The Age of Empires series is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and developers at World's Edge have a lot of exciting surprises planned for fans. A special celebratory presentation takes place this week, and won't just focus on the latest entry Age of Empires IV but the series as a whole. Over two decades later, developers are reflecting on the series' storied past and how they can continue to improve the franchise for every type of player.
Since its initial release, Age of Empires has set itself apart in the RTS genre with its warmer, inviting color palette and deep historical roots. Both have only improved over time, and the first three entries in the franchise have all been updated over time to enhance their historical accuracy and graphics.. This week, Age of Empires IV will receive a free update that adds two new civilizations, Ottomans and Malians, to the game as part of the 25th anniversary celebration, but developers have teased many other exciting announcements coming this week as well.
World's Edge Director of Customer Voice Emma Bridle and World's Edge Creative Director Adam Isgreen sat down with Screen Rant ahead of the festivities to discuss incorporating historical accuracy into the game, designing its visuals, and how Age of Empires changed the RTS genre.
Screen Rant: Just to start off, I'm curious what each of your favorite eras of history are, personally.
Emma Bridle: Oh, that's a great question. Oh, my goodness, that's really difficult.
Adam Isgreen: And you know, Emma - you're a history major, right?
Emma Bridle: I have a master's in theology. So, I chose that because, yeah, I love history and studying it through the lens of religion, where we looked at, like, culture, and art, and ethics, and sort of the evolution of history, but not based in conflict, more sort of in why people evolved the way they did and their beliefs. So, oh, gosh, I mean, that's a really, really, hard question.
You can take a couple if you want to.
Adam Isgreen: For me, it's the time period of - and this is about 1500 years - the time period of the Silk Road. Like I love the idea that, you know, people tend to think history was a bunch of people that were just kind of isolated, and the way we depict history in a lot of cinema is very isolated or very enclosed in just this one nation, this one people, but that's not the way it worked. People were pretty much a lot like us back in the Middle Ages. The language was different, sure, but they still communicated and they still networked, it was just a foot network or, you know, a network of horses or mules or camels or anything else that transported things where they could move information and goods.
And I love that, understanding more about the idea that people really were networked and they did try to communicate to try to learn from each other. They were only limited by their technology really, and how far they went with that. And to me, that was really cool, and that's something that was very inspiring when we looked at Age IV was like, okay, how can we communicate that people were actually a lot savvier than I think we give them credit for based on a lot of the media we see. It wasn't like people were super stupid or something like that back in the Middle Ages, right?
They just didn't have the tech, they were trying to figure things out, they were trying to do the best they could with the materials they had and the knowledge they had. I love that, I love the idea that, wow, we were really creative, you know? Like clever monkeys, so to speak, even now, just still figuring things out. To me that was great to see. The spread of Roman coins being found thousands and thousands of miles away from each other, that was something that I was very excited about, that era of people seeking knowledge and trying to understand each other. Human curiosity.
Emma Bridle: I think that's what I leaned into academically, was like, how do you explain the world when you haven't got the foundation of science that we have now? So I think the first period of history that really sparked my interest was the ancient Egyptians, because you study it early on in your education. For me, it was primary school, and that actually tied in really well with the first Age of Empires game.
I was learning Ancient Egypt at school, everything about hieroglyphics and tombs and the pantheon of gods, and then it tied in with the first Age of Empires game. So suddenly, I was playing and I was living that history that I was learning at school. But I have so many. I've really been learning a lot about American history, having moved to the States about three years ago, and I've gotten into recently the 1800s and the strong women there.
I have a podcast I recommend, it's from the BBC, it's called You're Dead to Me. It's run by a public historian who was heavily involved with Horrible Histories, the amazing historical TV show for kids. And each week, he brings on a historian and a comedian, and they look at different periods of history. So I've been gaming with the sound off recently, and listening to the podcast whilst I'm playing. And then annoying everyone at work when they come back and going, "Oh, I just learned all about Ada Lovelace, all about Harriet Tubman. I've got all these facts I want to share." But it's really reignited that extra spark of a passion for me, and I've started saying to my husband that maybe I'll do another degree part-time in history, just because it sparked that again.
Since there's so many of these eras and it's so hard to choose, I'm curious, when you're going into a new Age of Empires game, how do you narrow it down? How do you pick what's most important for a campaign or a time period?
