14 DAY TRIAL // Civilization: Beyond Earth is the recently revealed installment in the legendary Civilization series of 4X strategy games from Firaxis, set to explore what happens next, after a typical game of Civilization usually ends.
The upcoming game will explore the future of humankind as man takes to the stars, after Earth is no longer a viable home for them, following the depletion of natural resources and what the developers call "The Great Mistake."
A new developer Q&A session on publisher 2K's blog brings some insight into the upcoming strategy game, straight from its lead designers, David McDonough and Will Miller, revealing that the push for deep space is a necessity, and not merely an exploratory venture.
"The Great Mistake is a mysterious event that is partly interpretive to the player. We want them to discover the backstory by playing through the game and using their imagination," the two designers write.
"Playing through the game will provide a lot of insight as to what the event could be, but we don't outright say what happened. Games by Firaxis have always been about setting the stage and giving players the props to act out their own story," they continue.
So, it seems that players of Civilization: Beyond Earth will embark on the journey with no prior knowledge of their motivation and will uncover the game's backstory sequentially, by playing, which goes hand in hand with the new subtext.
Traditional Civilization titles usually have you following in the footsteps of the greatest leaders known to man, while Beyond Earth allows you to leave it all behind and write the next chapter in history yourself, creating your own empire.
The two also have revealed that all the information will be gleamed through the Civilopedia, as well as through various text descriptions, so players who are interested in pursuing the knowledge and piecing it together will be able to do so.
Firaxis is certainly enjoying the unfettered creative freedom the leap from real history offers them, and as such they will let their creative juices flow and make everything in Civilization: Beyond Earth new, including resources and technology.
"It was also great fun for us to create fiction. We have a lot of sci-fi fans on staff as well as lots of talented writers. It's been a real pleasure to read all of the written work by members of the team," the two inform, citing Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury and Heinlein as their main sources of inspiration.
Civilization: Beyond Earth is expected to come out sometime this fall, for PC, Mac and Linux.