![]() Most missions do allow players some choice in determining the order in which they take on secondary objectives but in all the campaigns here felt a bit more linear than they have in previous Age games.Īnd for the life of us, we can't figure out why there wasn't more of an emphasis on sea battles. There will sometimes be an option as to which of two paths you're going to take into the enemy base, but there's usually a "right" and a "wrong" answer even here. Sadly, only a handful of scenarios really present the player with any wide range of approaches. The best missions move back and forth between different objectives giving the player a chance to choose how they'll tackle the overall scenario. Naturally, a lot of the missions require players to capture and hold trading posts, destroy enemy town centers, and protect your own structures from enemy attack. I miss some of the cool resource-oriented missions of the previous games, but Asian Dynasties has its own charms - from finding and securing beached treasure ships to stampeding elephants through enemy towns. Finally, the Indian campaign puts players in charge of a British officer who decides to lend his support to the cause of Indian independence. From there, we see a mutiny in the Chinese navy as the Treasure Fleet moves first to India and then to the New World. The Japanese campaign kicks things off by retelling some key events in Tokugawa's efforts to unite Japan. ![]() ![]() Still, the fictional main characters in the campaigns give the designers room to tell a relatively unique story set within a firm historical framework. We want to stay true to the spirit of the Age of Empires games and yet contribute our own unique flair.Asian Dynasties steps away a bit from the more fictional campaigns of previous games in the series in favor of a slightly more historical approach. It's kind of like getting to be the "special guest director" on an episode of your favorite TV show. From the Big Huge Games side we want to make a game they'll be very happy with and feel good about. Ultimately Ensemble is the customer in this relationship so they have as much control as they want to have. ![]() On the design side, Greg Street and Sandy Petersen have been involved in the brainstorm sessions with us and designers from both groups have traveled back and forth several times. Reynolds: Most of the development for this expansion is taking place at Big Huge Games, but there has been collaboration between the teams throughout the process. GameSpy: How much collaboration is there between the two teams? Is this primarily a Big Huge games project and how much control does Ensemble have over the final product? On top of that, I've personally been a big fan of the Age of Empires series since the very beginning, so I was really excited at the chance to be directly involved in designing an expansion for it. BHG already had a great relationship with Microsoft and experience doing historical RTS games. Meanwhile Big Huge Games had some free time for its RTS team while our new RPG game got up to speed and the Catan Live project was finishing up. Ensemble saw that Age of Empires III was having great success and thought a second expansion might be a good idea, but most of its developers were already busy with other projects. With all due respect to your team at Big Huge Games who are certainly great developers, why isn't Ensemble Studios working on this project? How did you guys get together on this?īrian Reynolds: The project came together as a result of a series of fortunate events on all sides. We sat down with Big Huge Games' Brian Reynolds to discuss this most unusual expansion pack. Not only does The Asian Dynasties bring to the game three civilizations (China, Japan and India) that one doesn't usually associate with Colonial America, this title marks the first collaboration between the two RTS powerhouses. That's what made the recent announcement of a second expansion pack for Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires III so unusual. Most recently it brought the classic board game Catan to Xbox Live, bringing strategy excellence to a huge audience of Xbox 360 gamers. This is, after all, the crew that brought us the extraordinary Rise of Nations and the wildly original (if flawed) Rise of Legends. Big Huge Games is certainly no stranger to real-time strategy games.
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