Adam Isgreen: You know, the interesting thing is there's so many factors that go into that, right? The first one is: do we feel like we can really make a difference, like can we portray - especially if it's been covered before - can we do things in a different way that would be interesting for players? Can we tell history from a perspective that maybe not everyone has seen? Funnily enough, there's also concerns of like, well, if we put a civilization in from this time period here, we have to have everyone they fought, because we're making a game that's got combat in it. So then you have to bring all their friends, essentially - or enemies - with them. Then suddenly that kind of starts laying out your game, because of that first choice, you have to determine who's fighting who.
But that's just a component of what we do when we think about it. We also think about if there's some kind of gameplay that we want to really feature that would be interesting, that would cater towards one time period or another. Is there a specific thing in warfare that we wanted to highlight? And where and when did that happen? So we go all over the place, from way over here on game to way over here on history, what makes sense, and then back again, and we try to zero in - a lot with help from the community.
Emma Bridle: Yeah, and I love the way that we've told the stories through campaigns and Age of Empires IV, and you know, it's a period that I think a lot of people will be familiar with. So, I'm English, and you know, you play the campaign and you go, "Okay, 1066. Absolutely." If you're English, you know that. And then - Adam knows the story - but I joined the team about three years ago, and we were watching videos from Age of Empires IV, and there's one Hands on History video about medieval surgery, and they reference a key battle in English history that happened in the town I was born in that I never knew happened. So I was in my 30s learning stuff about English history that I had never heard before, from Age of Empires IV. So it's just done an amazing job - there's so much, these periods are so rich with stories that even if you've spent your whole life learning and absorbing that history, you can still learn more.
We have this wonderful story from one of our council members who helped build Age IV who sent us a video for the fan preview celebration last year, about how he has become a history teacher because of Age of Empires. And he's European, so he said he knew the story, he played Age of Empires II, he knew the story of Joan of Arc, but his school wasn't going to teach him Asian history. So all of a sudden, he had these frontiers of history that he was getting to learn about through the game, where he was coming to school and telling people all these stories that he'd learned from Age of Empires, and he ended up becoming a history teacher because of that spark of joy. So there's so many stories to tell, you know, we're adding the Malians and the Ottomans to Age of Empires IV and that's a whole new frontier for storytelling, but there's so much more we could do. It's so rich.
Adam Isgreen: Got a long way to go.
I know you guys haven't worked on this series since the beginning, but I'm sure you're familiar with all of the different entries, and when it first began, I've heard the phrase "Hollywood history" used, where it was drawing a lot of historical truth but also -
Adam Isgreen: [Laughs] Taking some creative liberties.
Yes, exactly. But that has sort of reduced over the years, and there's been this shifted focus to - like with Hands on History - more accurate representations. What is it like shifting into that and balancing historical influence and accuracy while still keeping things not too complex?
Adam Isgreen: Oh, boy, Emma can go on quite a bit, so I'm just going to add that we have full-time people now that think about geopolitics. Microsoft has them anyway, but specifically when it comes to Age of Empires, our narrative director on staff has now been trained and acts as a full time geopolitical liaison. Getting history accurate, especially as some cultures decide that their history was this way instead of this way, and navigating those kinds of waters is really challenging.
You know, we recognize because Age is played all over the world that we need to represent the cultures accurately. And, you know, it's having seen people get excited about representing their culture correctly, and us getting it right, like even in the language and stuff and people saying like, "Oh, my God, this is great! This is the language that they spoke!" I remember we had someone on our community team that, when we put in the Sultanate, he was listening the language and he was like this, "Oh, my gosh, this is great, except these words - they're speaking as if they're an equal, instead of speaking as if they're talking to their Lord, which, you know, since you're talking to you, maybe you want to change that."
It was awesome to get that kind of feedback. It's part of the recognition that it's a global game, and we really need to make sure that we go to the extent to get all of it accurate, right? Because there are people that want to be proud of what we're doing in the game. We've got to make sure we uphold that.
Emma Bridle: I mean, that's one of the biggest joys of my job working directly with the players is hearing for someone saying, "I never thought I'd hear my language in a video game" or "I never thought I'd see my heritage in a trailer." And so on my community team, we have a full time historical writer who's constantly researching, one of our copywriters who writes everything on the website is actually an academic medievalist. So we have these historians on the team who are drawn to come and work for us because of that passion.
