Poor Mr Isgreen. Nobody cares what he cared so much about:
The reason the team is going all out is because it knows that it has a responsibility, not to necessarily portray history accurately, but authentically – Age of Empires 4 will invariably end up introducing new areas of history to investigate for some of the playerbase. “I love that responsibility. I want that responsibility. I want Age of Empires 4 to be a trusted source of history. I think we can do that justice; I would be over the moon if people were like, ‘man, this is legit!’ because there’s been some shaky history in the previous Age of Empires games,” laughs Isgreen. “Age of Empires 4 is very much a celebration of all of history – not just the wars and the people, but the technology and spirituality too. We’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that our history is accurate to the places.”
BTW, which part of the “gameplay systems” will be affect so much if they DON’T use “Empire of Jade”?
I’m talking about very basic mechanics.
Starcraft 2 a game more than a decade ago has FAR better pathing and unit control. I cannot deny. It’s very smooth to control and the units quickly respond to your commands most of the time.
I don’t stick to those games longer because I’m not so interested in the fantasy setting.
Also the vast vast vast vast majority can more quickly get into fantasy settings than historical ones. AOE exists and survives because it has a unique historical vibe. If it directly competes with those games with a fantasy setting it has a very small chance of even keeping this current, already-smaller community. It would probably lose most of it.
According linkedn he is not working on the AOE4 anymore. He is working on AOM. AS far as I found info on this. Also when personal change they hold different values.
Also PR statements are PR statements.
“Adam Isgreen, the creative director of Age of Empires, takes us inside the early days of development on Age of Empires 4”
Early days of development
You missed the entire point. Its not that they have to use that name, but if gameplay is good, ppl dont care and Im now talking in general sense. Yes there will always be fanatical players who want accuracy, but vast majority do not care about this stuff as long as gameplay is good.
Even if AOE 4 was fantasy based it would do just fine, because at fundamental level all those 3 games are completely different from each other. WC and SC has far more similarities than AOE with them. So even with fantasy setting it would attract AOE type of players (not necessary you)
Its true that AOE has lot of realism fans, but you guys are minority. Its just fact. While Theme can appeal to some ppl it doesn’t just mean it has to be historically accurate. Some players like swords, bows etc in semi realistic setting and those are not going anywhere.
This is a bit outdated. You should use LOUD minority given the newer information.
I’m not getting even 0.001% of their share of profits so what do I care. Maybe you are?
Not every game needs to appeal to the majooooooooooority. Otherwise everyone will be making fantasy RPGs and Fortnites (and, believe me, those genres are far more fiercer in their competitions). Then why would anyone choose to make games that are not-as-mainstream (e.g. historical). That will be a true hell for us minooooooorities.
AOE has and could and should fill its unique niche to stand out.
So it basically means “you don’t care”, which means you’re still fine if they use other names, including more historically relevant ones.
So what are you doing here spending long replies trying to defend them and teaching people who care “you SHOULD NOT care”?
To show you’re a game design and marketing genius?
Agree with you, it is that dissonance that annoys me, we got more than 10 civs, and 3… factions? variations? how are we gonna call them? one is an order, the other is an emperor, the other is named after a 19 year old girl… what’s this… ??
So even if the name was Ayyubids or Mamluks I would be completely clueless about them and after quickly checking mamluk means “slave” so its quite controversial.
The Mamluk Sultanate is literally what the historical state was called.
You should appeal to your fan base first, is a rule, this is not age of empires 1 it is the IV, you have a ore established fan base… you know what happens when you don’t listen your fan base and you try to appeal to minorities or wider audiences ? DOW 3 happens
Even a fantasy game must be consistent within its own world. Using the example of Warcraft, you can see how the game can change its style to please somebody like you:
A complete loss of principles. We don’t want something like this to happen to AoE. We protect its style and identity in the game. And when we see that the overton window opens slightly in the direction of conditional fantasy or when elements not peculiar to the AoE series are added to the game, this causes resistance.
Any game is a set of conventions. And the skill of game design is to correctly fit the narrative elements into the gameplay elements. Within the framework of historical authenticity, French could not fight with Chinese, but this is permissible within the framework of the rules according to which AoE exists. Chinese can’t fight against Joan of Arc because it’s not Sid Meyer’s Civilization.
For you, any principles can be violated for the sake of interesting situations. If Joan of Arc is added to StarCraft II by the fourth faction, it will certainly be a VERY interesting plot twist. But it will completely kill the game.
Jeanne d’Arc is the worst of all possible names, but calling it Orléans and modeling it after the Burgundians makes absolutely no sense. The Burgundians fought against her and were the ones who captured her and delivered her to the English.
For French variants there are many much better options.
Royal France - Current faction (and the one Jeanne d’Arc fought for) Burgundy - Based on the Kingdom of Arles and domains of Charles the Bold Occitania - Based on the distinct cultural region of southern France centered around Toulouse Outremer - Most Crusaders were of French origin to the point where the locals called all Crusaders Franks
Absolutely, the devs really whiffed it. I can’t even comprehend what the heck a “Jeanne d’Arc” faction is supposed to entail. She is so inextricably linked to France that you can’t separate that out from the main faction in any logical way.
Cheats are there to cause chaos and go with all AOE culture.
But that fantasy Biome is there to ruin the game’s historical theme and is not AOE culture.
What baffles me more is that it actually takes far less time and intellectual effort to directly borrow from some historically relevant names. Most of them except “Jeanne d’Arc” can have a direct mapping to a real world faction (still have no idea what “Empire of Jade” refers to but it should be a more specific focus of Chinese regions, so you can still find a real life counterpart). Forum posters can do this in a minute.
HRE - House of Luxembourg or Hungarians
Abbassids - Mamluks or Ayyubids
Chinese - Dali if southern, Khitan/Jurchen if northern
Like you mentioned in the other post, reused Maltese assets and warthog in the AOE3 DLC seems rushed.
Here it’s not rushed. They even have the time to make these fantasy-like names.
It’s like spending a whole day building an Eye of Sauron model as a Maltese unique building.
It seems to me that the main problem is not in the names. Devs want to turn AoE 4 into Warcraft 3. They introduce civs based on HEROES. Joan of Arc, Saladin, Dracula and some unknown Chinese hero from the Jade Empire. You can’t just rename something that was created based on specific historical characters.
Still can’t believe they basically tried to claim that the name of the Mamluk sultanate was offensive/controversial as a reason for not adding them. It would be like if someone argued against adding slavs in aoe2 because it sounds like slaves.
I want that responsibility. I want Age of Empires 4 to be a trusted source of history. I think we can do that justice; I would be over the moon if people were like, ‘man, this is legit!’ because there’s been some shaky history in the previous Age of Empires games," laughs Isgreen.
I swear, his quote was a complete joke.
Nothing in there is true, but a lie.
We all see it now.
