Cool, looking forward to this one. But will there be nerve stapling?
IGN has an article up too:
I imagine it’s sort a Colonization-like project, which was basically a really involved mod of Civ IV. Saves on development, as they already have a platform that they’re familiar with. Any new engine is probably reserved for Civ 6.
They were the leads on Haunted Hollow before this.
Sounds like the developers are borrowing from more than Alpha Centauri:
… the switch from the traditional, linear tech tree that drives other Civilization games forward through established history to a more open-ended “Tech web” system…“We’re huge fans of sci-fi from every part of pop culture and history, so we went to that and imagined a web where you start in the middle, surrounded by techs that are relatively recognizable based on conventional technology, and you go outward into any frontier you can imagine,” says McDonough
Sounds like Endless Space to me.
At the same time you’re competing with the other colonial powers on this planet, you’ll also be up against the native life you find there – much of it initially hostile. “Civ 5’s barbarians are really more like a speed bump or an early-game punching bag for you to kind of get your military chops before you’re ready to get into a real war. In this game, they’re completely different. It’s really a whole other opponent that plays completely asymmetrically to any of the human players,” says McDonough. He promises that the indigenous aliens, while not sentient, will react intelligently and with some coordination to what you’re doing on their world,
And that sounds like Pandora:First Contact.
Of course, both of those had plenty of room for improvement, so I remain cautiously optimistic.
Tgb, the first point is also like Alpha Centuari, it had less fixed, linear tech tree than Civ.
The second point, it remind me of Elemental.
It’s early days so no real way to effectively judge anything. Like, I haven’t heard about anything mechanically that I find particularly exciting, but all of that mostly comes down to how it is implemented anyway. As far as sort of reimagining the conceit of Alpha Centauri, I’m glad they are attempting that.
Alpha Centauri, F&%# Yea!
Civ V is not my favorite, but maybe this will be different enough to be good as it’s own thing? Not sure if all the SMAC 2 talk is justified right now, but a decent futuristic take on the civ magic is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Trailer was cool also. Sweet.
That 3rd screenshot looks gorgeous.
I too will be cautiously optimistic.
I remember the tech tree being blind (as an option) but not truly random in terms of prerequisites. When they talk about a tech “web”, I think of something like this:
which is straight out of ES.
Cautious after reading the interviews. Concerned about the lack of UN and doesn’t really sound like there’s a unit workshop. Not sure about the RPG / quest elements since those could get stale quickly without variability. A little less civ v influence would be good, but we’ll have to see how it develops.
Diego
In the “cautiously optimistic” camp. I’m happy to see that they finally veering away from the traditional Civ framework - Civ 5 showed me that after 25 years I’ve finally had enough of the standard pottery/gunpowder/railroads/nukes progression, and that what I really crave is something different. (If anything, my worry is that Beyond Earth won’t be different enough.)
Personally I don’t care whether there’s a unit workshop: I’d rather have units carefully made by a clever designer than have the work outsourced to me. Besides, design-your-own-unit features usually end up breaking the game (cough, Fallen Enchantress.)
This.
A lack of unit customization is a bonus in my book! The entire reason I haven’t picked up that Pandora game, which otherwise looks like it has a fair amount going for it.
Looks like a Civ5 mod with too much SMAC influence. I’m curious to see if this has enough differences from Civ5 to be worth playing. I think I’m over the peaceful builder end turn masher the Civ series has become. I’m much more into war and politics (hello Paradox games).
Day fucking one.
I’m tired of the quasi-historical formula of the Civ games and have been waiting for years for anything resembling a SMAC sequel. Can’t wait.
If anyone was in doubt about the influence, one of the lead designers at the panel this morning basically said, “we don’t own the rights to SMAC, so this is definitely not SMAC 2!.. but yes, it’s our vision for a SMAC 2”. So that’s at least what they’re trying for. There was little to nothing else said that wasn’t in the PCGamer article; for a group of largely-not-great-on-stage designers who were clearly enthusiastic about the project, they also hewed very well to the PR talking points.
Adam Sessler was originally supposed to be the panel moderator, but all of his PAX East appearances were canceled due to his split with Rev 3; some Sessler-fanboy part of me wonders if he would have squeezed out some more details… but probably not, the whole thing felt very engineered, even by the standards of PAX panels.
It’s unit customization is probably the least amount of pain out of any unit customization I can remember. The only annoying thing is that I tend to make a lot of versions of the same chassis (arm with flamethrower, arm with machine gun, etc…) so I have versions optimized to fight specific types of troops. I need to employ a naming convention to keep it manageable.
I’m surprised its taken them this long to do something like this. For me this will live or die based on the voice overs for the faux-academic quotations for their fake future technology.