Yeah, the way they handled the reveals was probably suboptimal. They sort of let people run wild with their imagination, and it turns out that everybody basically wanted something different. For example on ESOC there are many people disappointed that it isn't set in aoe3's era (which makes sense) while other people were imagining all the world war ideas for aoe4._RDX_ wrote:They shouldn't have let us wait this long tho....to reveal this. This was released 814 days after the Announcement trailer. The last line from the Announcement trailer said "A new age is upon is." and the visuals were portrayed like a 'sequel' is coming to AoE 3, like a game that is set after the colonial era, somewhere set around WW 1 or WW 2 period. This 'gameplay' trailer seems completely deceptive. It feels like they were actually making a game on modern history initially and then they dropped the idea and then they started to make this. That could explain the time they took to reveal this but on the other hand, RTS games take even longer time to make. Imo, i'm not satisfied with the era that it is set in but the audio is sick, The graphics look lit and new developer for the franchise as well, something that i would really like to try out but not exactly what i expected.
I think it might have been better had they shown a cinematic trailer a year ago as the announcement. Just a trailer showcasing some medieval stuff. Then people would just be crazy excited that aoe4 is coming at all and wouldn't even give a shit that it's not their favorite era. The cinematic trailer is sort of missing either way. Normally games first show off something like that and then come up with a gameplay video right? I'm hoping we still get something sick next E3, maybe an insight into what the campaign will look like.