Former Age of Empires developer says the RTS genre's stuck in a rut: 'you're still playing the same game'
Dave Pottinger has programming credits on all three Age of Empires games, was director of technology on Age of Mythology, and was lead designer on Halo Wars. He probably knows what he's talking about when it comes to the RTS genre. Speaking to Videogamer to promote his new studio Last Keep's upcoming RTS, Project Citadel, Pottinger pointed out the genre hasn't done a lot of evolving in the last two decades.
"It hasn't changed much," he said. "You know, you're still playing the same game we're playing 20 years ago and looking at some of these new games—Stormgate and others like that—and they're still really largely based on that formula. It works, it's an old, golden set of rules, because they were good back then and they're still good now, and it’s nice to see that stuff still works but at the same time I want to do something new, we want to do something new."
As for why the RTS is so indebted to its past, he mentioned that back in his Age of Empires days there was a fear that players would push back against attempts to experiment. "There were some times on the Age franchise where we flew a little too close to the sun," he said. "We had to pull back and take some very innovative things out of the game—I'm talking particularly about formation-based combat in Age of Empires 3. Hell, we demoed that at E3, and took that out of the game because we were afraid it was going to alienate too many of the existing Age fans."
I'm the guy who fruitlessly votes for Dawn of War: Dark Crusade in the PC Gamer Top 100 every year, so I'd agree the RTS enjoyed its peak a good long while ago. Pottinger isn't just talking the talk, however, and Project Citadel (as it's currently codenamed) is aiming to shake things up. It'll be a space-based roguelike with procedural maps, and sounds a bit like a cross between Planetary Annihilation and FTL. "Battle your way through Voltari space on a mission to free the sector from their rule" says the description on its Steam page. "It won't be easy, but you have a secret weapon to aid you in your voyage—a secret relic that allows your mothership and crew to regenerate at the edge of Voltari space—again and again as you uncover the story’s twists and turns."
Other tweaks to the formula include a "Turn-based overmap" and "Fast-paced action with skill-shot special abilities". I dunno if permadeath and procedural generation is what it'll take to get me excited in a new RTS, but it's definitely a niche in need of a change. For once I agree with our cynic-in-residence Fraser Brown, who summed up recent attempts at revivals by writing that real-time strategy almost came back from the brink of death and then fell flat on its face.
Project Citadel is on its way to a release in early access, where the campaign will be fully playable. "Through Early Access," the developer says on its Steam page, "we plan to expand the number of playable factions, variety of units, and add related content in stages. We also plan to iterate on balance, gameplay rules and expand content based upon community feedback."