Age of Mythology began as a game about Atlantis. Ensemble Studios started work on it in 1997, two and a half weeks after finishing the first Age of Empires, and the first serious prototype was built around the lost civilisation. The studio dropped it, along with three other working prototypes, and settled on Greek, Egyptian and Norse myth instead. The game that reached the shops in November 2002 kept the Age formula of villagers, farms and armies, then added minotaurs, frost giants and gods who would drop a meteor on your troops. Atlantis came back too: the campaign’s hero, Arkantos, is an Atlantean.
Fast facts
- Developer: Ensemble Studios; published by Microsoft.
- Released: November 2002, for Windows PCs; a Macintosh version followed from MacSoft.
- Cultures: Greek, Egyptian and Norse, each with its own gods.
- Engine: BANG!, Ensemble’s first 3D engine.
- Expansion: The Titans (2003), which added the Atlanteans.
- Later versions: Extended Edition (2014) and Age of Mythology: Retold (2024).
From history to legend
In 2001 Computer Gaming World visited Ensemble’s 65 staff in Dallas and found them at a nightly playtest after one in the morning. They had already logged more than 600 hours of play on a game still a year from completion. Dave Pottinger, the technical director, said the goal from the start was 3D: “It had to look as good as what we were starting to see in AGE II, but in 3D.”
Choosing the subject was harder. Bruce Shelley, co-designer of Age of Empires, remembered “a series of very painful meetings” in which the team considered science fiction, the Second World War, superheroes, cowboys and fantasy, and even remaking the first game. Reviewers had praised Age of Empires II but said it offered little that was new, and the team wanted a game that played differently. Myth offered creatures, heroes and god powers that Ensemble had never had to design before. “What people believe happened long ago is still a part of the human experience,” Shelley said.
The gods themselves would never walk the map. The lead designer, Ian Fischer, explained that there was “no 500-foot-tall Zeus who walks around the map and kicks houses over”; some people had wanted one, but “it didn’t seem right.” Players built temples to their gods instead, and the gods answered with miracles.
Gods, favour and myth units
Each culture chose a major god at the start. For the Norse, CGW’s preview explained, the choices were Odin, Thor and Loki, and the choice mattered: Poseidon suited a Greek player on a watery map, and Loki’s archers could be answered with Zeus’s cavalry bonus. Every advance to a new age brought another choice, this time of a minor god, with new myth units, technologies and a god power.
Myth units and god powers cost favour, a fourth resource beside food, wood and gold, which each culture earned in its own way; Greek villagers earned it by praying at temples. God powers worked like one-shot spells. Zeus could strike down a single enemy with a bolt; Hades started a player’s town with stone sentinels to guard it; a Norse player who chose Hel over Tyr could raise fire, frost and mountain giants. Fischer wanted these powers to be pivotal moments, not weapons of mass destruction: “We’re doing a lot to make sure that [the god powers] are not nukes.”
The single-player campaign told one story across all three cultures, with voiced, in-engine cut-scenes. Codesigner Greg Street wanted “recurring villains and companions who fall in battle”. Arkantos begins by defending his people, then sails to help the Greeks at Troy, meeting his old friend Ajax and Amanra, a Nubian warrior serving Egypt, along the way; CGW’s reviewer noted that the story even went down into Hades.
Reception
Computer Gaming World made the game its cover story in December 2002. George Jones called it “about as close to perfect as a modern realtime strategy game can or will ever be”, and then worried in print that the genre itself was wearing out. Robert Coffey’s review the following month made the same two points. He found “nothing not to like”, praised the shimmering shorelines and the auto-formations, and cheered a small change: “FARMS NEVER DEPLETE!” Yet by the end the routine of building, gathering and fighting “began to feel like work”. Microsoft announced in March 2003 that the game had sold more than a million copies in its first four months, and that the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences had nominated it for PC Game of the Year and PC Strategy Game of the Year.
The Titans and after
Age of Mythology: The Titans gave the Atlanteans a civilisation of their own and a 12-mission campaign following Kastor, the son of Arkantos. Its namesakes were the titans, giant units built like wonders, which took a long time to raise and hundreds of ordinary soldiers to kill. CGW thought the expansion gave “a lot of bang for the buck”, but “it’s just not a very loud bang, falling short of energizing an aging game”.
Microsoft revived the game twice. SkyBox Labs’ Age of Mythology: Extended Edition came out for Windows in 2014, and a Chinese pantheon followed in the Tale of the Dragon expansion in 2016. Age of Mythology: Retold, a remastered version on the engine of Age of Empires III, was released for Windows and Xbox Series X|S on 4 September 2024 and for the PlayStation 5 in March 2025. Its first expansion, Immortal Pillars, added a Chinese pantheon of its own, with Fuxi, Nüwa and Shennong as its major gods.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 203, June 2001: Ken Brown’s preview feature (65 staff, 600 hours of play, work begun in 1997, the Atlantis prototype, Pottinger, Shelley and Fischer’s quotes, favour, the Norse gods, Poseidon, Zeus and Loki, Greg Street and the campaign).
- Computer Gaming World issue 217, August 2002: preview of the campaign (Arkantos, Ajax, Amanra, Troy).
- Computer Gaming World issue 221, December 2002, pp. 98–102: George Jones’s cover feature (“about as close to perfect”; villagers praying at temples for favour; the RTS genre “mined out”).
- Computer Gaming World issue 222, January 2003, pp. 98–99: Robert Coffey’s review (minor gods at each advance, favour, Zeus’s bolt, Hades’s sentinels, Hel and Tyr, farms that never deplete, the campaign in Hades).
- Computer Gaming World issue 234, January 2004: review of The Titans (the Atlanteans, Kastor, the 12-mission campaign, the titans).
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 115, November 2002, p. 28: release listed for November 2002.
- Macworld (US) vol. 22 no. 1, January 2005, p. 54: the Mac version from MacSoft. Australian Macworld issue 71, December 2003: the Mac version on sale for Christmas 2003.
- Microsoft, “Age of Mythology Goes Platinum With More Than 1 Million Units Sold”, press release, 11 March 2003 (web, secondary): sales from 1 November 2002 to 1 March 2003; the AIAS nominations. https://news.microsoft.com/2003/03/11/age-of-mythology-goes-platinum-with-more-than-1-million-units-sold/
- Wikipedia, “Age of Mythology” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): the release date, the Greeks earning favour at temples, the Extended Edition by SkyBox Labs (8 May 2014) and Tale of the Dragon (28 January 2016). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Mythology
- Wikipedia, “Age of Mythology: Retold” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): release dates and platforms; a remaster on the Age of Empires III engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Mythology:_Retold
- World’s Edge, “Age of Mythology: Retold – Immortal Pillars”, ageofempires.com (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): the Chinese pantheon and its major gods. https://www.ageofempires.com/games/aom/age-of-mythology-retold-immortal-pillars/