On our gaming news Fridays, we often write about new expansions of recently released games. But how about an expansion for a game that was released way back in 1999? What happened in 1999 you may ask? Well, Britney was asking to be hit just one more time, everyone was worried about Y2K, The Matrix made us think it’s all just an illusion, and Thabo Mbeki became the 2^nd president of a unified RSA.

It was also the release year of Ensemble Studios’ Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, receiving a second life in 2013 when Hidden Path Entertainment updated the game to an HD Edition (AOE II HD).

Writing on the Steam Community page, Ryan Chaply, producer of AOE II HD, noted that a new expansion will be making its way to Steam come later this year. What exactly the expansion will entail is still to be revealed, with Chaply stating that the new civilisation will be detailed in upcoming blog posts. He did however mention that, “you can anticipate a lot packed in there, including new civs, campaigns, game modes, units, and more,” leaving us with a screenshot, which might just point to a new Middle Eastern civilisation.

This is actually the second expansion that AOE II HD received, following in the footsteps of 2012’s modding project Forgotten Empires. It lead to the release of AOE II: The Forgotten, providing five new civilisations, including Italians, Indians, Slavs, Magyars and Incas.

If you played the original, and might be interested in the HD version of AOE II (buy it on Steam here), have a look at the trailer below.