Yes, it’s nice to have an intro narrated in a documentary style, it makes it feel more real. But it’s a double edged sword : it feels like it already happened (well, it actually did…), and makes it as if we were not entirely in control of what we are doing and what is happening.
What was nice with AOE II was the stories usually told by people who actually fought those battle or at least got a connection to what happened or what was going to happen, so we got invested to the soldiers we had to commend.
Think of it this way : in one of the norman campaign we have something like this when a wall falls
“The french army achieved to tear down the wall, but the keep had to hold up to survive.”
Now, imagine hearing a soldier say : “They breached the gate ! Hurry, the keep must not fall !”
I don’t know about you, but I’m far more invested by the calling to arms from the soldier than the documentary narrator already knowing what is going to happen
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It would be pretty jarring to have the units speak old english, and then your hero unit just speaks modern english. Which is one reason I think that just doesn’t work.
Throughout the Norman campaign alone we have units speaking old french and progressing upward towards more modern sounding english. So unless you want King Henry to speak in old english to you (which you will only understand with subtitles) it really doesn’t seem worth it.
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As a documentary addict, I personally like the documentary approach, but I have to admit Im not sure about the omniscient narrator. I would say they are quite nice, but, again, for me RTS are not about campaigns, which are always silly representations of what actually happened. I think the only RTS campaign where I could get immersed and got me really impressed was Homeworld’s.
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Agreed, Homeworld’s campaign is one of the few RTS campaigns that actually had a compelling story.
As for Aoe IV, I think the documentary approach suits what they’re going for. They’re describing historical events after all, not making a drama.
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Let the units speak old english and the subtitle to modern english.
I don’t see any problem in voice acting and only allow naration at the start of a mission, to introduce stuff.
Rigth now, the documentary aproach is killing the fun out of the game and people lose interess in playing and learning.
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It worked fine in AOE3. As well as in most historical movies.
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Aoe 3 completely ignored historical accuracy lol.
Plus the languages they spoke in aoe3’s timeline are way closer to now.
Wait… Asian civilization spoke english ? 
What are you even talking about lol.
Well, there were campaigns with Asian civs in AOE III and the characters in it spoke English during the cutscenes and during the scenario there if it was the game language
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Oh yeah lmao that was weird as well.
Honestly. The campaign was kind of a let down for me.
I really enjoyed the “in-the-moment” style writing they had in aoe2 and aoe3.
I think the documentary should be a side content that you get access to as you go through the campaign, but they should definitely made it more narrative focused, rather than documentary focused
The intros are also SO LONG. I honestly just skip them, because I want to PLAY the story, not WATCH it. If i wanted to watch a damn documentary I would be on youtube watching modern history tv, or some other medieval history focused channel.
Also, the single player stuff lags for me. Like I can’t do the campaign on some levels or the training levels, because it starts lagging like crazy. Only happens in single player, multiplayer runs smoothly.
I hope they change how they write and design the campaigns, cause the documentary take me OUT of the zone and that moment of immersion break kind of ruins it for me and makes me just want to not play the campaign.