Should they have kept the original Forgotten campaigns for DE?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I know there was a lot of issues with them, such as bugs, infinite enemy unit spam, enemies having unlimited resources and being post imp while you’re restricted to castle age, and more.

But I think they could have fixed these issues for DE and kept something that was part of AoE2 history instead of completely erasing and replacing it. Personally I liked the RPG element, as it offered something different and experimental. The Prithviraj campaign felt like a real adventure but now the new Prithviraj is just another generic build and destroy. Same with Alaric. The new Honfoglalas just pales in comparison to the OG, Admittedly, DE Sforza and Bari are brilliant campaigns, but again the old ones offered something a little unique and different. Also it would have been nice to hear these campaigns with voice acting.

I think they could have easily touched it up and made them more playable. It’s a shame that these campaigns which for me represent the revival of our beloved game have just been eradicated instead of merely improved.

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OG Alaric was super underwhelming. Current one feels like a real AoE2 campaign

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Yes, they should have, but they didnt. This is just one of their bad decisions for RoR.

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Alaric:

Hd had many incongruences like facing belisarius and inventing Roman generals but de is just very uncreative build and destroy for the most part and very uninspired storytelling. The sack of Rome is just repetitive, mindless and unhistorical… Who even is stilicho? Such a shame for a topic so fascinating…

Bari:

First of all why Bari? Anyway Hd had some nice ideas but the concept simply didn’t work in practice. Scenario 2 exemplified this, you can’t create a map for an rpg scenario and then make it a build and destroy, ending up having a nice map made of narrow one way roads while being stuck in castle age with little gold (they had to make it regen in your base). It’s like trying to play aoe in a crash bandicoot level, age of empires need space, you can’t make it work in an adventure kind of map.
That being said de Bari is ok ### ### ############# more streamlined but like you said miss the quirks. Scenario 3 in particular is just a random map while 4 is cool, they should have been on that level.

Sforza:

I don’t remember hd too much but again you had that feeling they were just trying to impress you with quirky triggers rather than telling a story and being fun.
De is not a masterpiece either, scenario 3 is a random 1v1 map with mirror civs and the rest is just normal. I admit I’m not very invested in the plot.

Prithviraj:

Similar to sforza more of a show of quirks and what you could do with triggers. But some of them were actually fun, the first scenario I think and the one where you initially do a stealth mission and then have to run with the Princess. It was not that bad for what I remember, it managed to balance better quirks and aoe gameplay.
De is fine but a little inconsistent maybe, unfocused, probably because the civ has been changed but not the campaign core. Change after change, it now feels like an afterthought under many aspects, still ok, the last mission since Doi I find very hard lol!

Dracula:

The one that was less changed I think… Scenario 3 is very good in de. The first in hd was the typical showcase of tricks and fireworks while de rework showed how inconsistent it is without those novelties. Even in this case despite the character, the story never ###### ### Scenario 4 was kinda pointless and the last one is like Bari 2, the map is too small and designed for an a to b to c mission so when you actually have to play aoe it falls short and feels out of place.

El Dorado:

A nice adventure actually, doesn’t even try to feel like aoe which it’s better than searching a grinding compromise like in Bari. It doesn’t work as an Inca campaign for sure but it’s creative for what it does, de reworks are very far from this level of playfulness. I think it has been too maligned after all!

Overall I think hd lacks in practicality and common sense but de is often a little too on the safe side. I looked at the Trajan campaign on ornlu channel and it was so run of the mill (storytelling was a little better at least) and also doi campaigns were a bit repetitive in terms of gameplay, nothing too brilliant.
De should risk more while managing to remain intuitive (unlike hd) and they need better writers for slides.
Alaric is so underwhelming… I really wish we could get over the ##### ### #### and honour rhetoric to have more than two dimensional characters even if it means taking some poetic licenses. Joan of arc, jadwiga and Saladin had good storytelling.

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I think Rajendra had a nice storytelling, or at least it tried to. It’s not the first time we see a campaign in which the protagonist is a bad guy, if not THE bad guy (I think there’s one in pretty much every update) but I think it was the first tale of corruption, showing a character’s journey from goodness and well meaning to egotistical villainy. That being said, in my memory the journey was maybe a little too cartoonish in its progression.
I feel like Sargon tried to do the same thing and possibly achieved a better result (at least in terms of storytelling), though it didn’t start with its protagonist appearing as immaculately pure.
Now that I think about it, Devapala also had a story about a journey of corruption followed by a redemption arc, but I think this one was very poorly executed (and so it is in terms of missions design, imo).

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Yes, with Attila, Timur, Rajendra and Sargon we are the bad guys…

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FYI: You can download the original Forgotten campaigns as a mod in DE, including El Dorado.

