That rulebook hasn’t even been written yet, not outside of fictional utopian and dystopian works that consider humanity’s present-day condition and where it might lead. We are beyond Earth. The traditional rules of human growth and development don’t apply. These are grounded concepts that, in many ways, are inspired by much of the conflict and competition – both armed and unarmed – in real-life history.īeyond Earth requires a different paradigm. A cultural victory is the product of an enlightened society. You earn a military victory by squashing all competing leaders and taking their capitals. Traditionally, Civilization games are a race to be the best at your chosen path of development before anyone else can be the best at theirs. ![]() The most dramatic shift, however, may be the way Beyond Earth‘s endgame plays out. All start in a common centerpoint surrounded by roughly recognizable technologies and then grow outwards into any frontier that you want.” “In this game you start with technology that we understand and grow toward … a science fiction future where we’ve got to imagine what the limits of humankind are going to be like in 1,000 years. Technological development is also the product of a complete overhaul, with the semi-linear march through the ages that characterized previous games replaced by a web-like grid of advancement possibilities. So when you arrive with all that stuff from the prologue, the first thing you do is pick the spot for your colony ship to land on and you go from there.” But the very first turn of the game is planetfall on the new planet. Who you are is up to you when you leave Earth. “It’s a whole new idea for Civilization the future of mankind on an alien world.”“The result is a fully customized replacement for the idea of Civ. Starting with your faction and then selecting the colonists that go along, the spacecraft you travel in, the cargo you bring with you. “You get to choose a bunch of customization options for who you are and what your colony expedition is made up of. We call it the Seeding,” McDonough says of the opening section of any Beyond Earth game. “It’s sort of like a prequel, a prologue to the game. There’s even a rethinking of how the building blocks of a typical civ’s life are first laid out. There’s the planet itself, an environment filled with competing colonists and any number of unknowns. There’s an orbital layer to build into, for military, scientific, and economic purposes. There’s a whole quest system, designed to introduce players to the alien landscape around them and the possible courses of development. ![]() This rebuilding process cleared the way for entirely new, fresh elements, things that either hadn’t been attempted or hadn’t even been possible in the past games. But when we built this game, we stripped Civ down to that aforementioned skeleton and rebuilt the whole experience on top of that.” The maps, the units on the tiles, the city improvements and buildings, Wonders, leaders and diplomacy. A lot of things that every Civ fan will recognize are the bones of this experience too. “There are the bones of the experience that every Civ game has in its core DNA. McDonough agrees that there’s a challenge, but it’s not as insurmountable as it might seem. Starting out in the Stone Age and building toward a nuclear-powered future is just as intrinsic to the experience as the turn-by-turn tactical play that sees players expanding their borders and influence – militarily, culturally, economically, scientifically – with each passing year. It’s a whole new idea for Civilization the future of mankind on an alien world.”įor a fan who’s poured tens of hours (if not hundreds) into the Firaxis franchise, it’s hard to imagine how a Civilization game could even work outside the boundaries of known history. ![]() “B ut it’s important to remember that this is not actually the same game again. Alpha Centauri was a big inspiration for this game,” Beyond Earth Lead Designer David McDonough tells Digital Trends. “It’s something a lot of our fans are going to think and, I have to say, they should.
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