Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Civilization: Beyond Earth Looks Out Of This World
I had my first chance to get some hands on with Civilization: Beyond Earth at E3 2014, and I'm impressed. If you've played Civilization 5 at all, you'll be fine to jump in immediately and dig in. That said, there's a lot of new tweaks and nuances that make the process of colonizing a planet a whole new game from its predecessors.
Here's one of the big ones. As players progress through the game, they're going to choose one of three affinities to gravitate to (you can certainly move into all three trees, but it's probably a good idea to focus). These affinities (Harmony, Purity, and Supremacy) are rooted in how you feel that the human race should deal with the whole process of alien planets and culture. Each of these affinities comes with associated special units, bonuses, and even win conditions, so it's arguably a much more interesting system than the legions of iron age units ramming into each other in any given Civ game.
Everyone can win the game through the classic "domination" victory condition, but each ideology has its own ways to win. Fun fact: things were in pre alpha, so one of the unit upgrades actually had a corgi as a placeholder.
The tech paths in the Civilization series have always made logical, linear sense based on human history. But since we don't really know where the future is going into space, these techs do not follow a straight-line path, but rather a diverse web. Players can move through the web at will, taking one or many aspects under the central hubs. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun to play around with and perfect routes.
Here's the final "big one": Quests. Quests function as additional motivation to complete tasks to gain additional rewards and also shape the route of your "story" in each game.
The "barbarians" of Civilization: Beyond Earth have been replaced with aliens. These aliens will function differently from the classic early game aggressors by having relationships with players and cultures and not acting as a simple, manageable nuisance.
Civilization lovers, you can relax. Beyond Earth looks like it's going to be a smooth launch into space.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
