Yaah, they can mess around with lighting little bit. It is just too toned down.
I don’t think it looks like AoE but that’s not because it looks cartoony. The units are tiny and indistinguishable. The walls are ridiculously large.
7 Likes
I dont expect that they will listen. This is like Clash of Clans but for PC. Getting Castle Siege vibes. This is looking worse than AoE3/AoM. I remember how I felt when I first started AoE3 so excited, its gameplay was not as good as AoE2 but those graphics made it whole for me. This is just riding on the franchise fame.
6 Likes
Not sure a medieval game with big castles could look less like AoE:Castle Siege.
4 Likes
Your concern is understandable, but I don’t think this game is cartoony at all. I hope you change your mind once you see more screenshots and gameplay. Watch the trailer over and over. The color scheme, object scaling and reflection can improve many concerns we all have. Trust me, I hate cartoony graphics more than you do, even made a lot of memes and trolled the guys at twitter. I hated Civ6, and I played every Civ (including the spinoffs). This is NOT cartoony, I looked every frame of trailer, this is doing eyes trick for many of us.
3 Likes
Maybe so because I really like this franchise have spent literally days playing it. Too many colors are being used that is why it is looking cartoonish. I think my emotions got better of me, the animations are slick. Still, these are very early stages “pre-alpha”. For me, depth of gameplay is more important than graphics but if Relic is not taking this seriously it may end up sub-par in all areas. I will still keep my stance because a little pressure on them to do better is a good thing.
5 Likes
Yeah, it happens. I had that happen when I was hyped of Civ6. If they do their moba trick with this game, then, oh boy…I will march with fork and torches with everyone.
It’s a pre-alpha so we can’t judge it as it is right now. However, if they’re going with this stylized graphics I’m gonna be very dissapointed as I don’t like it, I always prefer realistic artstyle.
4 Likes
Can it be renamed “AOE2 Plus”? Don’t destroy the spirit of Ensemble Studios.
Why don’t Microsoft let Relic do they good at?
3 Likes
Good Idea, but still a bit to cartoonish imo. But I guess there will be a lot of change until Beta.
In the first second after the trailer I was a bit disappointed but maybe it’s just becouse I really didn’t expected something like this.
1 Like
I’m not going into a doom spiral over it yet, as it is still really too early to say much…but yeah, I’m not fully sold on the aesthetic from the trailer.
In general, the trailer hasn’t done too much to grab attention. Really, the biggest thing of note was the fact that you can now put soldiers on walls, which, granted, is something I really like. I just wish we’d have more information on the actual game itself. How does aging up work? What ages specifically will be covered, just medieval, or antiquity up to Imperial? How does unit control work?
Hopefully we will learn more in the next month or so. Until then, super happy to have AOE 2 DE at least!
4 Likes
And units are not much detailed
No much pixel on them
Relic have to improve it. For now this game Is quite far from the quality of engine seen in Company of Heroes 2. Don’t like It.
5 Likes
I was also expecting something very different. I didn’t like it. Too cartoony.
9 Likes
It didn’t have the same impact on me as when I saw the first images of AOE 3 (despite the game itself was a disappointment). That one really looked like an evolution. This one looks kinda a cellphone game, with more resources.
7 Likes
you can’t define it: “it looks like a mobile game”. What did we actually see? the graphic aspect. Now, just the look and feel: the colors are very bright, but it’s not a carton graphic. AoEonline has a carton-like graphic. This video is in pre-alpha … I think it’s still too early to judge …
3 Likes
Improve this and will change my words.
How does this look cartoonish may I ask? Tell what doesn’t look cartoonish.
1 Like
It’s too stylized. They have to improve it.
I mean, speelforce3 Is more realistic and detailed than Aoe4
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My thoughts on what constitues the AOE vibe, which I mostly cannot find in the trailer.
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The art style doesn’t look as grown up as one is used to from AOE. It looks quite colorful, bright, pastelly, cartoonish if you want, I find this exaggerated though. Don’t get me wrong: it’s pretty, but not the kind of ‘AOE pretty’. For me AOE always had the intention to strive for realism and detail in its looks. This applies to the builing, units and foliage. I remember how happy it made me as a kid to see the leaves lying on the roof of the mill. I also remember being blown away by how realistic the foliage looked in AOE3; nothing I can say about what I’ve seen in the trailer. I really liked the trees, bushes and grass in AOE3. I like how realistic the wild animals reactied to my units. And so on and so on.
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The buildings seem small compared to the units. An important feature of AOE2 if you ask me. Having buildings which required much lateral space made AOE2 feel big. Grand is also a word that comes to my mind.
AOE3 was a step backward from this by squeezing most builings on a 2x2 grid, thereby somehow reducing the feeling of connection to your base. This holds espacially true for farms, which needed much space in AOE2 and almost none in AOE3. Making buildings too abstract in size can be a bad thing and ruin the vibe. It makes things more believeable to be real. Also a spread out base in AOE2 plays very different compared to a more compact base in AOE3.
By the way Homeworld has this special feeling of grandness, too, possibly because everything from a tiny fighter to a large battlecruiser is realistically sized. It gives the game something. -
The unit movement looks rather artificial, unfitting for an AOE title, see point 1. Also traditionally troops could stand and move very compact compared to other RTS titles and only spread out if you want them to.
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I do find the music and sounds very fitting, though.
If the thinking behind the art style was to appeal to a younger audience, look at it like this: as a kid you can have a lot of fun with a plastic sword, but a metal one is the real deal. You play with the plastic one because you have to, but you’d far rather have a real metal one. A toy plane can be a lot of fun, but a realistic model plane fascinates you, you get lost its details, its realism, it captures your imagination more than a toy could ever do.
For me the AOE series always had the intention to be more of the real deal. Spellforce 3 is actually a good example of what I would thought what an Age of Empires would look like. It has this realistic detail and prettiness. It gives me the feeling that I have a real world in front of me, which I can play in, which I find fascinating.
12 Likes