Chronicles: Alexander the Great - An Interview with Ben Angell

By Owain Williams

The ancient world has long been a favourite setting for video games, such as the Total War franchise. In recent years, Age of Empires, a beloved series of strategy games, has begun to explore antiquity. In this interview, we talk with Ben Angell, the Narrative Lead of CaptureAge, about bringing ancient Greece to pixelated life in Chronicles: Alexander the Great, the latest DLC for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.

Hi, Ben! Firstly, can you introduce yourself and explain your role in the development team?

I’m Ben Angell, and I’m the Narrative Lead at CaptureAge. Previously, I worked as a writer at Ubisoft, and before that I spent most of my life in academia, gaining a DPhil in Ancient History from the University of Oxford (that’s a PhD anywhere else – Oxford terminology, as usual, just has to be different!).

Narrative design is a job that seems to entail something completely different at each video game studio, and at CaptureAge my role is expansive indeed. I do all the things that a writer/narrative designer might do – come up with the story and characters, write the script, help storyboard the cinematics, cast and direct voice actors – but I’m also heavily involved in game design and level design. Our content is deeply historical, so designing a campaign begins with me trawling through the sources and distilling the history into a number of levels, looking for opportunities to represent history through gameplay. 

What is Age of Empires II? 

Age of Empires II is one of the most beloved real-time strategy (RTS) games of all time! Players gather resources, build cities, research technologies, and train armies, all with the ultimate goal of conquering their opponents.

Age of Empires II was originally released in 1999. It remained active long after its release, in large part due to a very active multiplayer scene (prize pools for major Age II tournaments reach up to $200,000!).

In 2019, the Definitive Edition was released. This aimed to remake just about every aspect of the game to modern standards – new graphics, a remastered soundtrack, and many quality-of-life improvements. The game is still going strong, with extravagant tournaments hosted in medieval castles, regular patches, and frequent content packs – of which Chronicles: Alexander the Great is the latest. 

What is the Chronicles DLC? 

Chronicles is a series of DLCs set in classical antiquity. It all started as a community-created mod for Age of Empires II called ‘Rome at War’, taking the game’s core gameplay and visually adapting it to the ancient world. The business brains at World’s Edge – the Microsoft division that takes care of the Age of Empires franchise – saw its potential, so they suggested that the modders join up with CaptureAge, a studio which was already making spectator software for the Age franchise. CaptureAge has since expanded, hiring a raft of experienced game developers.

Chronicles is mainly focused on its epic single-player campaigns – the first instalment, Chronicles: Battle for Greece, covered Greek history from the Ionian Revolt to the end of the Peloponnesian Wars, while the second, Chronicles: Alexander the Great, covers… Well, you may be able to guess. Players can also fight using ancient civilizations against the AI, or against other players online. We’ve even made it so that you can pit the ancient civilizations of Chronicles against the medieval ones. 

What can players expect from the DLC?

When we started out, our ambition was to create some of the best RTS campaigns of all time. With both Chronicles: Battle for Greece and Chronicles: Alexander the Great, we believe we’ve achieved that. Our campaigns are incredibly story-rich, representing a whole host of historical characters with flair and depth, backed by a top-quality cast of voice actors. They also present a huge variety of gameplay challenges, from fighting your way through the burning city of Sardis during the Ionian Revolt to building Alexander’s famous causeway to Tyre. 

It’s an experience which is elevated by beautiful artwork, including animated cutscenes in different styles to represent the cultures being depicted – in the Persian section of the campaign, it’s rock reliefs, whereas the Athenian section resembles red-figure vases brought to life. The buildings and units are equally wonderful, and it’s all backed by a new original soundtrack that blends a classic Hollywood sound with a modern twist (I got to indulge myself there, bombarding the composers with dozens of Miklos Rozsa references!) 

How do you balance historical authenticity with the demands of gameplay?  

Sometimes, history is very kind to us. The Athenians attempting to conquer Syracuse by enclosing the city in a vast wall, then the Syracusans and Spartans blocking this by building a counter-wall? That’s perfect Age of Empires gameplay. Alexander besieging Tyre by constructing a vast causeway across the sea, fending off landing parties and naval attacks? Top stuff. Founding the city of Alexandria Eschate while fending off angry Scythians? Crack open the fermented mare’s milk and let’s get building.

In other cases, adapting history to gameplay is more challenging. Single pitched battles are tricky to represent in Age of Empires, since the game isn’t just about combat but also gathering resources, building structures, and training units. The Battle of Marathon wouldn’t have been very fun if we just had the player charge down a beach, so most of that level consisted of Themistocles travelling around Attica gathering soldiers. To give that task some challenge, the player fights a rather improbable number of bandits.

My general rule is this: try not to directly contradict history but use the gaps in the sources as opportunities for invention. Our Alexander campaign begins with Alexander as a teenage prince, serving under his father Philip on campaign in Scythia. The only source for this is the Roman writer Justin (Epitome 9.1–3), who gives very little detail: the Macedonians fought and plundered the Scythians, then ran into the Triballi on the way home, who refused to let them through unless they shared their Scythian spoils. Philip refused, and another battle ensued. From these scanty details we constructed an elaborate level in which the player must navigate their way home through the rocky territory of the Triballi under constant threat of ambush – a tense survival-themed level to break up all the glorious conquests.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition retains the pixelated design of the original. How do you factor this style into conveying historical details in, for instance, weapons and armour? 

