I thought the new civs' unique mechanics were off-base, with big, one-off, Overwatch-style Ults replacing the more incremental bonuses civs usually have, while the single-player campaigns were stuffy and overcomplex, albeit with frequent moments of brilliance. The first post-DE expansion, Lords Of The West, left me a little cold. That's not just my love for the game's current golden age talking, either. And according to Beeckman, they're still nowhere near discovering the full extent of what AoE2's ancient scenario editor can do.īut good crikey, have they ever made progress.ĭawn Of The Dukes - and I say this as someone who's sunk thousands of hours into AoE2 over the decades - is the best expansion the game has ever had. But underneath these scant bells and whistles, it's the same grand old beast it always was.Īs of the present day, Beeckman's team have just launched Dawn Of The Dukes, their fifth expansion for AoE2 (it has six overall, including 2000's The Conquerors), and the second launched during the game's astonishing period of revival following the release of its Definitive Edition in 2019. Similar tweaks and additions have been made via Definitive Edition's monthly patches over the last two years, too.
The scenario editor isn't entirely untouched since the last millennium the horses, for example, have been spared further existential trauma by the addition of a "keep this faction in play even if they lose their units" trigger.
They formed a studio - taking on Forgotten Empires as their name - and got to work. To cut a long story (told excellently here) short, Microsoft was sufficiently impressed by the group's work that they were brought on board to make official expansions for AoE2's 2013 HD release. In 2011, that group found a way to insert new civilisations into the game, and began creating their own, unofficial expansion pack, called Forgotten Empires. Back in those days of impossible nested horses, Beeckman was on the player side of AoE2 - one of a group of enthusiasts still tinkering with the game a decade after its 1999 release, and finding ever more creative uses for its in-game scenario editor.
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