The first thing I was impressed about more than anything with this series was just like, wow!
That’s really smart," he tells me.
“Like, there’s no need to explain anything to people.
It’s like, it’s a wheelbarrow.
I know what that does!
They were still playing, they were still self hosting tournaments.
They were still creating mods.
Its also key that these games tell the stories they do, says Bridle.
With so many cultures represented, theres always an entry point, no matter where you grew up.
And from there, you’re free to learn about others.
So I knew Joan of Arc.
I knew William Wallace.
I never got to know our Asian history, that it’s not taught at school.
But I got to explore it through Age of Empires, discover this love.'”
That player is now a history teacher.
Bridle herself remembers playing the first AOE alongside learning about Egyptians in school.
But it does present a problem to solve.
How do you make things exciting again for a community thats so used to playing their own way?
Is it the community that owns the game?
And then we come back and like, hey, here’s some new stuff.
From day one, says Isgreen, the goal has been to involve the community in anything they did.
At one point, AOE4 used a completely different resource model, alongside other experimental features.
Isgreen remembers flying a bunch of the community to Relic studios to gauge their reactions.
What do you think about this?
Is it too far away from Age?
We were always really worried about making something that wasn’t Age of Empires-ish.
It’s always been hand in hand with the community, especially the Definitive Editions.
We didnt want to break the magic.
Looked at the features they used heavily, and the ways that they wanted to play.
I tried to ask for stats on how many changes we made.
And just in a pre-release environment, across the Definitive Editions, it was thousands of changes.
“And that’s really meaningful.
There’s so many places we can take AOE, but we do it in partnership with the community.
They have that seat at the table with us.
The first of these, says Isgreen, means keeping things human.
We’re centred on telling the human story.
Human is people, it’s inventions, it’s technology.
It’s everything that humans have either done or created or imagined, right?
The next pillar, says Isgreen, is Global.
The third one is Impactful, Isgreen continues.
We want to generate exciting content.
We wanted to kind of refresh the way that we were looking at telling stories.
Finally, theres the fourth pillar - Enlightening.
We want to be like, darn it, youre going to learn something!
Theres so many fantastic pro players creating content,” Bridle says.
The 25 years, it’s documented, adds Isgreen.
Theres a wealth of information on meta, ways to play, how to micro these units.
That said, I think we could do better.
“We’re 25 years in, but the franchise is growing.
Isgreen brings it around to those core pillars again.
Telling the story of people doesnt just mean replicating history to the letter.
Anywhere people go, or have gone, offers the team fertile ground to explore.
Originally it was: Age has gotta be just authentic history.
But mythology comes around and like, oh wait!
That’s a human byproduct of religions and the past.
There could be something like that,” he says.
So it gives us a lot of ground to play with in terms of the future.
Theres some fun stuff coming, says Bridle.
And there’s some really, really fun stuff there that I can’t wait to start using.
We’re gonna be excited to see what resonates with the players.
Alongside other updates, it brings two new civilisations to the game - the Ottomans and the Malians.
I have this saying that everyone on my creative team knows: players should feel like they’re cheating.
That you’re getting away with something.
That everyone else is angry because they can’t do that."
“And I’m like, what if they taxed?
This is where it links back to Westwood.
There’s a line you gotta walk.
It’s kind of like Red Alert, right?
We couldn’t make every unit wacky because then nothing would feel wacky, right?
Youve got to find that fine line.
And however we can manifest that through Age - not that we’re going to change Age.
