Human mythology is at the core of one of this year's biggest strategy game launches, and the team behind it is working to make the game more accessible than ever before.
Age of Mythology: Retold is on the way, and ahead of the game's arrival, I had the chance to speak with director of production Earnest Yuen and designer Kristen Pirillo about the work that developer World's Edge and its partner studios have put into remaking Age of Mythology for modern gaming hardware, including making the game more accessible and taking advantage of the graphics capabilities of the latest gaming PCs and Xbox Series X|S consoles.
Remaking a classic
The original Age of Mythology was developed by the now-defunct Ensemble Studios. Launching in 2002, it built on a number of ideas in the Age of Empires franchise by introducing God Powers, monsters, and heroes for players to command. In crafting Age of Mythology: Retold, the developers have worked to overcome the limitations the original game faced due to the hardware available at the time. One of the big calls made was to allow God Powers to be reused multiple times, instead of being the one-off abilities they are in the original game.
"When we approached this design, there was this thought in the back of our heads ‘Well now that we’re in the 2020s, what can we do?’ I mean, right off the bat, one of the big ones was reusable God Powers, because what could be cooler than having a multiplayer match where multiple God Powers are going off?" says Pirillo, adding that, "Something we saw is oftentimes in matches, because God Powers were single-use, they sometimes might not get used at all because you were saving it in the bank trying to find that perfect moment that may never come."
Pirillo notes that players would often abandon using myth units in the endgame of big matches, so the team worked to rebalance the Favor and Population caps in order to emphasize the mythological aspect of the game instead of having it feel like just another Age of Empires title.
“It was a lot of work that we needed to recreate and modernize for the current hardware,” Yuen says, praising the original team at Ensemble while pointing out that setting off multiple God Powers with multiple Titans on the screen simply wouldn’t have been possible with the technology available over 20 years ago.
Naturally, a lot of upgrades have also been pushed across the graphics of the game, allowing the team to push the visual fidelity that's possible in a strategy game.
“It’s like, we can push it further now because we have this incredible team of artists. When we’re making our monsters, we’ve gotta make them more monster-y. When we’re making our heroes, we gotta make them more hero-y," says Pirillo. “How can we make these things feel mythical and larger than life?”
Other, less flashy changes came in balancing. According to the developers, the Norse needed a particular level of restructuring to make them less off-putting to new players, as the data showed many players would try the Norse faction for the first time and then never bother again.
“There were a lot of philosophical questions of ‘How much does this fit? Where is a good medium?' Age of Mythology is more complicated [than Age of Empires] with the types of units and the types of damage that they can deal," explains Pirillo. "There are a lot more things that break the triangle."
The team did not want to change things for change's sake.
Earnest Yuen
Balancing will naturally continue post-launch, and the team valued player feedback from the beta session held earlier in the year. Yuen notes that "nothing was truly surprising" but that the beta weekend helped the team figure out what needed to be prioritized in the lead-up to launch.
“We all love the original games. So the team did not want to change things for change's sake,” Yuen says.
“There is a lot of complexity there, so I think for design the question is, where’s the sweet spot? Because we could go in and change everything. If this game was created from scratch now, how far would it go in terms of mythology and balance? It’s been a philosophical exercise,” says Pirillo. “It’s involved a lot of play testing.”
“The thing with World’s Edge and its dev partners is that so many of us are hardcore fans, we have a deep respect for the source and we’re very close to the project. So as we’re nearing the end of it, [with] each of us in our own mind, it can be hard to prioritize because we are so close to it.
With all of the big changes and improvements, I asked what their favorite God Powers are.
“I’m Meteor all the way,” says Yuen, praising the physics system the teams have created. For Pirillo, it's the Hades Sentinels, "...because then I can be mentally lazy and I don’t have to worry as much about defenses."
"Also – and this is very silly — I love the sound effect, the hum when they pop up," she says.
Adapting for accessibility
Age of Mythology: Retold presents two huge firsts for World's Edge. It's the first game the studio and its partners are shipping simultaneously on Xbox Series X|S consoles as well as PC, but it's also going to include controller support on PC from day one. Yuen says this is because Retold is benefitting from all the work that has come before across the Age of Empires: Definitive Edition launches and bringing two games to Xbox in 2023 while supporting controllers.
“We have learned from the Xbox versions of Age of Empires 2 and 4. Age of Empires 2 especially was really ‘How do we make it feel like a console game?’ We know new players are going to come in on the Xbox side, they may have never played an RTS before, we want them to play the game and think ‘Oh, this makes sense,’” Yuen says, explaining that the team went through multiple iterations of controller support while trying to figure it out.
At one point, they attempted to directly map the mouse to the stick with no other alterations. It did work, just not well, so the team scrapped that approach and ended up with the version that's in Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition on Xbox. This approach was then iterated on for Age of Empires 4, and then even further than that for the version that will ship in Age of Mythology: Retold.
We have learned from the Xbox versions of Age of Empires 2 and 4.
Earnest Yuen
“From those two, we have noticed that the features we added like the Villager Priority System don’t just help console players feel at home. You actually help new players start playing an RTS. It lowered the cognitive load, it made it easier for people to concentrate on what they want to concentrate on, like the battles, it helps lighten the load on some of the economic management, but it doesn’t take away your strategy, right?" Yuen says. "So we want that to be available in Retold on both sides day one.”
“Age of Mythology: Retold is going to be the most approachable game we have ever built. We want to make it really easy for people to start playing, but we also have the other end of the spectrum, we have aspiration that the game is going to be balanced and cool enough to become an Esport,” he adds, noting that they're really excited about its inclusion in the upcoming annual Wololo tournament later in the year.
I asked how the team is able to balance working with so many external partners on so many different games and DLC packs. According to Yuen, that's part of how the studio has been set up.
“World’s Edge is really like a hub where we manage the IP to make sure the timeline works. We work with different partners so that they can concentrate on what they’re really good at, because not everybody is good at everything, but they are excellent at something they do," he says. "There’s a lot of complicated coordination that we need to do, but we have been doing it for five years now and it has been working really well for us and that helped us scale further and further to grow the franchise even more in the future."
Looking to the future
I took the time to ask Yuen and Pirillo about what players can expect from the New Gods Pack that's included in the Premium Edition of Age of Mythology: Retold. While they can't share much right now, they do confirm that it's adding Freyr as a new Major God for the Norse faction.
“We want to offer players essentially new strategies or new ways to play existing civilizations,” Pirillo says, adding that there will be more details shared before the game launches.
Outside of remaining temporarily tight-lipped about what the Vanir brother of Freya will bring to the Norse, both Yuen and Pirillo are excited to see people take the game on, whether they've played the original or not.
“I want people of all different strategy experiences to enjoy it. To me, this golden situation in my head is that someone who played this game as a kid is able to go to their gaming group in Discord and get everybody into the game, and they’re all just able to meet each other where they’re at with the balance changes we’ve made, the features we’ve added, and everybody finds a way to have fun," Pirillo says. “Mythology is fun. Monsters are fun. Heroes are fun. That’s what this is really all about."
A short while to go
We're only a few weeks away from the game's launch, and I'm excited to see how everything shakes out. This was already one of the my most anticipated games of the year after I went hands-on with it after the Xbox Games Showcase, and it's clear to me the team is working hard to get this right.
Age of Mythology: Retold is scheduled to launch on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC on Sep. 4, 2024, as well as being included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Premium Edition buyers buyers will be able to start playing on Aug. 28, 2024.
