Age of Empires developers 'have not forgotten about Age of Mythology'
The beloved Age of Empires spin-off was released in 2002, but got an expansion more recently in 2016.
Ahead of Saturday's Age of Empires fan event, Microsoft arranged a roundtable interview with developers from Xbox Game Studios and the current developers of the Age of Empires series at Relic Entertainment. While the interview was mostly focused on the upcoming Age of Empires 4, another game came up—2002's Age of Mythology, a spin-off that traded AoE's more grounded history for Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology. Someone asked if Mythology would ever get the Definitive Edition treatment given to all three Age of Empires games.
"I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I have not forgotten about Age of Mythology," said franchise creative director Adam Isgreen. "It comes up all the time."
Microsoft did re-release Age of Mythology on Steam back in 2014, and actually followed it up with an expansion, Tale of the Dragon, in 2016. That's better treatment than many '90s and 2000s strategy games have gotten, but in the last five years it hasn't gotten any of the love Microsoft has shown the main Age series.
Isgreen didn't commit to a sequel or new expansion, but the enthusiastic response from the developers suggests that a new Age of Mythology isn't outside the realm of possibility. A new expansion for the classic game also seems plausible—Microsoft is still releasing expansions for the Age of Empires series thanks to their popularity on Steam.
"Stay tuned," Isgreen said. "We have not forgotten about it. I love Age of Mythology. I love mythology in general. We love the franchise. We're not pretending it's not there or anything like that. We know."
"Absolutely we know," added senior executive producer Michael Mann. "We're listening. We're 100 percent listening on that request."
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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.
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