A special “oops all real time strategy” edition of gaming grab bag series.

Age of Empires:

We’ve gotten another round of news about the latest step of the continuous onslaught of Age of Empires DLC.

The next AoE2 expansion is The Viking Sagas. Given my love of Norse history, you’d think I’d be super excited about this, but the Vikings were already in the game, so this feels like something of a cynical attempt to cash in on the popularity of “Vikings” as a concept.

Two of the new civilizations — Danes and Varangians — are just Vikings by another name. Generously, we could interpret the current Viking civilization as representing the peoples of actual Scandinavia, whereas the Varangians would be those who settled in eastern Europe and the Danes represent… Danes, so it’s not as egregious as some of the nonsense AoE4 has pulled with variant civilizations, but there’s still far more interesting things they could have done. Africa and North America are both far overdue for more content.

The Harald Hardrada grand campaign does sound cool, so I’ll likely still pick up the DLC at some point, but it’s probably going to be a “wait for a sale” thing.

The most unexpected news is that Age of Empires III isn’t dead after all. The previously cancelled Danes and Poles DLC, now called The Baltic Powers, is releasing in a few weeks. AoE3 is my least favourite installment, and there’s once again no single-player content, so it doesn’t do a lot for me, but I’m happy for the game’s fans. Again, may buy on sale.

Overall AoE4’s Raiders of the North is my most anticipated release of the current cycle. The lack of campaign is disappointing, but the updated Crucible mode shows promise, and the new civilizations look cool. Adding Vikings is a lot more exciting when your game doesn’t already have Vikings in it (still wish they were called Norse, though).

There are some conspicuous absences from the news as well. Nothing for Age of Mythology, and no mention of another Chronicles DLC for AoE2. AoM might just be on pause, but we are due for a Chronicles announcement. Given its apparent lack of popularity compared to other DLCs and the layoffs of several its key developers, I think we may have seen the last of that line.

I’m not as in love with Chronicles as some hardcore fans, but it was an interesting experiment, and I would have liked to see more of it. Was hoping we’d get to the Punic Wars, at least. I wanted my elephant bois.

The silver lining is the mainline campaigns increasingly seem to be incorporating some of the best ideas from Chronicles, so even if we never get another Chronicles DLC, its legacy will live on.

ZeroSpace:

This seems to also factor in my time in the demos, as it shows more time played than Steam does.

I spent most of this past weekend fighting for the Eden Accord in ZeroSpace’s Galactic War. Unfortunately, we came in second behind the Keeper Council, perhaps partly due to some bugs favouring the Council (though to be fair their players did also fight very hard). Still, it was a close thing, and we did take the lead many times over the past few weeks. We just couldn’t keep it when it mattered.

I’ve already given my impressions of ZeroSpace on Massively, and given some feedback on reddit, so I won’t repeat myself too much. The Galactic War remains one of the best ideas in any RTS ever, and the simplified macro is nice, but otherwise the more I play of ZeroSpace the more it feels like the poor man’s StarCraft II. It’s so rough.

I’m frustrated the developers spread themselves so thin on so many features instead of delivering a more focused and polished product, and they still have plans to keep tacking on more stuff. I want to grab them by the shirt and shake them. “STOP ADDING THINGS, FINISH THE FEATURES YOU HAVE NOW.”

I still think it could evolve into a great game over time, but I fear it’s not going to get the chance.

StarCraft II:

Finally, I have been playing a little of actual StarCraft II to take advantage of the free co-op XP booster Blizzard gave out as part of the lead up to BlizzCon. My thinking was to finish a last few prestiges and finally get Swann to cap, as he’s the only commander I never leveled up other than Tychus, whom I never bought*.

*(I never bought Mengsk either, but I did level him to cap during a free trial event many moons ago. I won’t play Tychus even for free.)

However, I am struggling to muster much passion for it. I fear I may have finally out of love with SC2 co-op. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but simply because I’ve played every mission literal hundreds of times now. That I enjoyed it as much as I did for as long as I did is a crowning achievement of game design, but all good things…

The future:

Feeling a bit sad about the future of RTS now. Age of Empires is still doing well, and that’s great, but I also crave the more fast-paced Blizzard style of RTS. One isn’t better than the other, but they scratch different itches.

Stormgate crashed and burned. Immortal: Gates of Pyre looks like it’s never going to get the funding to finish development. ZeroSpace’s future looks very cloudy. And there’s not much else hope on the horizon. The next StarCraft game is almost certainly a shooter (I do think we’ll see it unveiled at BlizzCon this year). There’s a rumour that Warcraft IV might be in development, but I’m extremely skeptical of that, nor am I sure modern Blizzard can live up to the legacy of their classic RTS games.

The other day I was thinking about what I’d like to see from a future of RTS, and being cursed with more creativity than I know what to do with, I ended up coming up with an extensive concept over the course of my afternoon walk. Factions, units, story, even some ideas on cost cutting by developing campaign and co-op concurrently. Gameplay inspired by Warcraft III, StarCraft II, and IGoP. Lore inspired by New World.

But of course I have absolutely zero funding and zero knowledge of video game development, so it will remain just an idea, taunting me in the back of my mind.