AGE OF EMPIRES 4 CIVILIZATIONS HOW TO
Afterwards the question is always asked: how could this company release such a bad game when they clearly know how to make a good one? And my answer is always that these companies have been around for multiple decades at this point and the people who developed Warcraft and Mass Effect are long, long gone all that’s left is the name attached to a mostly-new group of developers who, for whatever reason, can’t recapture that same magic. In recent years we’ve seen several studios who previously were known for releasing nothing but classics - Blizzard and Bioware are the ones who most immediately spring to mind - abruptly send their reputation straight into the toilet with a string of duds 1.
I think there’s finally been a general realisation that game development studios are a lot like the ship of Theseus they’re constantly undergoing a churn in personnel as older developers leave to do their own thing or are “promoted” to management positions and new blood is brought on board.
To be completely fair to Relic, Age of Empires 4 is a better game than I was expecting them to make based on their recent (or semi-recent) track record. But if Age of Empires 4 is indeed the next generation of real-time strategy gaming, then I have to say it looks a hell of a lot like the twenty year-old Age of Empires 2. Unlike those failures, Age of Empires 4 has the support of a big franchise name, a big publisher - they don’t get any bigger than Microsoft - and it’s being developed by Relic Entertainment, who are in theory a seasoned RTS studio thanks to their experience with Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. This is technically true, since aside from assorted mediocrities like Grey Goo and Company of Heroes 2 I don’t think anyone has taken a proper big (or at least medium-sized) budget stab at the classic RTS since Blizzard released Starcraft 2 back in 2010.
“The next generation of real-time strategy gaming!” proclaims the marketing blurb for Age of Empires 4.
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