I was actually fine with Mountain Royals. I loved that expansion. It’s a gold mine compared to Three Kingdoms. I’ve come to realize that it’s truly a classic expansion, even though I was a bit disappointed after the success that Dynasties of India was. Now, it feels like a blessing. The Wei, Shu, and Wu are definitions of how to ruin a beloved formula that kept the game alive. I just don’t get why they won’t even address the elephant in the room.
I think the player base has made it clear, but the team remains silent.
I would also say they reduced campaign contents over time as well. AOC and FE followed 4 civs and 3 campaign + series of historical battles. From that they just simply made 4 campaign and 4 civs and no more series of battles. Since DE they make 2 new civs and 3 campaigns. Also increased price. Not enough new editor units as well. Thats why I’m skeptical to say classical style. Rather I see content reduction.
I don’t quite agree with him, but the rough concept I do.
The Chronicles DLCs make the main devs look worse. Granted, even without Battle for Greece and Alexander, V&V and 3K would have been a mess. But this just begs the question “If these guys can add this many architecture sets, themed models, scenario objects, accurate history and voice-lines, why.can’t.you!?”
Chronicles exists because they hired people that wanted to make an antiquity focused AoE2.
So the choice was never between Chronicles and a medieval Grand Campaign. But even so Capture Age started helping out other teams already so their influence is being seen in AoE2 too and it will likely be even more visible in the next DLC.
It’s surprising how many people are still resistant to seeing this. It’s the absolute truth. Everything the studio has done for the last 2 years points directly at utterly incompetent management. The actual developer work can be good, but when the big bosses are terrible at their jobs and are seemingly intent on running the entire franchise into the ground, there’s nothing the devs can actually do.
We don’t know who did what decisions as outsiders so we can’t know who to blame.
It is always the easiest to just blame the publisher but that doesn’t mean that that’s the truth. We can’t know if Forgotten Empires, Worlds Edge or Xbox/Microsoft wanted the 3 Kingdoms setting for example.
And no stories about how they wanted the Koreans in the game 25 years ago don’t really matter today. We have no idea how much involvement Xbox/Microsoft has with the franchise.
All we know is that they made the wrong decisions but we don’t know who made them.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say Three Kingdoms has “a big campaign”. It has the (joint) least number of scenarios of any AoE2 expansion, arranged in three five-scenario campaigns.
That assumes you treat the three versions of battle of red cliffs as three separate scenarios. Which I suppose technically they are but they’re three scenarios in the same way if I split dos pilas into a Tikal and calakmul scenario, that I would have added a scenario to the game. Technically correct but quite disingenuous.
I don’t really get why if the main game took clues from chronicles it would automatically get better. I mean they already tried: the result was 3k (Grand campaign and civs based on factions). Why for the original game to copy a reskinned formula of the ORIGINAL one would be a good idea? Now because the grand campaign and narration is good everything must look like that? That’s the thinking that was behind 3k and that was exactly why they failed trying to emulate their own peers instead of being confident of their own identity, that’s conformism, not innovation built on a solid identity. It’s like seeing a parent emulating their own children to look cool and up to date.
What the main game needs is its identity who has been lost over the past dlcs. Age of empires 2 is a game about ethnicities/cultures fighting each others in the middle ages (we can discuss about it but roughly 300 to 1600 AD) with slides, funny dialogues/accents, some drama and pop history. Why Ror? Why chronicles? Don’t get me wrong, they’re both fine, specially the second, but where is age of empires 2 gone again? Dawn of the dukes was cool, dynasties of India was cool but I’m not arguing for simply repeating a winning formula… Where is the creativity based on a coherent identity (which means you don’t merge other games of the franchise together, other eras or logic too) that the game initially promised? Yeah AOM is cool yeah, it’s cool also cause it’s aom but you know this is aoe2, remember? Aoe1 was aoe1, was Ror really necessary? Chronicles is Chronicles, aoe4 is a soulless aoe2 and aoe2 is Frankenstein now I suppose?
Again the solution is never to copy the successful kids unless you’re still in high school (and it isn’t anyway). The solution is to have a SOUL of your own and that means no you don’t have to make the crusaders or Genghis khan as a grand campaign, you don’t have to remake Jadwiga, you have to make something better, new, while still holding on to your IDENTITY. No wonder we’re in 2025 and the things I wrote in caps letters are sorely missing, but they can still prove to be an exception.
The Alexander the Great DLC is far from perfect but memorable, and just fantastic all around. Epic, full of dev dedication, centred around the story, and putting the gameplay at its service, with countless wonderful scenarios. Yes, there are criticisms to make (and let’s make them to keep improving the quality), but I fundamentally disagree with questioning the raison d’être of the Chronicles!
Chronicles are wonderful for three main reasons which could not really be ported into the main game:
They can try new things, far from the main caveat of the game, and not be scared of break conventions. Now, it might sound a bit weird that I criticised e.g. the Three Kingdoms so much, as they were really trying many more things. Beyond the fact that 3K just did it wrong (overall), it was also purely not the place to do it! Chronicles does it right (overall) and is the right format (possibly not the only one) for that. It does not hinder the main game, and allows to see what works, what people like, etc. The best and most recent instance might be the attempt to rework the water play in the main game. Unfortunately, I’m not sure this is being done right, but you get the idea.
