PC Gamer UK Preview and Screenshots

[BrotherInJah]

Wow, those borders are quite... hex-ish?
..

I hate it!..

I hope they make good menus. Why all space games got style from the 80's SF movies, where everything was monochromatic. Technology is colorful, and all 4x space games are borring with it's graphics. Please don't let this happed to civ.

In trailer for Pandora – First Contact tech tree got this dull scheme. NO NO NO.

And fix that borders! They look stupid. look at this coastline!
- Sir there is some land left.
- Meeeh
- But we would get access to water
- We got it anyway.
- What? How?
- Jump over.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I hope they make good menus. Why all space games got style from the 80's SF movies, where everything was monochromatic. Technology is colorful, and all 4x space games are borring with it's graphics. Please don't let this happed to civ.

In trailer for Pandora – First Contact tech tree got this dull scheme. NO NO NO.

And fix that borders! They look stupid. look at this coastline!.

Same here. Civ 5 has an absolutely beautiful interface with just the right mix of decorative elements, colours and fonts. Colourful, yet tasteful. I hope they manage to do something similarly pretty, but as Sci-Fi that's not drab nor gaudy. I guess that's why they're hiding the interface at the moment, they are still working on it.

Also, yeah, I dislike the hex borders. I like the strong hex theme and it works well for the selection cursor and the fog of war... but for the land borders? I think having the straight lines work, but the corners are way too sharp, they need to be more rounded.

 

[Civrules]

They polish the graphics as they go. The game is still early on in production.

 

[Karl0413]

Rumoured to be October according to Game.

Gonna be a long five months or so.

 

[Lord Tirian]

They polish the graphics as they go. The game is still early on in production.

Of course, though it was something they've shown off publicly, so it's something that's no longer "just" a placeholder but rather something that's at least an intermediate step to the production version.

Also, I'm calling it now: much like the Civ5 interface used the circular frames for most icons, this one will use hexagonal frames. Hexes everywhere!

 

[Fabio1701]

I like how the borders fall into the crevaces. other than that they are indeed too straight. I assume that will be fixed in civ5 was able to do it. Couldnt possibly be a design choice could it?

One of the screens has the skeleton of a giant centipede or something. pretty cool. is it just decoration, or a resource or does it appear after killing a giant alien (that would be cool! reminders of epic battles)

I like that the terraformers/workers look like a mix between the SMAC unit and Ripleys walker from Alien. Good that it is not the same ugly yellow as SMAC had, but no sign of *real* terraforming yet. Making a farm or quarry dont count.

The green fog (miasma?) seems patchy. when two spots are next to each other it doesnt link up. this displays the grid too easily and kills immersion. Shoudl be able to link that up like radiation in civ5.


thanks for the pics!

 

[cpm4001]

The borders don't look too good right now, but I'm hoping those'll get touched up before the game is released. Otherwise this is shaping up well!

 

[Boygor]

I love the look of the borders . Hexes everywhere!

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I'd like the Hexes to look like they do in Civ 5, but seeing as it's all sci-fi theme, they might just keep them that way.

 

[AriochIV]

I suspect they made the change to look more high-tech. It's kind of an art designer's trope -- if you want to make something look futuristic, put hexagons on it.

 

[Fabio1701]

The farm.fields seem to be more hexy then the civ5 farmfields which are rectangular...ly?

 

[Makavcio]

Uh... These screens are kinda ugly. Firaxis' artwork tends to be very cartoony but in this case it's kinda... I'll put it this way: graphics was the absolutely worst element of the revived XCom series and these screens remind me of that experience. Big, flashy and colorful isn't good for sci-fi. True, good sci-fi tends to be dark, gloomy, depressing, sometimes sterile or industrial in climate, and when it happens to be colorful, it's because alien nature manifests that it's dangerous and it warns us using the most common warning signs avilagle for living organisms.

Here we've got just recolored Civ5. Recolored to a ridiculous degree and it seems to me that it was done merely to conceal the fact that we'll be dealing with just a very big mod, not an entirely new game. You're not fooling anyone, Firaxis, so please stop trying because the effect is cringe-worthy. We all know what we are getting and many of us have already pre-purchased the game, myself included.

 

[Fabio1701]

Uh... These screens are kinda ugly. Firaxis' artwork tends to be very cartoony but in this case it's kinda... I'll put it this way: graphics was the absolutely worst element of the revived XCom series and these screens remind me of that experience. Big, flashy and colorful isn't good for sci-fi. True, good sci-fi tends to be dark, gloomy, depressing, sometimes sterile or industrial in climate, and when it happens to be colorful, it's because alien nature manifests that it's dangerous and it warns us using the most common warning signs avilagle for living organisms.

