Bully
13-10-2003, 01:34 PM
The RTS genre has undergone some changes recently. A few years ago, the timeline of an RTS usually stuck to a relatively short span. Games like Starcraft and Command & Conquer featured plotlines that concerned, at most, a few years. The result was that there was no real room for major advancement, technology-wise. Sure you could research bonus attributes or abilities, but it's not as if the entire unit structure was overhauled as time progressed in the game (and as it does in real life). Even games like Age of Empires, which focused on the passing and development of certain ages of history, didn't feature dramatic changes in technology or units. A stronger knight here, a faster cavalry unit there, that was about it. Looking at the beginning and end of an Age of Empires game, the visuals might've changed to reflect the newer ages, but the gameplay remained almost identical. This is not the case in Empires: Dawn of the Modern World.
To say Empires: DotMW has a short timeframe is like saying Final Fantasy X is a quick run-through. The scope of this game is simply massive. Starting in 950AD with the birth of the Middle Ages, the game continues on through 1950AD, covering World War II and everything in between. Oh, and that's not to mention the fact that this span of 1000 years can pass in the time it takes to play Monopoly.
But we've seen this before, haven't we? After all, Rick Goodman, the lead designer on Empires: DotMW, created a game similar to this, called Empire Earth. The difference is that Empire Earth went from the Stone Age to the oh-so-distant future, complete with robots, and quite frankly, it didn't work that well due to the lack of accomplishment per era. Learning from those mistakes, Goodman's boiled down the basics into a game with a lot more happening for each stage of human evolution. Plus, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World eschews these earlier years, basically starting when AoE cuts off. In no time, you'll have knights, archers, cavalry and castles, all without that boring straw hut stage.
Just had a looky at the demo and i'll be lookin for it on the shelf's
here's a webby for it Empires: Dawn of the Modern World (http://empiresrts.com/)
To say Empires: DotMW has a short timeframe is like saying Final Fantasy X is a quick run-through. The scope of this game is simply massive. Starting in 950AD with the birth of the Middle Ages, the game continues on through 1950AD, covering World War II and everything in between. Oh, and that's not to mention the fact that this span of 1000 years can pass in the time it takes to play Monopoly.
But we've seen this before, haven't we? After all, Rick Goodman, the lead designer on Empires: DotMW, created a game similar to this, called Empire Earth. The difference is that Empire Earth went from the Stone Age to the oh-so-distant future, complete with robots, and quite frankly, it didn't work that well due to the lack of accomplishment per era. Learning from those mistakes, Goodman's boiled down the basics into a game with a lot more happening for each stage of human evolution. Plus, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World eschews these earlier years, basically starting when AoE cuts off. In no time, you'll have knights, archers, cavalry and castles, all without that boring straw hut stage.
Just had a looky at the demo and i'll be lookin for it on the shelf's
here's a webby for it Empires: Dawn of the Modern World (http://empiresrts.com/)