20 years ago, the umpteenth twist of the RTS (Real Time Strategy) genre came to the stores from the hand of Microsoft, after its enormous successes in the second half of the 90s with those glorious Age of Empires and other minor ones like Close Combat , based on real battles of World War II and that did not have as much travel or commercial success. Even so, the first years of the new millennium were the golden times of strategy and we would see the birth of a certain Age of Mythology .
Are we going to disturb the dead?
The fact is that a few days ago we learned that Microsoft is willing to revive this franchise, which surely for many of you rested peacefully on a CD from the time that you can still access with your PC. What’s more, in May 2014 we were lucky enough to receive an Age of Mythology Extended Edition that not only included all the DLC and content already released over the years , but also improved the graphics a bit by transforming them into HD.
Do you remember this version? Why not? Well, that is the level of expectation that must exist right now from users who want to revive a dead man who has been calm and without anyone bothering him for a long time. Why try again to make an old formula work that no one is asking for? What is the point of recovering franchises that no longer belong to this time? Look if not the Age of Empires IV test last year: Microsoft announced its development, launched it directly to Game Pass (here it goes) and… do you think it has been the same success as 25 years ago with the first ones?
Obviously not. There are video game sagas and specific genres that belong to an exact moment in history and that are not understood outside of that period. It’s like the platform games that flooded 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, or the purely arcade titles of the early days of video games in the late ’70s and early ’80s: you can’t be stretching your gum expecting hits to come back . that have already been overcome.
RTS have evolved… a lot
The fact is that Microsoft must be the only one that hasn’t realized that very few players are waiting for a reinterpretation of an old classic like Age of Mythology to arrive, much less an adaptation of the original game and its expansions because, even if they announce news In terms of gameplay, they will not be able to match the bets that are currently successful and that have a new battle arena: smartphone screens.
Although the PC with its keyboard and mouse is still a good place to enjoy an RTS long and hard, the truth is that many of these players have long been anchored to their mobile phones, to new habits of playing everywhere, where they have much more agile and deep alternatives than those that Age of Mythology is going to offer us, in addition to being free because that is another, in the end, we will need at least Xbox Game Pass for PC (that is, the Ultimate version) to access the title of Ensemble Studios and Skybox Labs. Tastes may remain intact, but habits… is there anything more complicated than changing a habit?
Without wanting to expand further, it honors Microsoft that it remembers the old titles that gave it glory when Xbox did not yet exist . Age of Mythology was heir to Age of Empires and a contemporary of the first American console but, believe us, the launch of this game will end like other revivals of the Redmond giant: going unnoticed and making us wonder if they couldn’t have invested so many efforts in something more productive and current.