It's official! Age of Empires II, one of the most beloved classic real-time strategy games of all time, is finally getting the love it deserves. During Microsoft's E3 Conference, the company officially announced that Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is in the works, and that people won't have to wait too long before they can get their hands on it this fall.
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition will feature a host of improvements and content additions to make this game, which has garnered the love of millions of fans over the past 20 years, even more worthy of its dedicated community. Apart from 4K Ultra HD graphics, remastered soundtracks, and new tutorials and challenges aimed at easing new players into the game, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition will also introduce three brand-new campaigns and four all-new civilizations to play as, with, or against.
In an exclusive interview with game devs over at Microsoft, the folks over at Destructoid have managed to shed some light onto the upcoming Definitive Edition of Age of Empires II, due in October of 2019. According the devs, one of the most remarkable changes will be the overhaul of the game's AI. In most real-time strategy games, especially back when machine learning wasn't a thing and everything had to be hard-coded into an AI program, AI were either too dumb for advanced players or too difficult for casual players. Microsoft overhauled Age of Empires II's artificial intelligence to allow for a more fine-tuned experience, hopefully one that's free of suicidal villagers and enemy AI with extremely unfair resource advantages.
Just last year, Microsoft released Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, a remaster of the original Age of Empires, which launched back in 1997. While there was so much hype and anticipation regarding the remaster, the actual release was met with mixed reviews. Age of Empires: Definitive Edition wasn't what a lot of people hoped it would be, but this time around, we hope that Microsoft has learned enough to make Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition everything it can be.
