Finding meaning in a game shouldn’t require homework, nor a reading list of content that appears outside the game. This new trend of hiding interesting lore outside of the game- Destiny falls into this trap, and Halo 4 all but requires you to have read the novels and lore- is becoming an annoying distraction. Unless you read the out-of-the-way blogposts on the Civilization website you’re not really given much background on who she is or what her faction is about you can only guess that it’s the future government of what is currently the Indian Subcontinent. Nothing connects them together into a better whole.Ī prime example of this can be found in the flavour text sourced from the Kavithan Protectorate and its mysterious leader, Kavitha Thakur. Shame felt upon discovering one has mistaken an artificial-intelligence for a close relation."īut unlike in Alpha Centauri, where it all congealed into a coherent story, Beyond Earth’s better writing feels like points of light in the dark. Some of the writing sparkles, like this flavor text for discovering the Synthetic Thought tech: "Turingschande: Noun. She becomes an almost playful guide through the web of knowledge and advancement that characterises your colony’s long march into the future. There is some absolutely stellar writing that periodically glitters into view, and the narrator -the presumptive voice of humanity-is the young woman who stars in the opening cinematic. The pieces are all there in Beyond Earth, they simply aren’t as musically arranged The connection of mechanics and writing are what we remember from Alpha Centauri, and that connection is missed in Beyond Earth.
This seems a fair way to think of most of Beyond Earth’s narrative failings: bright flashes of writing and expressive mechanics that need a corral of meaning. Yet, unlike mindworms and Planet itself, the aliens remain a blank canvas. You can live with them, more or less harmoniously, if you don’t attack them. The fungus-bred native mindworms and the neural network of planetary consciousness they expressed thus became a character in their own right, a narrative through-line that bore only a shield color in common with Civilization’s nameless, irksome barbarians.īeyond Earth, by contrast, gives us aliens that feel as inscrutably Other as Starship Troopers’ "bugs." This is in profound tension with a vital mechanical change that represents one of the game’s most incredible innovations: unlike barbarians or mindworms, they do not attack on sight. 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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