Here we've got just recolored Civ5. Recolored to a ridiculous degree and it seems to me that it was done merely to conceal the fact that we'll be dealing with just a very big mod, not an entirely new game. You're not fooling anyone, Firaxis, so please stop trying because the effect is cringe-worthy. We all know what we are getting and many of us have already pre-purchased the game, myself included.

Really? Star Trek TOS and TNG are way more colorful than Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise which were gloomy as hell. What was the better Sci-fi? Rick Berman's idea of a military ship is that it should operate in the dark so you cant see what you are doing. The reasoning that sci-fi has to be gloomy to be good is the reason we have so many depressing and boring movies/TV shows now. "Good" sci-fi is about expanding your mind's vision of what could be and challenging preconceptions, regardless of tone. Don't get me wrong, I like me some dystopian SMAC, but that it HAS to be dark to be good sci-fi shows a very limited palette of what sci-fi has been in the past 50 years. Jules Verne is rolling in his grave.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I'll put it this way: graphics was the absolutely worst element of the revived XCom series and these screens remind me of that experience. Big, flashy and colorful isn't good for sci-fi.

That's just your opinion, not a fact. XCom started colourful and cartoony, too, so Firaxis only ran with the same vibe.

 

[Migoooy]

I actually think that it looks great if a little too rigid. I can only hope they round the borders.

If it does end up being Civ5 with a skin that's fine but I will feel slightly annoyed because they have stated it isn't multiple times.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Uh... These screens are kinda ugly. Firaxis' artwork tends to be very cartoony but in this case it's kinda... I'll put it this way: graphics was the absolutely worst element of the revived XCom series and these screens remind me of that experience. Big, flashy and colorful isn't good for sci-fi. True, good sci-fi tends to be dark, gloomy, depressing, sometimes sterile or industrial in climate, and when it happens to be colorful, it's because alien nature manifests that it's dangerous and it warns us using the most common warning signs avilagle for living organisms.

I don't think the argument that an ample palette has no room in "good" sci-fi holds any water. You bring up your perceived flaws of XCOM:EU, and it turns out the original was even cartoonier and more colourful. And it was awesome. SMAC also had a pretty varied palette, with the blue of the oceans, the green/reddish of the terrain, the redder fungus, the wide selection of city styles, colourful units, etc.

The flashiest things we see in the CivBE screenshots are the environments, which remind me a bit of Avatar. Not necessarily a positive (or negative) thing, but you really can't expect all planets in the universe to accomodate to the same dull, gloomy palette. Especially when we're talking about habitable planets, which certainly needn't conform to the same colour range as Earth: the oceans needn't be blue, the land needn't be brown and the plants needn't be green. All of those arise from chemical composition, which might be markedly different on an alien world.

Here we've got just recolored Civ5. Recolored to a ridiculous degree and it seems to me that it was done merely to conceal the fact that we'll be dealing with just a very big mod, not an entirely new game. You're not fooling anyone, Firaxis, so please stop trying because the effect is cringe-worthy. We all know what we are getting and many of us have already pre-purchased the game, myself included.

Considering that we don't know all that much about the game, and that what we do know is suitably different from Civ5, it's incredibly baseless and cynical to call Beyond Earth a recoloured mod. Even less sensible than calling Civ5 a recoloured Civ4 a month after the former was announced.

 

[Lancor]

Considering that we don't know all that much about the game, and that what we do know is suitably different from Civ5, it's incredibly baseless and cynical to call Beyond Earth a recoloured mod. Even less sensible than calling Civ5 a recoloured Civ4 a month after the former was announced.

It probably is the fate of all games that are created with the same engine as their "prequels" to be called a mod in this kind of genre. To be honest, that's not fair, as it would stretch the meaning of the word "mod" by a huge margin.
Of course the game has huge similarities to the other Civ games, but that's why we are in. It IS the same engine as Civ5 so, sure, it will look similiar in many ways.

We just have to wait and see for ourselves if the content delivered matches the expectations and the price tag to make these kind of assumptions. And talking about stolen or copied graphics is moot until we see late beta/pre release candidate video footage.

 

[Lord Tirian]

It IS the same engine as Civ5 so, sure, it will look similiar in many ways.

Well, they should totally fix that by adding a shader effect that makes everything desaturated, extra darker and high contrast, then it'd look different!

 

[AriochIV]

Well, they should totally fix that by adding a shader effect that makes everything desaturated, extra darker and high contrast, then it'd look different!

So far we've only seen the lush green biome. The blue fungal biome and the desert biome may have a more alien feel.

 

[GeoModder]

Well, they should totally fix that by adding a shader effect that makes everything desaturated, extra darker and high contrast, then it'd look different!

Now make the effect movable, implement a 2 weeks/turn interval, and you have the basic setup of a Moon map.