canonically immortal), plus the Aztecs, who were already allies of both… then we would have a legendary battle where, after defeating the Circle and Kronos, Arkantos and Athena would say goodbye to our Blood protagonists and return to the Mount Olympus…

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In Lovecraft’s stories, the mythos is antediluvian, so there won’t necessarily be firearms or other modern technologies.
It’s true that it’s fictional, but most of Lovecraft’s works have the advantage of being set in our world, so I don’t have too much trouble imagining the Great Old Ones coexisting with Egyptian, Greek, or Aztec gods—unlike other fictional fantasy pantheons, as I’ve seen suggested on this forum.

P.S.: Sorry if my English is bad—I’m using a translator.

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Yes, in Call of Duty Zombies, in the Aether storyline since BO3, they reinterpreted Lovecraftian lore as an ancient civilization from eons ago called Agartha (like the one we know from esotericism) divided between Keepers and Apothicons (corrupted Keepers) that was worshipped by the Templars during the Crusades and then rediscovered by the Nazis in the 1930s…their leader is Shadowman or Tony “Hale” Rapt, which is an anagram of Nyarlathotep…since Call of Duty is owned by Microsoft, could we see a similar mythology (even if fictional)?..Corrupted Templars like those in AoE 4, but instead of worshipping God, they worship Nyarlathotep, and with that they obtain Lovecraftian “mythical” units and perhaps units from all over the world (Andes, Central Asia like the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas, Egypt, the center of the Amazon as corrupted mercenaries)?..

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I had this idea for occult stuff once:

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I though about having a map where the animals are just replaced with Cretaceous animals, maybe some new plants, but the Late Cretaceous fauna is pretty similar to the modern day so the current plants and forests might be good enough.

There could be an Easter Egg like a Triceratops Rider unit similar to the Jaguar Rider.

It would only be a place that is visited for a few mission not the core of a DLC or something.

Mammoths are so recent that they were still around when the pyramids where build so they could potentially even be added without time travelling.

But Pleistocene fauna would generally be a cool thing that is “close enough” to be added whit a little time travelling.

Not a fan of that.

But what would be extremely funny would be an “American” pantheon with the founding fathers as “Major Gods” and the AoE3DE American units as units. But of course that couldn’t actually be added.

That would be an interesting way to get a new interesting threat that isn’t just more normal units or more myth units. Fighting gunpowder units could require some strategic rethinking.

How gods “worked” was not really centrally organised so a lot of different local gods where just all called “Zeus” despite originally being different gods. It’s like the same with Chronos and Kronos, they were originally different gods but then merged over time.

It’s kinda funny to think that the super important plot point from AoE3 is just a Healing Spring that some Norse guys left on their way home from the fight against Tezcatlipoca.

Well Tezcatlipoca can look into the future so maybe after his defeat he teams up with Kronos and with their combined abilities they pull people from the future into the present of AoMR.

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Yes, Cthulhu has its fair share of deities, although it doesn’t make sense to incorporate the Elder Gods, since there are already many gods (Greek, Egyptian, Atlantean, Japanese) in the game:

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Although there are several Ancient/Outer Gods that could be included (those who predate the sinking of Atlantis, aka the end of Fall of the Trident):

Major Gods (The three deities—Azathoth, the god of death like Hades; Yog-Sothoth, the god of time like Kronos; and Shub-Niggurath, the goddess of life like Gaia—are thought to form a trinity with Azathoth at its apex):

  1. Azathoth/Ubbo-Sathla (would basically have the powers of Hades)

  2. Yog-Sothoth/Umr at-Tawil/Nyog’ Sothep (would basically have the powers of Kronos)

  3. Shub-Niggurath (would basically have the powers of Gaia)

Minor Gods:

  1. Nyarlathotep (would obviously have the power of Chaos)

  2. Ab-T’bohugha/Kaajh’Kaalbh (would have the Volcano power, creating a lake of lava around him)

  3. Aforgomon (would have the Forest Fire power and the ability to revive bodies)

  4. Aiueb Gnshal (of Bhutanese origin, said to have helped Genghis Khan conquer Asia)

  5. Azhorra-Tha/Kaalut (first settled on Mars and then hid on Earth, would have the Locust Swarm power)

  6. B’ar-Zok (being the son of no one, would have the power to absorb everything through the Implode power)

  7. Daoloth (would have the power cut from the game Enrage or something similar to Ragnarok)

  8. Demogorgon (would have the powers of Set, possibly a major god if released as DLC)

  9. D’endrrah (would be like Aphrodite but it would have a power similar to Greek Bronze, but with obsidian weapons and buildings)…

In DLC:

  1. Droom-Avista: (Discovers relics around the entire map)

  2. Ghroth (caused all of Earth’s mass extinctions…allows you to discover enemy units and hide your own)

  3. Gloon (would have a power similar to the Tartarian Gate)

  4. Mh’ithrha (would basically give you the Norse Fenris)

And the Titan would be Cthulhu, obviously…

Yes, that would be a great plot twist…it would have been cool to see Chinese characters in the Aztec campaign as a nod to the Chinese campaign in AoE 3…

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They are still present in Siberian Tengrist legends btw:

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Don’t we already kind of have that? We have Troyan war Era Greeks along with Aztecs along with Sengoku Period Japanese.

The civilizations of this Game are a idealized version mixing several periods of their history

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I’ve had a very similar idea. However, the way I imagine it, it would be the other way around: AOE3 universe travelling into the past. For a potential campaign, I imagine a european explorer (spanish?) would discover the old Atlantis. The word would spread of course and that would be the cause of a war among the superpowers of the time for the control of Atlantis and its artefacts. The fights could awaken the titan Kronos, who would drag them to the past into the AOM universe.

I also think it would be cool if the “guest civs” were able to summon creatures from their own folklore. I’d love to see the Brittish summon Spring-heeled Jack, who leaps in battle like an anubite!

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Yes, more or less…it used to be more justified by the underworld, but it seems that chronology itself doesn’t matter in AoM since only the area of ​​mythology in question matters…

Yes, that doesn’t sound bad… I would make it simpler, by having Old Atlantis simply emerge from the water in 1500 (in an event map for multiplayer)… before launching a reimagined Blood campaign with the protagonists of Blood and Fall of the Trident where what I said above happens (maybe Arkantos and Athena could meet Morgan and Lizzie after Pirates! or A Pirate’s Help)…

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