Age of Empires 3 Preview

Age of Empires III could be (somewhat inaccurately) described as a cross between Age of Kings and Age of Mythology. Ensemble has decided to invest the experience made on the development of Age of Mythology into the new installment in the Age of Empires franchise.

"Another lesson we learned in Age of Mythology was that single-player gamers really want a good story with interesting characters and situations," says the designer Greg Street. "So the single-player campaign in AoE III will have more in common with that of Age of Mythology than Age of Kings." The game will depict many historical events, but many fictional scenarios will be present as well. The main campaign will consist of 24 scenarios, following the story of several family generations of the Scottish immigrant Morgan Black. All scenarios will be closely tied together, creating a seamless story that will attempt to cross the boundary, or rather bridge the gap between history and fiction.

The concept of 'Ages' is present once again, and this time the Ages present will be: Discovery, Colonial, Industrial and Imperial, among others. It will also be possible to build famous buildings, which is a concept similar to Wonders. These buildings provide your nation with certain bonuses and apart from that, it is possible to add some nice personal touches to their appearance and adjust them to your liking.

As far as the graphics are concerned, AoE III takes RTS gaming to all new heights, and that is hardly an overstatement. Age of Empires III uses a new graphics engine that enables an unbelievable amount of detail with the use of dynamic lighting, bloom effect, self-shadowing and high dynamic range. Ensemble states the "Age of Empires III engine is a fully DX9, Shader 3.0 compliant engine with more technical bells and whistles than any other PC game to date." The game will feature a lot of neat cosmetic details in order to recreate the exact spirit of the time. Judging from the screenshots, the full splendor of the graphics engine is most evident in the sheer complexity of the scenes and an unbelievable amount of details in the environment. The cities of your European capital will be vibrant and full of life, with scenes of people embarking ships that will take them to their new homes in the New World.

On a somewhat related note, it is also possible to find out what people think by clicking on them, but it is still unclear whether it will be possible to influence their general inclination or if this is merely another cosmetic touch that should add more realism to the game.

Age of Empires III uses the Havok physics engine that adds even more cinematic quality and realism to the battles, providing all units and objects with realistic movement and reaction to impact and detonations. Prepare yourself for seeing chunks of buildings flying up in the air from the powerful detonations, having units fall off cliffs in a realistic fashion and other such spectacular scenes.

Bearing in mind the number of new units, drastically improved visuals, an advanced AI and a new story-driven campaign, this game leaves an impression of an ambitious project that will very soon become more than just a plain fantasy for the eager fans. The release of AoE III is scheduled for this year with no exact date given, which leaves Ensemble quite enough time to mold the new AoE game into a true masterpiece that will once again reshape the rather stale RTS scene.