It's really complex, you know, we are building a game, but I think society shifted so much since the last Age of Empires game came out in 16 years, and the way that we think about representation and inclusion and accuracy, and so it's a great honor to have that responsibility, but it's complex. As Adam said, you know, we can put all the research in, but we also understand that when we put things out, we're gonna get feedback. I think one of the big things that was happening when I joined the team was the reworking of the Native American and First Nations civilizations and Age of Empires III and a lot of debate around how do we sort of rework this into something that feels more accurate and feels more respectable.
We bring in consultants from those civilizations - we can do all our research, but we need to reach out to experts and we need to reach out to peoples from those cultures to really let us know how we're doing and what we can change. So we've worked with so many subject matter experts, you see them in their Hands on History videos in front of the camera, but there's so many that are behind the scenes. They're helping us figure out is this the right form of the language? Would they really be dressed like this? What should a flag look like? You know, when we put the flag icons in games, people are very passionate about flags. How do we represent that correctly? And I think we all have to be humble and know that we can put our best effort in, but we won't always get it fully, right. So we do as much work as we can, and then we listen to the community when we put it out there to get their feedback.
They're also very passionate about history as well, and they'll let us know, like, "Well, that church looks more Italian than Spanish for this era." [Laughs] We have historians in the community, and they're very passionate when their own culture is represented, and that's wonderful to see. And as I said, that's one of the best parts of my job, hearing from someone saying how meaningful it is to feel included, and to have the culture represented in a AAA video game, and that's the stuff that makes me emotional at my desk.
Can you talk a little bit more about how feedback and stuff like that from the community impacts these games?
Emma Bridle: Oh, yeah. So I mean, we get feedback on every facet of the game, you know, working with gamers is wonderful. They're very good at telling you when they do love something, and also when they don't love something. And so my team, my organization within World's Edge is really focused on how it's got to be a two-way conversation between us and the players, you know, they need to let us know what they think. And then we need to ingest that, figure out what we're going to action from that, and then feed it back to them. So I think what I'm consciously thinking of all the time is that two-way conversation, it's no good saying, "We're listening," and then them never seeing any movement on that. So constantly listening to what they're telling us through all our community platforms on forums, and Discord, and Reddit, and social and really getting an idea of what they're thinking, particularly around updates.
You know, when an update goes live, you get that immediate reaction of either they love it, they don't love it - they have clear ideas of how it could be improved. We're constantly working on how do to ingest all of that, feed it through to the game team, prioritize it. But the big thing for us is then feeding back and saying, "Hey, you told us that this is what you wanted, this is how we're working with it." So whether that's releasing regular roadmaps, so they can see what's coming, or responding to comments, or, you know, if we see an issue bubbling up within the community, particularly - as I'd mentioned - geopolitical ones around civilizations, how do we respond thoughtfully and sort of explain some of our thought process? And how we can work on that and have that conversation and not just sort of have them feel that they're speaking to us and not hearing back.
So it's an ongoing process, and we're always seeking to do more and do it better. The franchise's been kept going for 25 years by players. Players kept playing the games, even when there weren't new games coming out, even when they didn't have anything new, they modded the game and they kept going through their creativity, they organized tournaments and leagues. So really they're the beating heart of the franchise, so they've got to be at the center of what we do, because we owe the 25 years to them. We're going to be celebrating them in a big way tomorrow as part of the broadcast, but honestly, we're grateful for them every day and really are hoping that they feel they have a seat at the table. They're very much part of the development team with us. Adam probably has thoughts - sorry, this is my passion. I could ramble about it.
Adam Isgreen: No, no, I'd much rather let you.
Something I think is really special aesthetically about Age of Empires is that a lot of RTS games have sort of darker palettes that they use, whereas Age of Empires is much brighter and more inviting. I want to talk a little bit about why you think that unique look is so important to the series, and what it's like nailing down the look of a new expansion or installment?
Adam Isgreen: You know, it's funny, we were having a conversation with my whole creative team just the other day on this exact topic as we were discussing things for the future, in terms of the optimism that the Age of Empires has always projected. Because it's true, there's something, especially the older games, you listen to the music, the pacing of it, there's a certain cadence to Age that's not being like, "Hurry up, do this now!" A lot of games, you know, they've got pounding soundtracks, and you're driven to do something and you're supposed to rush, and especially as genres go longer, the games tend to get faster, right? Everyone wants the gameplay, like "Yeah, I understand this. Give me the new thing. Let me go faster." And Age was like, "Oh, no, no, no, we have a pace."
