Beyond Earth, the spiritual successor to Alpha Centarui... not really.

[albie_123]

I've just read Brian Reynolds' Wikipedia page. He went from Firaxis to BigHugeGames to Zynga (wut) to SecretNewCo (a mobile games company).

I'm sad now.

This, more than anything else, should tell you the fate of modern video games.

I am honestly surprised Beyond Earth is as good as it is, I was expecting far worse.

 

[kingsbury]

You took the capital.

Honest to god that was what I was thinking at the time, and I don't even think Miller worked for Firaxis at the time.

 

[Varek]

I can kind of see where the OP is coming from the game does feel a little souless to me, but I think with all the great modders for these games its only a matter of time until some great lore is modded in to it.

 

[Nereus77]

I can kind of see where the OP is coming from the game does feel a little souless to me, but I think with all the great modders for these games its only a matter of time until some great lore is modded in to it.

Exactly what I think

 

[UnlimitedBlades]

Yep, many comments we get here are terrible. They are most of the time extremly one-sided and blown out of proportion. And there is that board rule that says we may not call a troll a troll. Some threads/comments are obviously of trollish nature.

Moderator Action: If you think a post is trollish, then please report it. Engaging it is trolling and feeds the troll.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Hey I think you're not being fair here. I believe I put some thought into my comments. Do you truly believe Civ:BE matches up to SMAC in terms of story/lore/personality?

@BSPollux
I never said BE wasn't a good looking game. It certainly beats SMAC in the graphics department. I DID mention in my opening paragraph that part of my issue with BE lies with my own expectations. When I think of the spirit of SMAC I think of it's lore and personality. BE really has none of that, and all the factions are virtually the same etc.

Moderator Action: You are responsible for everything you quote, so please do not quote text that is engaging the troll nor include mod text from those posts.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

The release of this game has brought out a lot of people, myself included, who are interested in BE through the SMAC experience.
In fact, I was primarily a SMAC player, regular Civ isn't all that interesting to me.

Having found myself disappointed with the game I joined up to see what others were thinking. Being negative about a game isn't trolling if the game has as many problems as Civ BE.

I'm saying its fair to expect the SMAC crowd to come in and say their piece, since SMAC tended to be a landmark game for many people.

And this is not a case of the game not living up to unrealistic expectations, taken on its own terms, without the SMAC baggage - its still rather mediocre. And it shouldn't be spared criticism just because its a Firaxis game.

 

[vandyr]

SMAC was a masterpiece.

To each their own. SMAC was my least favorite and least played Civ game, but I love BE. Has some problems, but I'm looking forward to what they do with it.

 

[kingsbury]

To each their own. SMAC was my least favorite and least played Civ game, but I love BE. Has some problems, but I'm looking forward to what they do with it.

I would play AC when I was a kid on a lower difficulty and turtle until I got the float tanks. I play Beyond Earth a lot differently now.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Anyone who was expecting a real spiritual successor to AC has not been paying attention to the modern games industry. "Spiritual successor" has, for a long while now, been industry code for "we want to cash in on the cachet of an older game without actually having to deliver a product of comparable quality". Nothing new about that.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Anyone who was expecting a real spiritual successor to AC has not been paying attention to the modern games industry. "Spiritual successor" has, for a long while now, been industry code for "we want to cash in on the cachet of an older game without actually having to deliver a product of comparable quality". Nothing new about that.

Ignore the greater problems with the game, like Planet being a pushover or Harmony being interchangeable with the other affinities, as far as Planet is concerned -- what's sad is how little money it would have taken to get a better writer and a handful of voice actors. That'd solve half the flavor problem. So easy.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Beyond Earth just seems like Civ 5 in space, which really isn't a problem for me because I liked Civ 5.

The thing is, the game isn't as good as even Civ 5. Civ 5 with all expansions has far more depth and interesting game mechanics, as well as better presentation thant Beyond earth does. Even more so if you use mods.

I played Beyond earth for like a few hours, got bored, and then simply started a new game of Civ 5 with mods instead, and I found it much more fun.

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

The trick is to do it with the least amount of money you can get away with.

