In strategy gaming, no name has more weight than Sid Meier. Meier has conceived some of the greatest strategy games of all time, including the beloved Civilization series and Alpha Centauri. And he’s finally going back into space with Civilization: Beyond Earth.
The site for the game isn’t terribly informative, but information leaked out at PAX East over the weekend. Also, there was an awesome trailer:
Essentially, the setup is that you’re one of eight factions of humans getting off our polluted rock and exploring a new planet. From there, the choice is yours: Do you terraform this new planet, try to evolve to live in a symbiotic relationship with it, or beat the planet with robots until it conforms to your whims?
This being a Civ game, you can also win by making first contact with aliens and by killing off the other civilizations. If this sounds a bit like, oh, Alpha Centauri, let’s just say there’s been a lot of winking and nudging to the effect of “Well, EA owns the rights to that franchise. This is just a new version of Civ. Honest. Really. Ignore the fact that several members of the AC team are also working on this game.”
That said, we have to admit we’re excited. Nobody does sprawling strategy games quite like Meier, and the fact that the remake of X-Com was one of the biggest surprise hits on consoles last year indicates that this might be an even bigger breakout hit. And if nothing else, we’ll finally have a sequel to a great strategy game.
Just no X-Com crossovers, guys. There’s only so much awesome our hearts can take.