Age of Empires 4: What we Know so Far

Age of Empires 4 is the long-awaited sequel to one of the most popular franchises in history. The Age of Empires series has been around for over 20 years, and the newest installment will be released soon. How soon? October 28th! So, in this article, we'll go through everything that's been confirmed about the Age of Empires 4 so far.

A little bit of history & some basic info

First of all, the Age of Empires 4 will be on PC only. There are no plans to release the game to any other platforms at this time. However, Microsoft is planning a beta program so that players can test out certain aspects before release day. This may change everything, depending on how successful the beta testing goes, and let's not forget that since Microsoft Studios is the publisher, an Xbox Series X/S release could be just around the corner! The upcoming game was first announced by IGN during E³ 2017 in June 2017 and it is developed by Relic Entertainment. If you wonder why it's not developed by Ensemble Studios(developer studio who worked with age series since Age of Empires I), I'll be sad to inform you that the studios closed down back in 2009, due to a lack of interest from Microsoft.

Age of Empires 4 has been in development for over two years. The previous installment was Age of Empires: II HD: African Kingdoms was released on steam only at the end of 2014 after many requests from fans.

This videogame series is one of the most popular ever made. The first installment was released back in 1997 and it's still immensely popular today. The second one came out a year later, followed by the third one, which had some improvements to graphics, etc... But, overall, they were all pretty similar gameplay-wise. It's worth mentioning that the last major release under Microsoft Studios was Age Of Empires Online (2011). However, that wasn't received very well due to being an MMO with microtransactions/payments involved.

Where to pre-purchase Age of Empires 4

You can pre-purchase the game (normal or deluxe edition), on Steam.

Who is the composer?

We already mentioned that Relic Entertainment is behind the development, but what about the music? Well, the composer will be Mikolai Stroinski, the man who's behind the Witcher 3 soundtrack. He shared the happy news with the players through a post on his FB.

Is Age of Empires 4 going to be 'Modernized'?

Creative director Adam Isgreen shared Age of Empires 4's goal to not overcomplicate the new game in an attempt to modernize it.

"Generally speaking, the longer a genre exists, the games that are responsible for taking it forward tend to make it more complicated. With Age of Empires 4, it was important for us to be like, 'okay, how do we back away from that?'. We do not want to take on all of the complexity that we see in RTS games today". "This is a fresh start for us. We want to modernize the series and that means we are going to do things differently."

Humanized histories

Creative director Adam Isgreen hinted that:

'We're doing something very different with the campaign… I can't talk about it, but it's really crazy-cool". "I can say that we will be bringing history in a fun and exciting way to people – the way we coined it for Age of Empires 4 is 'humanized histories'.

Historical Campaigns

This time we'll witness four campaigns that give us a better view of a civilization's history. Narrative lead Philippe Boulle said:

"You get the whole story of the Norman conquest, from the time this ambitious duke made his way across the channel and said 'this is mine,' all the way to the point where you're signing the Magna Carta and laying the foundations of what England is today". "We bridge the gap between missions with these wonderful historical films. We worked with documentarians to go to all kinds of locations like Hastings and Dover, where these events happened. And that's just one of the four campaigns we're shipping with."

How many civilizations will exist in the Age of Empires 4?

Age of Empires 4 starts with 8 civilizations but's there's plenty of room to expand.

So, that's everything we know about the game so far! Are you as excited as we are for this upcoming release?