Best civilization beyond earth11/19/2023 There was a narrative unity that gave life to the world by punctuating the development of your colony with all of this lore, delivered in a way that it could all be easily digested. These details lent coherence and meaning to the strategic action at its ludic heart. You can find the soul of Alpha Centauri in the voiced faction leaders, the vast array of quotes both from Earth’s past and from Alpha Centauri’s invented future, the short fiction that punctuated the action at key events and its surprisingly well done secret project videos. Its mechanics lack a crucial transparency, and what they seem to express is not given a coherent voice by the writing. But more than that, its problem lies in its inability to connect its innovative mechanics to a bigger, more meaningful story. The masterful voice-overs practically sing reams worth of philosophy and worldbuilding lore over the course of play, burning its speculative fiction into your consciousness.īeyond Earth lacks a similarly memorable impact. But the best strategy games go farther, using what critic Rowan Kaiser calls " transparent mechanics" - mechanics that work to express a game’s core ideas, imbuing gameplay with meaning.Īlpha Centauri’s strength can be found in its use of aptly placed flavor text, fully voice acted in many cases, to give events in the game - such as researching a technology or building a city improvement - added significance. Narrative feels even more pretextual for your average 4X strategy title than it does for most games, where it’s a threadbare excuse upon which to hang the actual gameplay. One of the most common criticisms levelled at Firaxis’ Civilization: Beyond Earth is that it fails to live up to the narrative grandeur of its spiritual-predecessor, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri but why? Simple nostalgia?Ĭertainly the grass is greener in the 1990s for many gamers, but I would argue there’s more to this discontent, something which goes to the heart of good game design.
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