Age of Empires 4 announced, original trilogy remasters on the way

Microsoft has been keeping Age of Empires alive for a couple of years now. We have seen new expansions for Age of Empires II, the original game recently received a ‘definitive edition’ and now, after many years, we are finally getting a full-blown sequel. At Gamescom last night, Microsoft officially announced Age of Empires IV, which is being developed by Relic Entertainment.

For those of you who are hardcore fans of the series, you can be assured that Microsoft won’t be ‘dumbing down’ this game in an effort to get it playable on consoles with a gamepad. Age of Empires IV will be exclusive to PC. Unfortunately, we don’t have a release date yet, or even any gameplay footage but the concept art trailer showed off a few armies, including the Native Americans, Japanese Samurai, Roman Legionnaires and British Redcoats.

Aside from Age of Empires IV, Microsoft is also going to be publishing ‘Definitive Editions’ for Age of Empires II and Age of Empires III. Age of Empires II technically already has a HD remaster on Steam but this one should differ in a number of ways. We can expect to see support for resolutions up to 4K, a remastered soundtrack and improved gameplay.

We already knew that Age of Empires I was getting a definitive edition but now it looks like the rest of the trilogy will be following suit. These will be Windows 10 exclusives though, which likely means we won’t be seeing a Steam release. The AoE Definitive Edition is arriving in October, we don’t have release dates for AoE II or AoE III just yet.

KitGuru Says: After toying around with expansions and definitive editions, its good to see Microsoft giving Age of Empires a proper revival. Not only is the original trilogy coming back in remastered form but we are even getting a sequel. How many of you have played Age of Empires? Are you glad to see it coming back?

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