Greetings Age Community! What a wonderful week it has been celebrating 25 years of Age of Empires. This week has been filled with some incredible news and along with that has been an outpouring of love and encouragement from you, our fans. We cannot say thank you enough for the support you have given us for a quarter of a century, but as a small token of our appreciation, we would like to gift you a one-of-a-kind digital painting created by legendary digital artist Craig Mullins titled “Your Move.”
The Age of Empires team worked with Craig to encompass the best of 25 years into one stunning painting sprinkled with easter eggs and references to games from across our franchise. Let us take a more in depth look at the unique details of this masterpiece.
- The painting is an homage to the classic cinematic from Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings depicting two kings playing chess. This version shows Jeanne d’Arc (the French) and Mansa Musa (the Malians) in a battle for the ages.
- The painting includes easter eggs from Age of Empires and Age of Mythology. How many can you find? (Hint: start in the fireplace.)
- All characters in the tableaux are also in the cover art for our games. Think you can spot them all?
- The World’s Edge team is a huge fan of the franchise’s unofficial mascot—the scarf wearing Sheep! If you look closely, you can spot these cuddly friends on the stained-glass window.
You can download the 4k version of this painting here and the desktop version here.
Once again, we thank you sincerely and cannot wait to see what the next 25 have in store!
Cheers,
Sage