Ferrago has new screenshots of Age of Empires III and Rise of Legends.

If they keep this up, I’m going to lose all my hardcore grognard street cred by gushing over graphics.

First the AoE3 screens. The Vauban style fort in this shot is a little out of place in the New World. I guess Louisbourg was a pretty solid fortress, but most New World fortifications were simpler. But it’s really silly pointing out ahistorical stuff in an Age game. I think I saw this shot in an old Western once. All the new screenshots look amazing, but give little real sense of what the game is going to be like. No new battle scenes, not a lot of resource gathering stuff. More a pretty textbook than the sense that there is a game going on. But this is Ensemble and the game related stuff should be available soon.

As for Rise of Legends, it is still a year off. No way to tell that from the screenshots. Check out this battle scene. Or this one. The themes of an Arabian Nights world and a steampunk civilization are pretty clear. There looks to be a genie in one of the battles and one of the cities has that fantasy Harun al-Rashid thing going on. The flying machines look really cool. Here we have a lot of battles, but little else. I am assuming that most of these shots are coming from the story driven campaign in production, so the conflict is the centerpiece. But a little more of the civilian side would be nice. As I mentioned earlier, I play my RTS games at a pretty slow pace, so the domestic development is something I am really interested in.

Thanks to Ferrago for posting these screenshots. The anticipation is almost as sweet as the inevitable satisfaction.