The Age games have tended to have 2 distinct styles of campaign: a series of campaigns following historical civilizations or leaders (like in age 1 and 2) or stories with new characters inspired by historical events and figures (like Mythology or Age 3). Personally I prefer the structure of Age 1 and 2 in their campaigns as I didn’t really care too much for the storytelling of the later games but that kind of puts us in an awkward position since the game seems to be in the same time period as Age 2 and we already have an abundance of those campaigns.
Are there other RTS campaigns you hope the game will be inspired by? What about the separate economic and combat campaigns of stronghold? Or the conquer the world modes of games like Rise of Nations or Warhammer 40k Dark Crusade?
I am looking forward to the option of creating your own character and follow them through the campaign adventures in an ARPG, hack and slash gameplay style.
Ok, jokes aside, and before I raise a duststorm of angry purists again, they have teased the campaigns quite a bit. We’ve heard that it is not going to be anything like what we’ve seen in an Age or RTS game before. While using the keyword: “Humanized History”
Something that I would find very interesting is campaigns with interactive story telling, where player’s decisions through the missions can actually affect the storyline and lead to multiple different developments or ends.
Maybe the player could even be able to pick sides and decide who should the “bad” of history will be and fight and who the “good” one that will help.
Following your own fictional character instead of a specific historical figure is a nice concept for me as well.
In any case, as long as the context remains historical, I’m fine with the story to be something else. Rewriting history or humanizing historical characters and events with narrative details and stories can be more interesting than following history in a linear way.
Generally, I’m more excited to see all the new things that the game will bring to feel fresh and futureproof. What will do differently and how, rather than what will stay the same and how similar it will be to other games or old RTS recipes.
While I do prefer the style of the Age 1 and 2 campaigns I’m totally open to something new. No point in making the same game again since we have good versions that function on modern PCs.
I suggest a campaign story where you can play multiple side. Instead of the story focusing on one side you can play the whole conflict from multiple sides.
For example, hundred years war campaign where you can play certain missions as Frank and other as British.
Playing Completely non historical character with odd story may feel out of place. It was one of the weak point of aoe3
If various choices are possible, then maybe the final battle could be fought on the same map-base from a different angle and versus a different ally of the foe.With an ending highlighting what your victorious participation brought to the conflict’s resolvement.
In terms of presentation definitely not as aoe2 but in terms of historical relevance im npt sure. I like the idea of being able to choose which side you want to play. Aoe2 was boring because how it was presented following objectives felt like a burden to get rid of. While aoe3 was more fun to play and following the objectives over and over again was fun so i didnt mind completing the whole campaign over and over again. Aom was historically more relevant than aoe3 so playing a design figure that is inspired by history doesnt sound so bad but what sounds bad is making up an event that is historically irrelevant such as ottoman army stepping foot to the new world.
So i think the real question is “how much would it limit developers to make the fun while maintaining the historical relevance?”
If its a matter of choice between historical relevance and gaming experience, i would pick gaming experience over historical relevance.
If the crusades are covered, I really want to see the politics of the day play a role. When the first crusade conquered a city, the leadership immediately quarreled over who would get to command the city to start a kingdom/principality, despite their oaths to return lands to the East Roman Empire. Once Antioch was captured, for instance, there was immediate discussion of whether or not the city should be gifted to the East by the one leader who still valued their oaths, arguments among the others about why they had the right to the city, mobs of crusaders angry at the leadership for not moving towards Jerusalem while they debated…eventually the East Roman Empire would have to war with the crusader deserters that stayed behind in Antioch. On the other side, Shia and Shiite kingdoms took advantage of the situation, sometimes paying tribute and letting the army pass through so that they could start ravaging rival lands. I want more units turning sides, and for decisions to have consequences, possibly breaking from historical reality. (Take the city for yourself? Face the Byzantines in the next scenario for breaking your oath. Let the crusader army pass the map uncontested while mopping up those that remain behind? Face a rebellion in the next map for failing to defend Islam. Etc).
I really do like the AoE1 and AoE2 campaings but the storytelling of AoE3 is quite good, following a family, playing some maps centuries after the 1st time you played them, it was quite new and interesting. Maybe yes, an option of playing both sides of a history would be nice.
The problem of ‘split’-story though… is that the quality can’t be maintained while adding extra encounters.
Basically, a player will either face 1/3rd of all the material or the budget per encounter is forced to get slimmed down
So I’d rather have 1 story path, long and great in story and chapters.
I like the idea that the player could pick sides and decide who would be good or bad since all heroes have a nasty side to them. They wouldn’t get where they were if they were nice all of the time.
