Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition will launch tomorrow. Fans of the series have been waiting for this remaster for a while now. The remaster of Age of Empires 1 and 2 were incredibly good. So, we are hoping that this one also follows suit. Just like the previous remasters, this one also brings massive changes.
Improvements have been made in almost every department. The Director of Development at Tantalus Studio, Joss Ellis, talked about the improvements made in AoE3: DE in an official blog post. Keep in mind that Definitive Edition is a remaster and not a remake.
“We overhauled the entire engine: moving from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11. Each texture and model has been updated, as well as all the in-game cinematics which were re-rendered with higher fidelity. This means players will see significant changes from when comparing the original Age of Empires III to the Definitive Edition: including improvements to the cliff visuals and readability with triplanar texture projection—all part of a reworked procedural generation code with new pixel shaders,” Ellis claimed in the blog post. “The terrain was also redesigned with a better blending system that gave our artists more control over blending between the materials, including a brand new FFT-based water system and river generation.”
That’s not all. Tantalus also adopted a new Physically-Based Rendering system. SSAO and TAA graphics options will also be available for players. The Havok system is now the new physics engine of the game, so there is a completely new destruction mechanism as well. Dynamic Lighting has been added to the particle system.
Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition will also support features that weren’t previously available. This includes high refresh rates, 4:3 aspect ratio, Ultrawide resolution, and UltraHD support. AI has also been drastically improved and Spectator mode has been added. The game is going to be much more accessible for deaf and color blind players. Not a lot of developers do this, but it’s always appreciated.
As mentioned above, Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition launches tomorrow. You can purchase the game on Steam and the Windows Store. It will also be part of the Xbox Game Pass for PC.
So what do you think? Are you excited about Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition? Did you play the remasters of other Age of Empires games? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