We want people to enjoy the game and be able to explore and have fun, but not feel so hurried. So, you know, when you talk about that, in terms of the style, I think the idea of a bright inviting world is something that's been mentioned multiple times with Age of Empires. When we were approaching IV, we're like, "We want to maintain this." Like I was saying earlier, you know, cinema so portrays a lot of medieval history as drab and colorless, just browns and grays. When we were doing our research, this is why we did specifically a Hands on History about color and pigments. It didn't look like that, we had color!
There was color everywhere, and there was vibrancy, and some of it was rare. Some of the colors were rare, right? That's fascinating, that whole thing on purple, purple was this insanely coveted color because you could only get it from this certain snail in this certain area. And so it became like, "We own purple." I love that, and so as we were looking for the style, one of the things we really wanted to do is have some kind of through line.
I'm a big fan of having consistency throughout the games, and that's why we came up with that. When we're talking about, you know, the Hands on Histories and the briefings and the documentary kind of approach. We're like, well, how are we going to bridge history and real? How can we do this in a way that people will get the connections? That was one of the things where the art director Zach Schläppi at Relic had the idea of this golden ink concept and this idea of the illuminated manuscripts and the writing in gold that they used to do when they're copying important documents and books and things. And that kind of became that through line that we took through the game.
We're like, "Okay, we know, we want things bright, but we also want to have this kind of through line." So you see in the briefings the golden soldiers overlaid over the real world, or in the game where the little people are building up the buildings, because you're representing the idea of tens to hundreds of years, right? A castle doesn't spring up in a minute. That was kind of our through line that kind of connects the game and the history and kind of grounds it in a way that you can connect past to the present Because that was the thing that was really important to us was, can we find something to bring people through if they play the whole experience? Where they can be like, "You know what, history is right behind me, it's not something way in the distance that I have no connection to, it's literally right here."
And that was part of why we went with what we went with. I think the other challenge is always in a realtime strategy game, you're talking about a camera that's pretty high up right off of the battlefield, and there's a lot of considerations to the scale of weapons, scale of people, scale of buildings to make everything readable without having to constantly play the zoom in zoom out game, which Ages never been about. We wanted to avoid anything like that. It was a lot of talking, looking at references from the earlier games, talking to people that worked on the earlier games, talking with the community, because there was such an amount of time between Ages III and Ages IV.
There were a lot of expectations of what the game could look like, but the other thing was that we had to recognize that because Ages is a global franchise, people were playing this game all over the world. So we had to make the game run on as much as we could, because we didn't want to leave anybody behind - there's still people that are playing on pretty low spec machines, and it was important to us to find some kind of style that could fit that. I think that we did okay, I would say, as we launched the game, and we are still refining. There are some really awesome changes coming up in the pipeline for some of the visuals that I'm very excited about that I can't talk about just yet, but know that we are definitely always trying to improve our visuals and we'll continue to do so throughout the life of the product.
I'm curious if you can reveal, or at least tease anything coming in the future for Age of Empires?
Emma Bridle: I mean, really, all you need to do is tune into our broadcast tomorrow. So 10am Pacific, it's a big celebration. But, you know, in order to celebrate the 25 years that have gone, we also need to look to what's coming, so that people know that this is just the first 25 years, hopefully, and we're heading into a new era. And so there will be new things to take a look at tomorrow, so I heavily invite people to tune in if they want to see some of where we're going.
Adam Isgreen: Yeah, I would add that there is something for everyone, and how you define everyone is very open to interpretation. In terms of, does that mean the type of player, does that mean a certain game? I don't know, you'll have to tune in.
Emma Bridle: Trying to maintain that air of mystery that we talked about, but yeah, definitely tune in tomorrow. It's going to be a really good show, and as someone who will be managing getting stuff out live and seeing the community reaction. I am very excited. I'm very excited for tomorrow.
The Age of Empires IV free update releases October 25 in conjunction with the Age of Empires Anniversary livestream, which takes place October 25 at 10AM PST, and can be viewed on the Age of Empires, Xbox, or Red Bull Twitch channels or on the Age of Empires YouTube channel.