We do have to factor in the fact that players will be viewing the soldiers from a distance. Our hoplites originally had a very intricate illustration on their shields, but once we tested the unit in-game we found that the design just became blurry and unrecognizable, so we switched instead to a clearer snake design. In general, though, we can represent a good level of detail, and where ancient visual evidence exists, we can replicate this in-game – the Persian Immortals, for instance, are based directly on the reliefs from Persepolis.

Our buildings are another interesting matter. In Age of Empires, each civilization has the same set of basic buildings, such as a barracks, siege workshop, and blacksmith. These all have a set ‘footprint’ (e.g. 3 x 3 tiles) and must be ‘readable’, i.e. the player has to know at a glance that this new building is an archery range or a mill. When we create buildings, then, we’re not replicating any particular building that actually existed in the ancient world; rather, we use the materials, textures, decorations, building techniques, and architectural adornments common to the culture being represented to create something that nonetheless feels authentic. 

Chronicles: Alexander the Great naturally includes an Indian faction. What resources were available for you when researching ancient India for the DLC?  

Ah, now this brings up a thorny problem! Of course, we originally considered that the Indian faction should be a famous empire like the Maurya or the Nanda. However, these were not the people that Alexander fought, and it would be odd to include them in the DLC and then rename them in the campaign.

So we instead chose to focus on the people ruled by King Porus, against whom the player gets to fight as Alexander (and there’s also a level where you get to play as King Porus, fighting his regional enemies). But who were the people Porus ruled? The Greek and Roman sources give no name, and there are no ancient Indian sources for Porus at all! Searching simply for the right name for this people, I noticed that many modern historians avoid naming Porus’s people or kingdom at all; those that do either call them the Puru or Pauravas, with no degree of conviction, and some like Richard Stoneman simply write “Puru/Pauravas”.

Lacking local textual sources, we were mainly forced to rely on Greek and Roman descriptions for military matters, including the terrifying war elephants and bamboo longbows so large that archers had to brace them with their feet in order to fire. We then filled in some details with reference to later, better-attested empires like the Maurya. We also drew on local geography for inspiration – for instance, the Puru have a bonus whereby stone mines generate some additional food, inspired by the bountiful salt deposits of the Potohar Plateau. We modelled the architecture on Taxila, the kingdom just north of Porus, which survives today as a magnificent heritage site.

The writing and characters of Chronicles have received praise. How do you balance the many different accounts about figures from antiquity, not to mention modern studies, in writing such characters?

Alexander is the best example of this – five major primary sources, each presenting a very different picture of Alexander, spawning an even greater variety of modern portraits, from idealistic humanist to paranoid tyrant to alcoholic thug. As a historian, one can recognize the limitations and agendas of the sources and write a very sensible, nuanced account of Alexander that recognizes how little we can truly say about his personality. However, when creating historical fiction, that approach is only going to result in a bland and undefined character; one has to be bold and pick a direction.

With most characters, however, we have the opposite problem: rather than a mass of contradictory evidence, there’s very little source material at all – and even when there is, it gives a writer no hints as to how that character should speak and express themselves. Often, I have to grab on to small scraps. Let me give an extended example with Lysander, whom we portrayed as a snarling, resentful, ruthless villain:

• There’s a sense that he was unscrupulous with his methods – Plutarch records a saying that Lysander would “cheat boys with knuckle-bones, but men with oaths” (Lysander 8).

• He was a dark and moody man – Plutarch says that he was “prey to melancholy” (Lysander 2) and had a “harsh disposition” (Lysander 28).

• Plutarch calls him “harsh of speech and terrifying to his opponents” (Lysander 22).

• He was greatly unpopular with his peers, and ended his life in rather ignominious fashion, scorned and rejected.

• There’s a rumour that his mother was a helot. This is debatable as a matter of fact (like every other detail), but I chose to make it true for our particular piece of historical fiction and imagined the resentfulness that would result from a man who’s been scorned all his life.

As with all the characters, there are also other considerations beyond fidelity to history. I like to pair contrasting characters together, and so Lysander makes a great foil for the noble and heroic Brasidas. I also wanted to use Lysander to embody one of the themes of Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War – that as it goes on, the moral character of Greece becomes degraded and savage. Lysander’s temperament worries people like Brasidas and King Agis, but ultimately this kind of war can only be won by this kind of man. The character also evolves when it’s in the hands of the voice actor – the brilliant Joseph Capp played the part in a more energetically menacing way than I had imagined, and the result is delightful (you can listen to a sample here). 

What emphases are there on non-military aspects of the ancient civilizations depicted in Chronicles? How do you incorporate non-military elements?  

As strategy games go, Age of Empires is pretty combat-heavy! However, we are able to reference non-military elements in numerous ways. Each civilization has unique bonuses, such as the Thracians’ ability to build on mountainous terrain that other civilisations would be restricted on. There are also unique technologies, which reference institutions like the Athenian eisphora or the Peloponnesian League.

Then we also have some unique civilization mechanics. The Athenians, for instance, can enact different political policies (military, economic, or naval) which each grant different bonuses. In a nod to the system of satrapies, the Achaemenids can upgrade each of their Town Center buildings to specialize in different areas.

The DLCs have, so far, chronicled Classical Greek history. Are there any plans to continue into the Hellenistic period? 

Ah, I couldn’t possibly say! If it were up to the nerds like me, we’d be exploring every conflict and clash in the ancient world, but it’s ultimately a publisher decision. Whatever happens, you can be sure it’ll be both entertaining and packed with historical detail.