"I'm sorry, I just got back from my Halloween party. How can I help you?"
Critical paths
Every Saturday, Richard Cobbett digs into the story and writing of games - some old, some new...
I never
thought I'd miss Sister Miriam, but it only took until my second rival
made planetfall in Beyond Earth to start remembering her fondly. If you
never played Alpha Centauri... well, firstly, please rectify this
situation at once... she's the faction leader everyone loved to hate,
without the inherent awkwardness of classic Civilisation jokes about
Gandhi getting the Bomb and so on. She heads up the religious faction in
the game, the Believers, though that's honestly not why she's hated.
It's that she's very strong in the early game, that her faction tends to
be aggressive and problematic, that the only reason she'll ever have
your back is to stab it, and last but not least, because she has a
really punchable face. Her scowl says it all; eyes narrow, contemptuous,
looking you in the eye only because she wants you to know the extent of
her scorn.
How I wish Beyond Earth had half the personality of that one simple bitmap. Wasted Halloween opportunity of the year - have Zombie Miriam make planetfall in BEIn
a way, I feel bad about making the comparison, because Beyond Earth's
team has always been clear that they were making Civ In Space rather
than Alpha Centauri 2. It was also going to be nigh-impossible to
recapture that lightning in a bottle without simply rehashing what came
before. As is often the case, a modern game picking up where an older
one left off doesn't simply have to compete with the original, but
potentially decades of carefully pruned and polished memories. In Alpha
Centauri's case for instance, it's easy to forget that the dialogue was
largely done in Mad Lib style - endless conversations along the lines
of "Greetings from the [WHO HECK US], honored [PERSON], I hope you are
[APPROPRIATE THING TO SAY]!" Any memories of real diplomatic
cut-and-thrust are entirely invented or very rose-tinted.
But damn, if it didn't do a great job at creating the illusion. Alpha Centauri is hands down my favourite 4X game of all time,
and it's almost entirely down to its characters and story. The idea to
split humanity on ideological rather than national boundaries was a
great one, but it's what happened next that marks AC's true genius - the
human faces put onto them to make them more than simply a philosophy,
mixed with a game that made you feel you were seeing the expression of
it. Regardless of the numbers and what specific tactics the AI was
using, fighting the Hive felt different to fighting the Gaians; the
accumulated weight of the Morganite philosophies and their financial
empire making allying with them a very different matter to, say,
Chairman Yang, who would turtle up in his bases. It was a personal
experience, helped by a thousand tiny little touches like the insults
the faction leaders would sling at each other ("Lady Deidre dancing
naked through the trees" and so on) that made it feel like they were
engaged in the struggle instead of simply controlling their part, and
the beautifully written slivers of philosophy that sat effortlessly next
to words taken from some of the greatest minds in history. "Rude? No, no! Oh God, You're Here Too is... a compliment here! Yes!"Beyond
Earth, its defenders say, goes to similar lengths. If you look in the
Civpedia, you can find reams of background information on the difference
between Franco-Iberia and Brazilia, information on the techs and
wonders, where CEO Suzanne Fielding went to school, all of that. And
that's true, in much the same way that the plans for the bypass due to
knock down Arthur Dent's house were technically on display for
him to see. The difference is that these never really feel part of the
game. Even after several games, I don't feel any innate sense of how the
Slavic Federation rolls vs. the Pan-Asian Co-operative or whatever, nor
that the developers even care that much beyond what was needed for
balancing. By that, I'm not calling laziness, but rather pointing to the
fact that the sweep of the game is about everyone losing interest in
all that stuff anyway in favour of the Harmony, Purity and Supremacy
affinities that they all inevitably end up subscribing to.
A simpler way to put it is that Alpha Centauri has story, Beyond Earth has lore.
The two are often confused, but serve very different purposes. Lore is
background. Lore is additional information. All too often, lore is an
excuse, seen in many a bullshit argument like "But elves are
nymphomaniac nudists in the lore!" Story is a core part of the
experience, and in Alpha Centauri more than any other 4X game ever made.
