Age of Mythology: Retold

[Elttharion]

Yeah, this is AI generated.

 

[Lacrymas]

^ Yikes.

 

[PlayerEmers]

I remember someone posting screenshots of the credits where you can see a bunch of asian names.

They outsourced some random company that most likely used AI art + artist fixing the most egregious mistakes. Chinese company with cheap mobile tier art + AI is such a fucking retarded combo.

Also remember this post:


They didnt deny AI usage, just said "hand-painted by artists". If they used AI with the final touch made by somebody, this tweet is still true.

 

[d1r]

This is just awful. Holy shit.

 

[thesheeep]

They are lying about it, the art is very obviously AI to anyone with a trained eye. It's not just the uncanny style that almost looks like real art but not quite, there are also little mistakes that prove it.

I still don't think they are lying, though, or at least were not originally.
My guess would be that it's some contractor who "guaranteed" them that he didn't use AI. From the portraits I saw, I can also see different styles, so my guess would be one (or more?) of the people making these portraits is using an AI-generated base to paint over (and obviously didn't clean up the "crime" well enough).

Still weird that it is so obvious and yet they still stick to their story, or rather ignore the mini-shitstorm cause most people won't care either way.
What's so hard about "oh, sorry, we were not aware, the culprit has been caught and tasked to replace the portraits"?

They didnt deny AI usage, just said "hand-painted by artists". If they used AI with the final touch made by somebody, this tweet is still true.

Technically true, I guess

 

[catfood]

Cut them some slack. Microsoft is just a small indie studio. They can't afford to hire proper artists.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I haven't gone through the pantheon & gameplay changes in detail, just a glance. They look substantial. This seems unwise to me. Groot Gaia is also an abomination.

 

[JarlFrank]

This statement implies that no AI was used at any point of the process.

And as you can see from the images, and the detailed analysis people in the reddit threads I linked have done, this is clearly more AI than human. Whichever human artist worked on fixing the AI quirks didn't do a very good job because they're still extremely visible.

Just look at the image of Apollo posted at the top of this page. What human artist would look at that arrow and the bowstring clipping through his fingers and think "this is fine"?

I'm willing to bet 100$ that no human artists were involved in the creation of these images at all. It's 100% AI generated, not even touched up to fix the errors.

 

[Caim]

Plot twist: the art was in fact hand drawn by artists, except the artists are really, really shit at their jobs.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Nah, it's ai plus some do the needful saar-tier retouch. Things like the bowstring/hand posted above just prove it 100%, but it's still rather obvious otherwise from the general "style".

 

[flyingjohn]

Artist who defends AI can't tell that the example he used was made by AI. This game is delivering on the butthurt/drama. Shame about the actual game balance butchering.

 

[JarlFrank]

"Artists" who defend AI aren't really artists, because if they were, they wouldn't defend AI.

 

[thesheeep]

Plot twist: the art was in fact hand drawn by artists, except the artists are really, really shit at their jobs.

That would be the funniest reveal.
An artist shitty in such a specific way that everyone always thinks his stuff is AI-made

 

[JarlFrank]

Detailed analysis:

 

[DoWhocares]

As part of the purchase of Acti-Blizzard, one of the clauses must've been for Microsoft to push out an RTS remaster that shits on the original to such a degree that WCIII: Refunded looks tame in comparison. Only thing that makes sense here, really.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I wonder why they keep flubbing AOM. They're doing a good job with AOEII and AOEIII, these games look and play good. What the hell is up with them? Is this another Warcraft III: Reforged kinda deal?

 

[Caim]

I wonder why they keep flubbing AOM. They're doing a good job with AOEII and AOEIII, these games look and play good. What the hell is up with them? Is this another Warcraft III: Reforged kinda deal?

The remaster (or whatever the name is of the version currently on sale) came with an expansion that was utterly shit as well. Something must be afoot here.

 

[Lacrymas]

As far as I can see, it's not as bad as Reforged. Some balance changes were badly needed. But we'll see.

 

[PlayerEmers]

I wonder why they keep flubbing AOM. They're doing a good job with AOEII and AOEIII, these games look and play good. What the hell is up with them? Is this another Warcraft III: Reforged kinda deal?

The remaster (or whatever the name is of the version currently on sale) came with an expansion that was utterly shit as well. Something must be afoot here.

AOM Extended Edition? The problem of that version was the devs: they mainly worked on AOE 2 (the HD/2013 version) and some of them used to make mods for the original AOE 2.
The skills and knowledge they had with AOE 2 didnt traslated well to AOM. Both the engine and the game are extremly different compared to AOE 2.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I wonder why they keep flubbing AOM. They're doing a good job with AOEII and AOEIII, these games look and play good. What the hell is up with them? Is this another Warcraft III: Reforged kinda deal?

The remaster (or whatever the name is of the version currently on sale) came with an expansion that was utterly shit as well. Something must be afoot here.

AOM Extended Edition? The problem of that version was the devs: they mainly worked on AOE 2 (the HD/2013 version) and some of them used to make mods for the original AOE 2.
The skills and knowledge they had with AOE 2 didnt traslated well to AOM. Both the engine and the game are extremly different compared to AOE 2.

Shouldn't they just use people from AOEIII remaster?
AOEIII is literally built off AOM.

 

[Hoodoo]

gg

 

[PlayerEmers]

Shouldn't they just use people from AOEIII remaster?
AOEIII is literally built off AOM.

They are using the same devs. The store page on steam lists 5 dev teams, three of those worked on AOE 3 definitive edition.

One of the teams (Forgotten Empires, they are the ones that have AOE 2 modders working on the team) worked on the chinese DLC for AOM Extended Edition. They probably learned with their mistakes because most problems with the AOM definitive edition are from outsourced art, music and 3d modeling.

 

[PlayerEmers]

https://www.ageofempires.com/news/age-of-mythology-retold-multiplayer-steam-stress-test/

stress test this weekend
anyone can join

 

[Lacrymas]

I tested it. It's definitely a remake made by people. A lot of stuff has changed and I was semi-confused in my first game, but got the hang of it in my second. Performance is terrible. I'm not sold on repeatable god powers, but we'll see. There are some models that look very strange and behave uncannily, like the minotaur and toxote (for some reason). Imo, the graphics are a bit too busy and everything is just a tiny bit harder to make out in the chaos of everything. Otherwise, it's the same game, which is good.

 

[Lacrymas]

I played some more today, 2 ranked matches and 1 quick match. Their servers are definitely not ready for launch, there were numerous technical problems. Performance was better, but I tweaked the graphics settings, some of them are too heavy for what they are. As for repeatable god powers, I don't think they are a very good addition. You can be sure you'll have the first two ages' god powers in every major battle with the other player because they aren't as expensive as the devs thought they are. That means the god powers with battle applications are generally better than the eco ones. The problem with eco ones is that they are usually meh if you know what you are doing and a crutch if you don't. Among the Greeks, Hades is the winner in that regard. Gaia is an eco powerhouse and plays a lot like the Zerg with her green creep, so you will lose if you let the Atlanteans boom. I don't like the Norse, so I didn't play them and the Egyptians weren't available. Greeks have a problem against myth units due to their very limited access to heroes (only the 4 named ones you get from the TC), so Atlanteans spamming automata is an issue. However, I liked the overall experience because it's still AoM and it's a good game, probably my favorite "ciassic" RTS.