00:00www.mesmerism.info
00:04The Definitive Edition started with looking at something that was already going on.
00:08A small group of passionate guys at the Age2 community
00:12were working on this unofficial expansion for Age of Empires II.
00:15I actually remember the very first goal we had when we released the first mod.
00:20I was like, I want $20,000. That was my goal.
00:23And we hit that after two hours in one crash website.
00:29I played that and I saw the love was there.
00:32It was so good as basically a mod that we ended up publishing them.
00:39That was sort of the beginning of this revival.
00:46With Definitive Edition, we're going back to the very beginning.
00:50Every Age of Empires game except Age of Empires I
00:53has seen an extra boost given in the last few years.
00:56It needed a refreshment.
00:58For us, it was a really easy call.
01:01We've got a group of super talented developers
01:03and we've got this great game that people still love.
01:07What can we do to modernize it, to bring it into now?
01:11The big piece was visuals, I would say.
01:13Everything had to be remade from scratch.
01:15It's shockingly good on the outside and the music is beautiful.
01:23Microsoft went out to Prague, got a proper symphony orchestra
01:26and they kind of redid several tracks with a full symphony orchestra,
01:29which is great.
01:29It takes all those age melodies that you remember
01:34and just blows the doors off of it.
01:37We had to make a lot of gameplay changes as well
01:40because the game, it saw such a big improvement from H1 to H2
01:44that if you now go back, it really feels old.
01:46We've addressed nearly all of the game's shortcomings.
01:49So the series is now cohesive, which is a wonderful achievement.
01:53We took what was already pretty incredible and just made it even better.
02:05The definitive edition started with looking at something that was already going on.
02:10This awesome group of age fans had made these editions.
02:13They literally did on their own called The Forgotten.
02:16Five years ago, I was working in a restaurant
02:18and I was still playing Age of Empires like once in a while
02:21and I started to dabble around in modding.
02:24I was like, okay, I have IDs, but I can't make graphics, I can't make sounds.
02:29Then we started sourcing from the community
02:32and I was like, hey, wanna help out a bit?
02:34What's great about age is you just have so much passion throughout the world
02:36that you can find where passion's kind of coupled with talent
02:39and you just get some really special people.
02:41The most rabid fans of the series getting together,
02:44a modding team, pooling the talent to form a full-fledged developer.
02:47I think the passion of the fans making something that cohesive surprised me.
02:52I think the Forgotten Empire guys with their campaigns,
02:55they were just as good as the ensemble campaigns.
02:58That's a testament to their dedication and I think that's rare.
03:04I think they took a calculated risk in partnering with us
03:07and allowing us to be stewards of the franchise.
03:10Most important for us was there's a team that we can work with
03:12that have that same passion and still believe in this product
03:15and want to make it new again.
03:16When I started with Age of Empires series in 1996,
03:20I never in my wildest dreams thought that 21 years later
03:23I'd be working on the same game, the same code base.
03:27It's a timeless franchise and it has proven that already.
03:30This moment of time, the rebirth of Age of Empires 1
03:34and this definitive edition for the 20th anniversary,
03:37I think it's just the beginning of a much longer journey
03:40that we're about to embark on.
03:41So I think that's why we're really going to love to
03:47say global arc campaign,
03:47our needs of the confidence inside of the 100th anniversary
03:47to which we're always experiencing,
03:48Grazie a tutti.
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