There's the obvious stuff with the faction leaders and big
text infodumps at regular intervals, but there's also a lot of other
important stuff going on that's less front-of-house - not least the
constant reinforcement of just how awful everything on the planet
actually is. What starts as a mission of hope breaks up before it's even
really begun, and it's not long after that that you're nerve-stapling
citizens and fighting wars where the losing immortal is thrown screaming
into a pain booth. Alpha Centauri's Planet is a terrible, terrible
place where the best of intentions go to die.
But here's the thing. It's your
terrible, terrible place. Chances are that at least initially you'll
take a faction that you feel comfortable with, that chimes at least
somewhat with your moral compass or beliefs and set out to make Planet a
better place (This is admittedly much less the case in
the gimmicker add-on Alien Crossfire). By the time you realise just how
bad things really are, it's too late. Dipping into the lore, it's even
worse than it may seem - at one point Lady Deidre of the Gaians manages
to impress another faction by greeting them without her protective mask
on, the mindworms cripple their victims with fear and give them one of
the most horrible deaths this side of the Sarlaac pit, and the entire
plot is rooted in extinction. But all of that is just trimming on a game
that sells the effect with just what we see and what's implied. Aw, the University wants to wage war. Adorable.The
core difference between the two games though is that Beyond Earth is a
game about humanity settling a new world, while Alpha Centauri was about
humans doing so. That's a bigger difference than it might
initially seem, though one that shows itself again and again in
execution details - in quests that honestly believe that a boost to
production is the most important part of your choice, or in your first
glimpse of your rival factions coming in the form of stock dialogue that
sounds like it was written by a robot. "I'm sorry, but we haven't known
one another for long enough for me to feel comfortable doing so.
Perhaps we can revisit this subject in the future." Sigh. Boring!
This
is all very Civilisation in style, of course. But in Civilisation, you
don't go in cold. There are expectations of the characters and nations,
fair or otherwise, there's... well... there's history. In Beyond Earth,
the artifice is gone. These people are simply statistics with a face,
every stone left unturned to make them more. It comes from a design
school that has stripped away personality with pretty much every sequel,
from the first Civilisation where you got to see your cities and build a
throne room, to the current one which is far more concerned with
warfare and the numbers of production. Alpha Centauri meanwhile picked
up where its creator Brian Reynolds left off with Colonisation, where
the King was an active player and your direct relationship with home was
a fundamental part of the experience - from initial settlement to
finally declaring independence and having to hold the land that you'd
taken. Of course, the real way to win the game was to lose. Traitor.For
me though, the wider scope doesn't lead to a more interesting or even
more freeform game. Technically, sure, you can argue it does. The
Harmony/Supremacy/Purity split is a decent attempt at covering both
philosophy and strategic considerations, and for the game, it makes
sense. Clarity is important. On a narrative level though, I can never
fight the feeling that I'm less forging a path for my society as quietly
signing it up to a space-cult. If your vision of the future doesn't
conform to one of them, complete with what goes with it, you're left
picking on either purely pragmatic reasons, killing the philosophy, or
forced into the least personally objectionable. Alpha Centauri meanwhile
only provided one real path (multiple victories, yes, but
that's not the same thing), but a better illusion. It's like dealing
with a magician holding a pack of cards. You're always going to get the
Ace of Spades, or close enough. What matters is that you think you chose
it. What do you mean 'no map'? We're from SPACE! Was nobody looking out a window?I'm
certainly not saying Beyond Earth is a bad game here, just not what I
was hoping for. It's a solid strategy game about conquering a new world.
It's just not the story of the next big jump for humanity, not
really, and while most of the other bits that people don't like at the
moment can be bulked up or patched with expansions it seems unlikely
that any money or attention will go on that side of things, or into
future revisions of the concept. It's not that only Brian Reynolds could
create something like Alpha Centauri, but that he increasingly feels
like the only person who's been high up on the Civ chain of command who
appreciates what stepping away from the numbers can do - AC being less a
designer's new take on Civilisation as a Civilisation designer
exploring philosophy through its lens. Next time, it would be good to
see the skill and processing that goes into the mechanical side take a
few cues from that, and show us just how much more a world can be than
the sum of its strategies.