And they got away with it too... this time. Metacritic score is sitting at around 8/10 (lol), user score at the more realistic 6/10.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Ignore the greater problems with the game, like Planet being a pushover or Harmony being interchangeable with the other affinities, as far as Planet is concerned -- what's sad is how little money it would have taken to get a better writer and a handful of voice actors. That'd solve half the flavor problem. So easy.

Writing budgets being far down on the list of priorities is, sadly, also an extremely common feature of modern game companies. Most of that is our fault, the fault of those of us who buy games. Unfortunately, a majority of us don't care about that stuff, we'll happily buy something with writing that looks like it was banged out by a chimp with a typewriter as long as the graphics are pretty enough or the hype machine strong enough.

 

[kingsbury]

The thing is, the game isn't as good as even Civ 5. Civ 5 with all expansions has far more depth and interesting game mechanics, as well as better presentation thant Beyond earth does. Even more so if you use mods.

I played Beyond earth for like a few hours, got bored, and then simply started a new game of Civ 5 with mods instead, and I found it much more fun.

But the terraforming hexes are so beautiful

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Its only been 5 days, and each time I play BE I find myself wanting to fire up SMAC again.

 

[NyQuil]

Comparing BE with a game that already been patched and had expansions added on is a bit unfair.

Ideally, yes, BE should have taken into account the mechanics incorporated into the expansions.

But at the same time, I'm prepared to see if they can patch up some of the more egregious issues and hopefully add a little variety as well.

 

[Autoclave]

I played AC after Civ 5 and i really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much that i even moded it's horrible horrible tech tree.

Most of the OP's complaints about CivBE are valid and i agree with them. AC had a menacing atmosphere as well as a very depressing ambient sound (which was very very fitting). From this point of view AC is superior hands down.

Gameplay wise AC felt unique, but it wasn't necessarily a better experience. It's difficult to explain and to pinpoint it's individual failures, but there are a lot of them. Here is my personal short list of things i don't like in AC: Squares, ICS, tech tree, doom stacks, "clean" minerals, water cities.

Personally i think that both games should be played as neither is perfect.

 

[UnlimitedBlades]

The thing is it's not like Firaxis lacks the ability to hire good writers or create a good sci-fi atmosphere. I think they did an excellent job with X-com. It's the sheer lack of effort that bothers me as much as anything else. If they hired a few good voice actors and made some relevant quotes, it would be significantly better than what we have now.

 

[Aethervapor]

I think the fact that any leader can adopt any affinity put a major constraint on the kind of faction leaders they created, since they all had to be at least somewhat philosophically neutral. The SMAC leaders were a lot more interesting because they weren't at all philosophically neutral - each one represented a very distinct ideology. But if you took them and combined them randomly with the BE affinities (as would happen in gameplay), you could get combinations that would be really hard to make sense of (Morgan/Harmony, Yang/Purity), and some leaders who align with an affinity so well (Deirdre/Harmony, Miriam/Purity) that it'd be hard to make sense of them making any other choice.

They decided to do something new in this game, rather than attempt to one-up an old classic. I can appreciate that.

As for the quotes and lore, Alpha Centauri set a really high bar there. If BE falls short, I'd sooner attribute it to SMAC's level of achievement than to BE's failure. The cinematic for the Self-Aware Colony is still one of the most chilling things I've ever seen in a game.

 

[Chaos Blade]

Its only been 5 days, and each time I play BE I find myself wanting to fire up SMAC again.

I gave in, and am happier for it. I am even aiming for a transcendence victory this time, something I truly hate of the game :/

I played AC after Civ 5 and i really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much that i even moded it's horrible horrible tech tree.

Most of the OP's complaints about CivBE are valid and i agree with them. AC had a menacing atmosphere as well as a very depressing ambient sound (which was very very fitting). From this point of view AC is superior hands down.

Gameplay wise AC felt unique, but it wasn't necessarily a better experience. It's difficult to explain and to pinpoint it's individual failures, but there are a lot of them. Here is my personal short list of things i don't like in AC: Squares, ICS, tech tree, doom stacks, "clean" minerals, water cities.

Personally i think that both games should be played as neither is perfect.

Oh, neither game is perfect, agreed, lategame SMAC is a chore, for one but the fact is, for a Firaxis game, BE is sub par and below expectations.