The release of Age of Wonders 4 is just behind the corner. On May 2nd, we will once again immerse ourselves within the series’ amazing magical universe and spend hundreds of hours having top-notch turn-based strategy fun.At the start of the week we’ve reminded you about the ability to pre-order
Age of Wonders 4, in both
Standard and
Premium Edition (to get some sweet additional content by doing so), shared our
Affinity QUIZ which helps you to determine which cosmic power best suits your style, and posted a
Guest Article from the game’s director and co-founder of Triumph Studios Lennart Sas, in which he shed more light on the series’ foundations and the latest entry’s features and story.
Today we are back with even more cool things! We had the absolute pleasure of talking to Lennart Sas once again and asking him about the development process of Age of Wonders 4, as well as additional questions about the game’s mechanics and lore. Enjoy!
Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the release of the original Age of Wonders. Throughout all these years the series has gained an iconic status and given us multiple great entries. How is working on such an impactful and renowned franchise different from let’s say completely new IP?The difficulty with developing new games in a long running series is striking the right balance between respecting the game’s heritage/audience expectation and adding innovations. Too little innovation and a brand can become stale and give off a “been there done that” vibe.Taking the games too far into another direction can make devs lose the connection with the fan base. I think as gamers we’ve all seen examples. A solution for us has been to add a selection of exciting, even radical additions on top of the proven base and then start a dialogue with a group of fans early to get feedback and then iterate.
Making an entirely new game with a new IP is a lot of fun as we’ve experienced with the Overlord series, but can be scary from a business perspective. You actually need to find an audience and a place between the thousands of great games out there. You need to have a clear answer to: “Why does this game need to exist?”, which is also true for sequels where your biggest competitor you need to challenge is often the previous game.So far, everything that we’ve seen of Age of Wonders 4 looked incredible. We expect it to bring us all countless amounts of amazing strategy-based fun. But we imagine that making such an ambitious project comes with its hardships. What would you say was the most difficult aspect that you’ve managed to overcome?Thank you! The faction creation and evolution is the central cool new thing in the game which also impacted many other systems. It was hard to make with everything being interconnected. It was difficult in terms of tech and art; compositing armies from modular sections but also in terms of gameplay; having a tech tree spread over 54 tomes of magic and 6 affinity trees is a daunting task. But I think you need a certain level of friction and hardship to reach new grounds. If it was easy or obvious, someone else would have done it already!
And what was the most fun part when working on Age of Wonders 4? Because we’re sure there was plenty of that as well!Absolutely! The most fun part is seeing the team tackling these challenges and the pieces falling into place. Getting the feeling we added major innovations to a long running franchise and genre, and seeing fans embrace it. This has been very satisfying for us. Also, I don’t think I’ve seen the team play one of our games so much, even after spending years on it.One of the beloved elements of the series is its vast and detailed world and lore. Some entries were more connected to one another, some less. Where does Age of Wonders 4 stand in that regard – could you shed more light on its story?In many ways Age of Wonders 4 is a fresh new start, but at the same time has a deep connection to the stories of previous games. AoW4 sees the return of the banished Wizard Kings who, after centuries of banishment, try to wrest control over the domains of mortals.These Wizard Kings operate from a Pantheon located at a place called Magehaven from where they can reach various realms within the Astral Sea. Previous games hinted at there being other worlds beyond the canon world of Atlha, now players can actually go there.
Characters from previous games reappear to oppose you or join in the pantheon. We have a story campaign consisting of 5 missions which explore the lore and adventures of a couple key characters on a deeper level.It’s a given that Age of Wonders 4 is a must-have title for all the fans of the series. What about people who are completely new to it? Will they be able to enjoy it just as much? Age of Wonders 4 is a perfect game to join the series; it has the best tutorial and UI we’ve ever done and you don’t need knowledge of the stories from the previous games to get what’s going on.
There are cool introductory story missions, but another cool way to start is just to go in configuring your own fantasy. The game encourages you to role-play the ruler of a fantasy empire. In the front end you can tailor your character and people to your liking, and configure a realm to go with them. In your first games you don’t need to worry about complex synergies. Role-playing and tinkering is lots of fun, from there on you can pick scenarios with increasing difficulty.Is there anything you’d like to say to our community before they jump into Age of Wonders’ new magical realms and start to experience their wildest fantasy dreams?We’d like to thank all the people that played our games. We are gamers just like you. We make the games we want to play but couldn’t have done this with your input and encouragement. Age of Wonders 4 is the culmination of a 25 year long cooperation, we hope you enjoy the result!
And we’d like to thank Lennart for these great answers and Paradox Interactive for the opportunity to have this interview.The excitement to play Age of Wonders 4 in just a few days is through the roof. Get your bonuses from the pre-order now and we’ll see you in Magehaven on May 2nd, 2023. Have a great one! 