14 DAY TRIAL // Civilization: Beyond Earth is the most recent video game project from developer Firaxis and publisher Take Two and even if he is not the lead developer on the strategy title, company leader Sid Meier will be involved with the game-making process.
The veteran game creator, best known for making the Civilization series back in the 90s, tells Gamespot that he was impressed by the loyalty that fans had for older titles like Alpha Centauri, Railroads and Pirates, and decided that the first one could be re-imagined using the tech that the company had created.
He explained that, “We've got a lot of new ideas, have learned a lot, and there’s so much new stuff we can do with a science fiction setting. The Civilization series has come so far and we can do a lot of new stuff now that we couldn't do before. We had an opportunity with people who had some great ideas on how to put this together - and it just all came together!”
Sid Meier believes that Alpha Centauri managed to deliver an impressive set of science fiction ideas when it launched and also impressed when it came to characters and narrative, something that the Civilization franchise rarely did.
He added, “I think Alpha Centauri also did a good job of introducing you to concepts that made sense even though they weren't, perhaps, historical concepts. You could kind of play with your intuition as opposed to trying to read the manual and figure out what the game was all about.”
Civilization: Beyond Earth will allow gamers to explore an alien world after a great catastrophe has affected all nations on Earth.
Players will be able to pick not just their faction, but also the spaceship that will carry them to the stars and the type of cargo that they want to have available during the first years on the new world they will be exploring.
Firaxis has said that it will keep the core one military unit per hex concept from Civilization V and that it will introduce extra layers in order to open up more tactical possibilities.
The new title is also designed to use five different victory conditions linked to faction affinities and tech progress.
Civilization: Beyond Earth will be launched exclusively on the PC before the end of the year and Firaxis says that it will deliver more updates in the coming months about the core features of the title.