"I'm sorry, I just got back from my Halloween party. How can I help you?"
Critical paths
Every Saturday, Richard Cobbett digs into the story and writing of games - some old, some new...
I never
thought I'd miss Sister Miriam, but it only took until my second rival
made planetfall in Beyond Earth to start remembering her fondly. If you
never played Alpha Centauri... well, firstly, please rectify this
situation at once... she's the faction leader everyone loved to hate,
without the inherent awkwardness of classic Civilisation jokes about
Gandhi getting the Bomb and so on. She heads up the religious faction in
the game, the Believers, though that's honestly not why she's hated.
It's that she's very strong in the early game, that her faction tends to
be aggressive and problematic, that the only reason she'll ever have
your back is to stab it, and last but not least, because she has a
really punchable face. Her scowl says it all; eyes narrow, contemptuous,
looking you in the eye only because she wants you to know the extent of
her scorn.
How I wish Beyond Earth had half the personality of that one simple bitmap. Wasted Halloween opportunity of the year - have Zombie Miriam make planetfall in BEIn
a way, I feel bad about making the comparison, because Beyond Earth's
team has always been clear that they were making Civ In Space rather
than Alpha Centauri 2. It was also going to be nigh-impossible to
recapture that lightning in a bottle without simply rehashing what came
before. As is often the case, a modern game picking up where an older
one left off doesn't simply have to compete with the original, but
potentially decades of carefully pruned and polished memories. In Alpha
Centauri's case for instance, it's easy to forget that the dialogue was
largely done in Mad Lib style - endless conversations along the lines
of "Greetings from the [WHO HECK US], honored [PERSON], I hope you are
[APPROPRIATE THING TO SAY]!" Any memories of real diplomatic
cut-and-thrust are entirely invented or very rose-tinted.
But damn, if it didn't do a great job at creating the illusion. Alpha Centauri is hands down my favourite 4X game of all time,
and it's almost entirely down to its characters and story. The idea to
split humanity on ideological rather than national boundaries was a
great one, but it's what happened next that marks AC's true genius - the
human faces put onto them to make them more than simply a philosophy,
mixed with a game that made you feel you were seeing the expression of
it. Regardless of the numbers and what specific tactics the AI was
using, fighting the Hive felt different to fighting the Gaians; the
accumulated weight of the Morganite philosophies and their financial
empire making allying with them a very different matter to, say,
Chairman Yang, who would turtle up in his bases. It was a personal
experience, helped by a thousand tiny little touches like the insults
the faction leaders would sling at each other ("Lady Deidre dancing
naked through the trees" and so on) that made it feel like they were
engaged in the struggle instead of simply controlling their part, and
the beautifully written slivers of philosophy that sat effortlessly next
to words taken from some of the greatest minds in history. "Rude? No, no! Oh God, You're Here Too is... a compliment here! Yes!"Beyond
Earth, its defenders say, goes to similar lengths. If you look in the
Civpedia, you can find reams of background information on the difference
between Franco-Iberia and Brazilia, information on the techs and
wonders, where CEO Suzanne Fielding went to school, all of that. And
that's true, in much the same way that the plans for the bypass due to
knock down Arthur Dent's house were technically on display for
him to see. The difference is that these never really feel part of the
game. Even after several games, I don't feel any innate sense of how the
Slavic Federation rolls vs. the Pan-Asian Co-operative or whatever, nor
that the developers even care that much beyond what was needed for
balancing. By that, I'm not calling laziness, but rather pointing to the
fact that the sweep of the game is about everyone losing interest in
all that stuff anyway in favour of the Harmony, Purity and Supremacy
affinities that they all inevitably end up subscribing to.
A simpler way to put it is that Alpha Centauri has story, Beyond Earth has lore.
The two are often confused, but serve very different purposes. Lore is
background. Lore is additional information. All too often, lore is an
excuse, seen in many a bullshit argument like "But elves are
nymphomaniac nudists in the lore!" Story is a core part of the
experience, and in Alpha Centauri more than any other 4X game ever made.
