Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition looks a lot better

In an interview, Joss Ellis from Tantalus Studio details what's new in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition. You can read it over here. Here's a blurb about the new graphics feature of this remastered version. Besides support for resolutions of up to 4K, the game now also supports really wide monitors and is updated from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11. The model assets got updated, the game has re-rendered cinematics with higher fidelity, and the graphics engine got a pretty beefy upgrade. Furthermore, there's also a new destruction system.

World’s Edge: What kind of work went into all the graphics improvements for Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition?

Joss Ellis: First, we overhauled the entire engine: moving from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11. Each texture and model has been updated, as well as all the in-game cinematics which were re-rendered with higher fidelity. This means players will see significant changes from when comparing the original Age of Empires III to the Definitive Edition: including improvements to the cliff visuals and readability with triplanar texture projection—all part of a reworked procedural generation code with new pixel shaders. The terrain was also redesigned with a better blending system that gave our artists more control over blending between the materials, including a brand new FFT-based water system and river generation.

Under the hood, we also put in a Physically-Based Rendering system and SSAO & TAA graphic options. The physics engine was upgraded to the newest Havok system, and the particle system was upgraded with new dynamic lights. Not to mention, we put in an all-new destruction system! All of this was done with significant performance improvements, so the game now better utilizes the GPU and multi-cores where possible.

Here is a screenshot that compares the original with the Definite Edition. It's no Age of Empires IV but it does seem like a nice upgrade.