Age of Empires 4 has a release date and plenty of Jeanne D'Arc

If Age of Empires 4 hasn't yet wololo'd its way into your heart, perhaps a bit of Jeanne D'Arc, The Maid of Orléans, will convince you. That's what Relic and Microsoft are hoping for, at least, with the trailer for Age of Empires 4 out of the joint Microsoft/Bethesda E3 presentation today. Showing off a bit of Joan of Arc trotting about on a horse, doing a cavalry charge, and more than a few other bits: A horse archer right off the asian steppe, a blacksmith working a forge, and a siege kicking off. It's a pretty neat style, with glowing outlines laid over real-world locations.

It's all very Age of Empires 2 looking, but with multi-model units. The buildings aren't nearly all to scale like in the old game, though, a departure from series aesthetics that still seems off to me, but it does make large settlements take up a lot less screen space.

A broad variety of units show up in the brief combat snippets: French Knights, war elephants, camel archers, genoese crossbowmen, some of those spooky haunted trebuchets on a cart that drag themselves around uncrewed. All your favorite Age of Empires stuff is there.

For all that, though, it still doesn't tell us much new about how the game plays. Looks like we'll still have to stick to the dev blogs for crumbs on that. Or you can just keep watching our page on everything there is to know about Age of Empires 4.

Age of Empires 4 will release on October 28, 2021. It'll be available immediately on Xbox Game Pass for PC.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.