Quoted from AoK Heaven:
The German magazine Gamestar also has an article about Age of Empires II: Age of Kings in their April 99 issue. On the CD that come with the mag, there is also a preview of the game where you can see formations on the march and other various scenes, all in animated splendor. Almost a must even if you don't read German, hehe.
Heinrich Lehnhardt of Gamestar talked also to Bruce Shelley about his plans for the future. Heres what Bruce said:
- Ensemble Studios will release four parts: Age of Empires, Age of Kings, Age of Discovery, and the last one has no name yet.
- Age of Discovery (Bruce Shelley's favourite period of history) will cover the epoch from 1492 to 1918 when World War 1 ended, letting players build wooden boats up to mighty battleships.
- there might be a brand new 3d engine for Age of Discovery
- the last part, which will be released in 2003 will cover the epoch from the end of WW1 to the near future, including all the WW2 units.
- Then Bruce said they might start over again, just to insert new design ideas and new technologies which have been developed since good old Age of Empires I.
- There are also rumours of a second, new formed Ensemble team, working on a role-playing game in the tradition of Diablo.
Just to clarify something about the "schedule" they mention... take into account that after the Conquerors, they thought about leaving Microsoft, so they started doing AoM without knowing who would be the publisher, thus, AoE could not be made, as it's a Microsoft Trade Mark. That's the date difference. Suppose this hadn't been thought, and that game hadn't been a year late, as it happenned to AoM.
Then, AoE III would have gone out on 2001, its x-pack in 2002, and AoE IV would be 10 days away from release in the present 2003 year; if you think about it, it actually makes sense.
So... post your thoughts.
Co-Author of the Aztec Civilization Outline for AoM.
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