The upcoming Age of Mythology: Retold was shown in detail for the first time today during Microsoft’s New Year, New Age livestream. This is the first time we’ve seen the definitive edition of the beloved Age spin-off since it was announced in late 2022.
The new video uses an augmented reality platform to detail some of the game’s signature mythological monsters, including the terrifying jellyfish, the flying pegasus scout and the titan Cerberus. The monsters look quite attractive, part of an overall effort to make Age of Mythology: Retold a real upgrade from the game we played in 2002, including model changes as we progress through the eras, although they are certainly complemented by classic sounds and reimagining old animations.
That’s exactly what Age of Mythology: Retold producer Ernest Yuen said. He worked at Microsoft for almost a quarter of a century, starting as a tester for the first Age of Empires – it’s clear that his love for the series runs deep.
The studio’s plans to remake the first fully 3D Age of Empires required other work and inspired the team to take new achievements in updating the game.
“Age of Mythology: Retold goes beyond what we typically do for definitive editions,” says Yuen. He and the team want to make the game as epic, fun and beautiful as players remember it, not just update what it was. “We want to create a game in your head,” he said.
This means taking the graphics and game engine changes that were made for Age of Empires 3 Definitive Edition and then going beyond them. Let’s start by “adding ray tracing, increasing the population limit, [и] Let’s add an engine to handle special effects.” In particular, the population cap will be a big change for Age of Mythology, not only from a visual point of view, but also from a game fundamentals point of view. AoM strategies were often limited by the strict limits of units set by the limitations of the graphics technology of the time .
Another major gameplay change is how much control you have over your mythic units. In 2002, they simply used their abilities when they expired, but nothing more. “What we do with Retold is we make them user-controlled, you can use them however you want.”
Another significant change is to your god powers: Instead of lightning bolts that can be fired once and never appear in a match again, these powers now have timeouts. This is a fundamental and huge change to Age of Mythology, but it was well received by the group of AoM players that Yuen and the studio hired to participate in playtesting.
For Yuen and the team, these changes are aimed at making the game more fun and, most importantly, more competitive 22 years later. They hope the updated version will help boost the still-existing community and tournament scene around Age of Mythology in the same way that the Definitive Edition caused a surge in player numbers for Age of Empires 2, which is now listed as an esports site.
“Changing the god power is great for both esports and watching the game,” says Yuen, “because you know that, like a key cooldown in a MOBA match, that lightning bolt or meteor will be back soon. “That anticipation makes the game that much more interesting.” , he says.
The company hopes that by making the game a little more accessible and helping it fit a little better with modern ideas of what an RTS is, they can inspire players to share the same fun stories they’ve heard from players of past Definitive Editions, whether it’s taking part in the revival competitive scene, playing in community-organized tournaments, discovering a classic, or enjoying a game they loved as a child.”
Of course, a completely updated interface is a given for such a remaster, but game balance changes and exploit fixes are also very important.
“These things need to be updated, if we don’t patch and fix the exploits, the game will become unviable as an eSports game. It’s important for us to fix these things so our community can run the tournaments they love,” Yuen said.
Ultimately, however, the Microsoft team still wants the remake to highlight how great the original was, rather than throw away what made it great in the first place.
“Any changes we’ve made will not break that promise,” Yuen said.
