#beyond earth

[dantekaname]

we’re going Beyond the beer porthole!!!

wow… what if I uploaded video to tumblr….

the game is Sid Meier[ 🤮 ]’s Civilization: Beyond Earth

I don’t like Sid but I do love the game series he’s responsible for dearly, despite some of the shitty ideological assumptions it sometimes takes for granted

[pencilmagmen]

outer species (via Extraterrestial Features: Europa Moon Descendant)

[color-mixed]

Beyond Earth Blog: Venturing into the Cosmic Frontier

Explore space with Beyond Earth Blog! Discover Mars missions, exoplanets, and space tech breakthroughs shaping Earth’s future.

Explore space with the Beyond Earth Blog! Discover Mars missions, exoplanets, and space tech breakthroughs shaping Earth’s future.

[simfanru]

[cat-appreciator]

I’m thinking today about Civilization: Beyond Earth, aka “The Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri from wish dot com”. A spiritual sequel to the beloved SMAC without any of the spirit. The way I see it, Beyond Earth’s gameplay had multiple flaws:

* The starting factions had extremely minimal gameplay influence, which one you picked didn’t really mean anything.

* What resources you started near meant everything. You were planning to go down the Unity part of the tech tree, build big stompy robots? Too bad, there’s no Levistone nearby. You’ll choke down your Xenomass and go Harmony like RNJesus intended. Or you can reroll a new planet and hope for better luck next time … after you spend 10-20 turns finding out what resources you start with this time.

But the major problem with Beyond Earth was that it had big shoes to fill and didn’t really bother to try to fill them.

I mentioned before that the starting factions meant nothing in Beyond Earth? In SMAC they meant everything, because everything was voice acted. Build a recycling vat? Shen-Ji Yang will tell you “it is every citizen’s final duty to go into the tanks …”. Research the Industrial Base tech? Nwabudike Morgan says “Resources exist to be consumed, and consumed they will be!”. The faction leaders were given such depth of character, so well voice acted, that I can still quote them extemporaneously two decades later. SMAC had soul.

Beyond Earth, on the other hand, had one voice actor, a perfectly reasonable AI (human VA playing an AI, it has to be said in these stupid, stupid times) who stripped all the character and emotion from voice quotes attributed to Beyond Earth’s faction leaders. You could not get invested in them as characters - I can’t recall any of their names.

And still, if you win a science victory in Civ 6, you launch the exoplanet expedition, you win the game, and then there is no real sequel unless you want to choke down the bitter Xenomass of disappointment that is Beyond Earth … or return once more to the rolling pink hills and frolicking mindworms of Planet.

There’s space for some sort of near-future xenocolonization 4X game, is what I’m saying. The fallen torch is still there for some game dev to pick up. And I wish they would, instead of continually trying to retread the Civilization story as Old World, Humankind et al have done. Maybe there’s some game out there I’m missing. I hope so.

[yusufalioglu]

Beyond Earth by Yusuf Alioğlu Via Flickr: Beyond Earth Planet Dokeia Interplanetary Travel Camera: Samsung Galaxy S8 Photograph by Yusuf Alioglu Location: Outer space (space) Facebook Become a Patron! Twitter Youtube Instagram iStock Blogger Vimeo UnbornArt deviantART Tumblr Check out this portfolio on Shutterstock!

[neon-cold-war]

*maniacal laughter*

[disk28]