Steam Microsoft Bringing Age of Empires II HD Exclusively to Steam

[x3sphere]

Yes, you read that right - in conjunction with developer Hidden Path, Microsoft is bringing RTS classic Age of Empires II exclusively to Steam - and it's also receiving the HD treatment. The title is due out April 9 officially, though those who pre-purchase at the 10% discount will get it earlier on April 5.

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[slicer4ever]

am i missing something, or wouldn't microsoft want to use this to help prop their windows store?

 

[Trigun]

So, what. They zoomed out the view to make the sprites not get all filtered ugly and what not?

It doesn't look like they redrew anything. But it's hard to tell. It looks very nice either way

 

[x3sphere]

Some 1080p screens up on the Steam page now:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/221380/

The sprites look higher res to me.

 

[Trigun]

It was hard to tell from the video. Easier thanks to the screens but it's still a bit difficult without comparisons. Because if many old Isometric 2D games are examples. They could've just zoomed the view out so that everything is displayed close to 1:1 scale. Which is what makes it look nice. (See Recent updated versions of Divine Divinity games. High res patches for Fallout,Starcraft,Baldur's Gate, etc)

But again that's not to say that it doesn't look good. Because that's not true. It looks GREAT.


I'm just curious about whether it's actual new sprites or not. And since i'm not familiar with the original I can't say for sure.


Edit: After watching the trailer like 10 times in the spot where it changes. You can definitely see some very distinctly different sprites for the enviroment.

 

[LocutusEstBorg]

The low framerate animations ruin it for me.