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The German magazine Gamestar also has an article about Age of Empires II: Age of Kings in their April 99 issue. On the CD that come with the mag, there is also a preview of the game where you can see formations on the march and other various scenes, all in animated splendor. Almost a must even if you don't read German, hehe.
Heinrich Lehnhardt of Gamestar talked also to Bruce Shelley about his plans for the future. Heres what Bruce said:
- Ensemble Studios will release four parts: Age of Empires, Age of Kings, Age of Discovery, and the last one has no name yet.
- Age of Discovery (Bruce Shelley's favourite period of history) will cover the epoch from 1492 to 1918 when World War 1 ended, letting players build wooden boats up to mighty battleships.
- there might be a brand new 3d engine for Age of Discovery
- the last part, which will be released in 2003 will cover the epoch from the end of WW1 to the near future, including all the WW2 units.
- Then Bruce said they might start over again, just to insert new design ideas and new technologies which have been developed since good old Age of Empires I.
- There are also rumours of a second, new formed Ensemble team, working on a role-playing game in the tradition of Diablo.
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Clearly this "tentative schedule" is quite off-track. However, might the idea that ES was indeed thinking about the concept of AoE III back before the game was even released increase the probability of it actually coming to fruition eventually?