There's the obvious stuff with the faction leaders and big
text infodumps at regular intervals, but there's also a lot of other
important stuff going on that's less front-of-house - not least the
constant reinforcement of just how awful everything on the planet
actually is. What starts as a mission of hope breaks up before it's even
really begun, and it's not long after that that you're nerve-stapling
citizens and fighting wars where the losing immortal is thrown screaming
into a pain booth. Alpha Centauri's Planet is a terrible, terrible
place where the best of intentions go to die.
But here's the thing. It's your
terrible, terrible place. Chances are that at least initially you'll
take a faction that you feel comfortable with, that chimes at least
somewhat with your moral compass or beliefs and set out to make Planet a
better place (This is admittedly much less the case in
the gimmicker add-on Alien Crossfire). By the time you realise just how
bad things really are, it's too late. Dipping into the lore, it's even
worse than it may seem - at one point Lady Deidre of the Gaians manages
to impress another faction by greeting them without her protective mask
on, the mindworms cripple their victims with fear and give them one of
the most horrible deaths this side of the Sarlaac pit, and the entire
plot is rooted in extinction. But all of that is just trimming on a game
that sells the effect with just what we see and what's implied. Aw, the University wants to wage war. Adorable.The
core difference between the two games though is that Beyond Earth is a
game about humanity settling a new world, while Alpha Centauri was about
humans doing so. That's a bigger difference than it might
initially seem, though one that shows itself again and again in
execution details - in quests that honestly believe that a boost to
production is the most important part of your choice, or in your first
glimpse of your rival factions coming in the form of stock dialogue that
sounds like it was written by a robot. "I'm sorry, but we haven't known
one another for long enough for me to feel comfortable doing so.
Perhaps we can revisit this subject in the future." Sigh. Boring!
This
is all very Civilisation in style, of course. But in Civilisation, you
don't go in cold. There are expectations of the characters and nations,
fair or otherwise, there's... well... there's history. In Beyond Earth,
the artifice is gone. These people are simply statistics with a face,
every stone left unturned to make them more. It comes from a design
school that has stripped away personality with pretty much every sequel,
from the first Civilisation where you got to see your cities and build a
throne room, to the current one which is far more concerned with
warfare and the numbers of production. Alpha Centauri meanwhile picked
up where its creator Brian Reynolds left off with Colonisation, where
the King was an active player and your direct relationship with home was
a fundamental part of the experience - from initial settlement to
finally declaring independence and having to hold the land that you'd
taken. Of course, the real way to win the game was to lose. Traitor.For
me though, the wider scope doesn't lead to a more interesting or even
more freeform game. Technically, sure, you can argue it does. The
Harmony/Supremacy/Purity split is a decent attempt at covering both
philosophy and strategic considerations, and for the game, it makes
sense. Clarity is important. On a narrative level though, I can never
fight the feeling that I'm less forging a path for my society as quietly
signing it up to a space-cult. If your vision of the future doesn't
conform to one of them, complete with what goes with it, you're left
picking on either purely pragmatic reasons, killing the philosophy, or
forced into the least personally objectionable. Alpha Centauri meanwhile
only provided one real path (multiple victories, yes, but
that's not the same thing), but a better illusion. It's like dealing
with a magician holding a pack of cards. You're always going to get the
Ace of Spades, or close enough. What matters is that you think you chose
it. What do you mean 'no map'? We're from SPACE! Was nobody looking out a window?I'm
certainly not saying Beyond Earth is a bad game here, just not what I
was hoping for. It's a solid strategy game about conquering a new world.
It's just not the story of the next big jump for humanity, not
really, and while most of the other bits that people don't like at the
moment can be bulked up or patched with expansions it seems unlikely
that any money or attention will go on that side of things, or into
future revisions of the concept. It's not that only Brian Reynolds could
create something like Alpha Centauri, but that he increasingly feels
like the only person who's been high up on the Civ chain of command who
appreciates what stepping away from the numbers can do - AC being less a
designer's new take on Civilisation as a Civilisation designer
exploring philosophy through its lens. Next time, it would be good to
see the skill and processing that goes into the mechanical side take a
few cues from that, and show us just how much more a world can be than
the sum of its strategies.
