14 DAY TRIAL // The two lead designers currently developing the next installment in the Civilization turn-based strategy series, titled Beyond Earth, have shared their thoughts and inspiration sources for the game's science, which will consists mainly of anticipative items for the first time since the franchise debuted.
Not taking into account Alpha Centauri, which was very different from the standard Civilization opus in many ways, all the games in the series started with the founding of the first human settlement, and then went on until present day.
That meant that the designers had to work with technology that we already know, looking to the past and only having to see how to fit the various discoveries into a timeline, and with players having only the options to pick the order in which certain new techs were discovered.
This time around, for Beyond Earth, breaking the limits of our planet also means breaking away from what we know and delving into the speculative realm that Alpha Centauri also ventured in.
The technology tree will now break into several different ideologies, and exploring different branches will result in players getting to new areas and discovering techs that other players may not ever see over the course of the game.
Speaking to Space.com, Firaxis' Will Miller and David McDonough have expressed their excitement to be able to work on a new, science-fiction entry in the consecrated Sid Meier's Civilization series.
"It was one of those amazing moments when we realized we were going to have the chance to combine a love of game design with a love of science and space exploration. For us, 'Civilization: Beyond Earth' has been an opportunity to explore ideas about the future — technology, progress and culture — and think about how settling on a new planet could be the next stage for humanity's progress," the two reveal.
While past installments in the series allowed players to enjoy an alternate history of Earth, Beyond Earth starts off with the premise that humanity has emerged from a period of strife with renewed strength and resolve, and with an interest in exploring space.
"In our game fiction, this is galvanized by a few key events, such as the first image of a habitable world, another pale blue dot around a distant star. But it is also driven by need. Settling an extrasolar planet would be a massively resource-intensive process, and as resources become scarce, eventually, there won't be enough to support mass colonization, which is an idea we're referring to as the Inflection Point," the two share.
Consequently, players get to write the next chapter in the history of humanity, defined by their actions during the Seeding, while leading one of the expeditions that leave Earth and start to spread through the universe.
"The earliest Techs that players will acquire draw inspiration from research being carried out by the world's space programs: habitation for living on alien worlds, engineering solutions for compact and efficient power plants, and genetics for medicine and health," the designers explain.
"Working on 'Beyond Earth' has been an amazing opportunity to continue to learn about current directions in research and engineering. Every time we've come up with a gameplay idea, and we've thought: 'If only there were some sort of science we could hang this on,' we've found a real and promising current direction being explored," they continue.
All the science in the game is grounded in what is being currently explored by scientist, and the designers have confessed that no matter how strange their ideas were, once they started researching, they often found that reality was often even stranger, and that the future felt a lot closer when you started realizing how many of those ideas were already being put to use.
Civilization: Beyond Earth is set to release on October 24, 2014, for PC, Mac and Linux.
