 A
tough question that any legendary gaming franchise eventually faces is
"How do you maintain the franchise's excellence when time's
winged chariot hastens its original engine into tiredness?" Or
something like that. That's the question Ensemble Studios faced after
completing Age of Empires II: Age of Kings. AoE 2 was a great game,
but it wrung just about as much out of the AoE engine as it could.
Nevertheless, Ensemble could have haphazardly ground out an AoE3 that
just projected the same game system into the Renaissance, and they
undoubtedly would have sold a bajillion copies of the game.
 To
their great credit, they haven't . Their newest project, Age of
Mythology, does have some things in common with their Age of Empires
games. For example, it's still a pre-modern gather-resources-and-build
armies RTS game, and it still features AoE conventions like tech
trees, progression through ages, civilization bonuses, and formations.
But that's about it. Age of Mythology marks a crucial watershed in
what I suppose must now be called the "Age of" series.
 First,
it's changed the series' setting from the historical to the
quasi-historical and mythological. Age of Mythology will include
monsters, heroes, and spells--but they'll be limited. AoM is not going
to be Heroes of Might and Magic in real-time. In AoM, you'll be able
to choose to play one of three cultures--Egyptian, Greek, or
Norse. Each culture will also allow you to choose between one of three
gods. For instance, the Norse culture allows you to worship
Odin, Thor or Loki. Each god grants certain bonuses and certain
mythological creatures, and if you build temples and toe the line,
your god will grant you favor points, which can then be used to cast
spells or to build mythological creatures. The spells I saw at E3
looked pretty devastating--they're based upon natural occurrences,
so don't expect to be casting Magic Missile or Color Spray. Instead,
you'll invoke powers like lightning, meteor, and storms.
Ensemble plans to make the spells powerful enough to tilt the fortunes
of battle in unpredictable ways, but infrequent enough so they don't
become uberweapons. The same goes for the game's mythological
creatures. There will be over 20 of them, and the ones I saw included
cyclops (right out of Harryhausen, by the way), frost and ice giants,
scorpion men, griffins, chimeras, and trolls. All of them have very
useful special abilities--for example, the frost giant has a freeze
spell and minotaurs can use a headbutt to send enemy soldiers flying.
And what would a mythological game be without heroes? In AoM, you'll
be able to command such stalwarts as Odysseus and Beowulf, who will
also have special abilities and
bonuses.
 Gameplay
will also change. Ensemble realizes that too often the AoE games
consisted of a mad dash to the final age, where the best units were
located. In AoM, the shortest route to the final age will not
necessarily be the best. If you don't build up your temples and
infrastructure in the earlier ages, you'll find yourself seriously
handicapped in certain areas, and players who putter around for a
while in the second age will find they've accrued
certain bonuses. Games will also be shorter, lasting about an hour,
and no longer will you have to run down the enemy's lone surviving
unit to win.
 The
other great change is that AoM will be using a 3D engine. This was a
trend I noticed in many of the RTS games at E3, and with AoM it's more
than a cosmetic change. For example, terrain now becomes deformable
and plays a larger part in combat, the in-game cutscenes are seamless,
and--most importantly--equipment upgrades now appear on your units. If
you upgrade a unit to a bronze shield, then by god a bronze shield
will appear on that unit. This means that unupgraded units will look
pretty bare, while units that have been blessed by the tech tree will
look very, very, badass, kitted out from head to toe in shiny armor
and evil-looking weapons.
 AoM
will also include a single-player campaign. I know, the AoE series
contained campaigns as well, but Ensemble really wants to ramp this
one up. Right now, they plan for it to consist of over 40 missions
which allow you as a hero to play through each of the game's cultures
while experiencing myriad plot twists, sort of like Starcraft's
memorable campaigns. And yes, multiplayer will be
supported.
Don't expect to see this
one until 2002, but it will be worth the wait. It's good to see that
Ensemble's not resting on its laurels, and that the future of at least
this legendary game franchise looks very, very, bright.
     
Rick
Fehrenbacher |