The theme being explored (Antiquity) is fundamentally not AoE II’s (main game). (Again, quote 3K.) So broadening the fantastic narrative capabilities of the AoE II ‘ressources’, as Ornlu says, to these larger-than-life stories (I mean, Themistocles, Pericles and Alexander the Great!!!) makes a lot of sense! A lot of the fans of AoE II are interested in these, at the very least in campaign settings adn perhaps more. I’m ready to bet that, although it does not sell as well as main game DLCs, it is still a guaranteed number of sells. And wait for the Romans to see record breaking!
For 20 years, the main asset keeping the community vibrating around the game was not the pro players, but the mods. Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but so many wonderful hours spent with AoE II were in the Scenario Editor and in so many different custom mods and campaigns, from the Rockspring Revolution to Lord of the Rings. Although the Steam Workshop is sadly behind us, Chronicles introduces so much more to play around with.
Now the whole question on who would play an alternative Chronicles ranked ladder is a good one, and I plan to deeply examine this in a separate topic.
All of this being said, I wish not to turn my back to classic AoE II, either multiplayer (although I personally don’t have time) or expansions and campaigns. But don’t say that Chronicles in itself doesn’t serve a purpose.
I also think on this thread, some of us are taking this for a criticism of Chronicles’ very existance – which I strongly disagree with – while some other are morning the glorious days of the main AoE II. A few additional thoughts on that:
The various controversial extensions of AoE II in the past ~ 2 years were not all the same at all. RoR was a cool idea for me, but very poorly implemented. On the AoE aspect, the overhaul and balance was actually great, yielding by far the best version of that game. It also added one civ and A-tier cammpaigns. But it was too expensive for AoE: DE owners, there was no smart way to reunite that community around RoR. And for AoE II main players, it was just one controversial civ, both in design and existence, although still cool. V&V campagins are (mostly) great in themselves, but poorly corrected in terms of bugs, and it was too expensive for already available content. The biggest hit though was 3K by far! Not only for all the problematic precedents it brought to the game, but also for everything it wasn’t. The big “classic” civ and campaign intensive DLC we were all hoping for.
About identity:
yeah I agree to that. Let’s consider that it’s very difficult to keep adding civilisations endlessly, and even more so to make them relevant and unique. The Romans and a lot more so the 3K showed how problematic that is. t the same time, the Jurchens and Khitans, although also presenting flaws, are much better, so it is still possible.
All of this absolutely begs the question of the future of the game. There’s always a growth crisis eventually. Adding more civs endlessly is not necessarily the solution.
To the main game’s credit, a lot has improved since the release of DE. Patches have fixed chat spec to pathing, added nice graphics and much better balance. Yes, there’s still a lot to be done, but the meta still shifting regularly shows how lively the game is.
My biggest regret after the 3K is that the game is not encouraging modding and custom gaming, from lobbys to single player, as it used to.
Fair point, allow me to rephrase then: Three Kingdoms has three five-scenario campaigns with a shared final scenario, for a total of 13, the least of any AoE2 expansion.
In any case, for players who mainly or entirely care about singleplayer campaigns, it is pretty light on content. It seems to be primarily aimed at multiplayer-only players.
I agree with your post but I don’t get why people are praising the narration in Chronicles so much. The narrator is detached from the narrative, rather than being a character in it like most of the base game campaign narrators are – to me, that makes it much less engaging. Also, the narrator cutscenes are often pretty long – if I play a game I want to actually play the game, not listen to a history lecture.
That said I’m basing this on BfG only, so maybe it’s different for Alexander.
I dont think this is a good excuse. We always had narrators in 3rd person and Chronicles aint different. Technically narrator’s story aint over yet. Its most likely temple priestess. Again Characters in AOE2 always narrated the story in 3rd person. Also you can always skip the cutscene if you want. Sounds nitpicking over anything
We don’t have to argue about the quality of the DLC, I think we can all agree on that it wasn’t the best. I was more talking about the general concept of the DLC, just with a better setting and better quality.
I think the next main game DLC will show where the game will be progressing in the future.
I left the following coment in the video, because I heavily disagree with the final thoughts; so I copy it over here as well:
I heavily disagree with the final points; when Battle for Greece released I was sceptic, but after playing that campaign I thought the idea was really cool; having a single player side mode that covers antiquity and is not related to normal multiplayer balance gives CA a lot of creativity, and also serve as a testing ground for normal AoE2; we can see that with the upcoming water balance and the use of oysters in new maps. It bothers me a little that pros and casters always say new content needs to go to them and tournaments giving that that is only 1% of the player-base; don’t get me wrong, I think we all love big S tier tournaments and see the big names clash, but I’m just saying, don’t ignore the other 99% of the player base that play unranked or just single player Skirmish and campaign.
Oh yeah you’re right, he (and I) forgot that Chronicles is also a testing ground for the main game. The 3 Kingdoms DLC reused multiple civ bonuses that first appeared in Chronicles and Chronicles is certainly a testing ground for campaign design and water gameplay. The 3 Kingdoms campaign already used a Chronicles style UI.
Vocal audience of the game are from that scene while you silent majority who simply plays SP contents and move on to next game. Also vocal audience also being esports scene as well. So you are gonna bound to get more feedbacks from them.
I agreed as you said. Pro player scenes are playing from CD days and still very conservative to changes or evolution. This is how FE/WE DLCs developed as well. Just playing far too safe. AOE4 literally is cool evolution ideas they couldnt just do it even if they wanted to. Playing safe and game setting in Middle Ages. Didnt go future American Civil War/WW1 era then modern and finally something like star wars the way original Ensemble planned.
Honestly im not liking new water tho. It hardly addressed anything water faced. Getting weird mish-mash. Also more confusing triangle when they could’ve played simpler.