Age of Mythology: Retold will have full controller support on PC from day one. World’s Edge confirmed this to me when I went hands-on with the real-time strategy (RTS) remake earlier this week following its appearance at the Xbox Games Showcase.
For those out of the loop, Age of Mythology: Retold is a remake of a beloved spinoff of the Age of Empires RTS series. It uses mythological characters and factions rather than historical ones, but still features the same engaging army-building and battling gameplay loop of Assemble Studios’ classics. From what I played of Retold, this remake retains all of that while simply upgrading the visuals to be much prettier and adding some quality-of-life features (like being able to recharge god powers during a battle) that make the game even more fun to play.
One of those awesome quality-of-life features is day-one controller support on PC. World’s Edge Director of Production Earnest Yuen explained to Tech Reader that this is a direct result of Age of Mythology: Retold being World Edge’s first game to release on the same day across both Xbox and PC. He gave thanks for the work and feedback they’ve gotten on the Xbox ports of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and Age of Empires IV.
“One of the best compliments that we have gotten with Age of Empires 2 on console is that people say they thought it would not work, but found it was smooth. For the dev team, that is honestly the best. We took all those learnings, 100%, and put it into Retold because we are launching into console and PC at that same time. That means we are actually going to have controller support on PC from day one so that people actually get to try it on PC.”
Having gone hands-on with the Xbox Series X version of Age of Mythology: Retold, I thought it looked pretty, ran smoothly, and played great. It definitely felt very familiar to the controls for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition on console, meaning it was easy to select units and command them around to attack as I fought to defeat Chronos in this demo level. On top of that, players can now press down one of the triggers to bring up a radial menu of all the god powers they can use.
Considering that these god powers can be recharged rather than being one-time uses, that is an extremely helpful and intuitive feature. While most PC players will be just fine sticking to mouse and keyboard, it’s nice to see that Microsoft and World’s Edge have put the work in to make sure that not only does Age of Mythology: Retold feel good to play on a controller on an Xbox console, but that PC players have access to that improvement as well.
Age of Mythology: Retold will be released for PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 4 for $30, although those who preorder the $50 premium edition of the game will get seven days of early access, as well as any future expansions World’s Edge creates for the remake.
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