If Age of Empires 4 hasn’t yet wololo’d its way into your heart, maybe a little Jeanne D’Arc, The Maid of Orléans, will. That’s what Relic and Microsoft are aiming for with the Age of Empires 4 trailer from today’s joint Microsoft/Bethesda E3 presentation. Showing off a piece of Joan of Arc running around on a horse, performing a cavalry charge, and a few other bits: A horse archer straight from the Asian steppes, a blacksmith at work on a forge, and a siege in full swing. It’s a cool look, with shimmering outlines over real-world surroundings.
It’s basically Age of Empires 2 in appearance, but with multi-model troops. The structures aren’t as as to scale as they were in the last game, a change from the series aesthetics that still feels strange to me, but it does make enormous communities take up a lot less screen area.
The brief battle clips feature a wide range of forces, including French Knights, war elephants, camel archers, Genoese crossbowmen, and some of those eerie ghost trebuchets on a cart that drag themselves about uncrewed. All of your favourite Age of Empires content is included.