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Genghis Khan is the OG bad guyand the most over the top one, especially in his fourth scenario. I would argue Dracula is kind of a bad guy because of some of his methods, but the narration doesn’t lean that much into it and he’s mostly presented as a hero defending his country so he’s more nuanced.
It’s implied at the end of Yodit’s campaign that she may be far more ruthless and tyrannical than how the narrator portrayed her, but ultimately the game let us decide what we want to believe (possibly as a nod to the contradicting source regarding the historical figure).
Francisco de Almeida is also portrayed as kind of a bad guy (which is probably fitting for one of those who help begin the age of European colonialism), but with some nuance being brought to the character.
Gajah Mada is probably the most nuanced character in an AoE2 campaign so far imo, I really liked playing his campaign in part because of it.

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Rajendra is fine, it’s made by Bassi after all? Still not on level with jadwiga which I think it’s by far the best campaign of the game. Devapala was not exceptional for sure.
I’ve seen only the first scenario of Sargon and storytelling looks promising while gameplay is ok but it seems to me they’re running out of ideas.
But like with civ bonuses I think there’s still a lot to invent, they need to take back the naive creativity of hd as op said without those gimmicky excesses.
If you stay adherent to history you can actually come up with new mechanics and a dramatic plot, or at least that’s my philosophy when making custom scenarios.

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Yes, we are definitely bad guys in many campaigns, Lord Edward and the Dukes of Burgundy would also be bad seen from the other point of view (Wallace and Joan of Arc)…

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Hmm, it’s interesting to see that people care so much about storytelling and characterisation in a campaign. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do want some context and continuity to the scenarios, and I think the AoE2 approach is much better than the detached approach of AoE1 and 4. But I also want to play a game, not watch a slideshow, and I generally get bored when the intros are too long, which is usually necessary for any meaningful level of storytelling and characterisation.

As for the HD campaigns, I remember finding them pretty much unplayable, and they always just felt like a bundle of custom campaigns. Way too many RPG elements, which I don’t think work well in AoE2. I think replacing them was a good decision.

That said, I’m not that impressed with some of the DE replacements either. I find Sforza bland, Bari tedious, and Prithviraj quite hit and miss. I really like Alaric, though!

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Sure, though it can work both ways. From their point of view, Wallace and Joan of Arc are the ones in the wrong.
By the way, in the missions where he fights against William Wallace, it’s Edward Longshanks or King Edward I. He was only a lord until he ascended to the throne.

When I talk about storytelling, it’s not just the voiceovers in the intro and outro, it also includes dialogues, missions, maps, level building, etc. In a game, all those things matter for storytelling.
For instance, Kotyan Khan’s campaign (one of my favorites by the way) is about a leader facing an unstoppable ennemy with countless soldiers and deciding to save his people by fleeing and migrating far away. It’s shown in part through your objectives not being building a huge army to crush your ennemies but saving as many people as you can, and I see this as a way to tell the story.

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I think you’re in the majority here, don’t worry ahah.
But to me it’s very important, I get bored as well but I don’t think it’s because of slideshows being long but rather them being not very engaging.
Also in game dialogues most of the time are just bland statements about what’s happening, would be cool to see a more “lyrical” approach since it’s history after all, I think it calls for it.

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Maybe. I can’t remember any specific examples, but some intros from the more recent campaigns have felt very long to me. But feeling long isn’t the same as actually being long.

I feel the same with any game though. I used to love cinematics and in-game cutscenes when I was a teenager, but nowadays I dislike anything that takes away control from the player. Even triggers that move the viewpoint annoy me.

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The intros for the Portuguese campaign seem like they should end at certain points, but just keep going. It’s very annoying.

This is Return of Rome, but the 1st Sargon mission also has a ridiculously long intro.

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Maybe that’s what I’m thinking of, but I vaguely remember some from the DE expansions that felt long as well, perhaps from The Hautevilles or something from Dynasties of India.

Yes, maybe that’s the longest. I understand why it’s like that, but at the same time, at the beginning of a campaign especially I really just want to get into it. I like it when games throw you straight into the action with no explanation, and then give some background later on – but I don’t see that working well in an RTS.

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Sargon is good as a story, going from prophet to villain is a very strong plotwist…

The intros are good, I don’t feel they are so long…

Of course, of course, I call him Lord Edward because that’s what they call him in the campaign and I like it better than calling him “Edward Longshanks”…

True, it’s like a campaign where you feel latent defeat and you can be annihilated…It’s like Terminator Defiance xd…

Yes, but it’s long on purpose, to explain why you start with Sargon and his follower in the middle of the desert… if you skipped the intro, you wouldn’t understand anything… who is Ishtar, Lugalzagesi, or why they want to kill you…

Yes, in The Forgotten in HD they were pure texts, at least the devs are keen on the cinematics, even if they repeat with some images…

Yes, this is not the CoD… you need to previously build the world in which your campaign is set, more like an RTS, in which you have several factions…

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I don’t think I’ve ever played CoD, so I’ll take your word for it. I think the best examples from games I’ve played are Hades, Muramasa, and basically any pre-Half Life FPS… but none of these are anything like AoE2!

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Yes, I say this because the RTS always had some lore within the games based on their mechanics (Dune 2, Warcraft, Command and Conquer and the same AoE)