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

[TomSawyer]

+1 to the OP

I admit to being older than dirt. I STILL have a working 486 system in my computer lair (as my wife calls it). It has alot of the older games on it to include Civ. Yes I could DosBox but I digress.

SMAC(X) had so much immersion. It has been pointed out but I will rehash some points. The wonder videos in SMAC. Yeah dated by todays standards but damn they really made you sit up and go YEAH that was worth it. Heck the tech tree alone with the voice overs telling you about it. I still crack up on super lube. Each faction WAS different. Each had their ideological goal. Being able to mod your units, heck even your terraform units could be turned into fugicide death machines. Little touches that despite the god awful AI and bugs you still wanted to play yet another game.

BE just seems brain dead. The total lack of interest in animated wonders or even techs. Static screens with a wall of text? Welcome back to the days of zork almost. Cookie cutter leaders. Cardboard box units. Here is your affinity and by picking this point you get 2 options.

I know BE was not meant to be SMAC 2. But so many companies now are just chasing the $$$. Get the product out, get it onto the tablet. If we can make back 2x what we put into it then we rock. No matter if the product is not something that will stand the test of time. Slapping Sid's name and a off tribute and reference to SMAC is just sad.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Oh yea, I forgot to mention the lack of wonder movies. Thanks for pointing that out. Another thing that is missing is the end replay. Why the ending reply is missing I don't get. Did they not learn their leason with civ 5? The replay feature was added exactly because people complained about it not being there.

And then they repeat the same mistake again.

 

[Natura]

BE isn't the spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri.

It's the spiritual successor to Civ IV: Colonization.

 

[Kutuzov]

I think some folks fooled themselves into believing that this was going to be some sort of sequel to AC. They had to make sure that this game did not resemble AC in any meaningful way because they would be sued by the company that currently holds the IP for AC.

Just wait a few weeks for the first balance patch and I'll bet a lot of folks will be happy with the game. It's now standard practice for forum frequenters to be unsatisfied when new games/expansions are announced for games they are so passionate about. I very much doubt that I'm the only person here who's having a blast playing BE. It's just not safe to say so here yet

 

[UnlimitedBlades]

Just another thing I've noticed:
I think the Purity/Supremacy/Harmony has actually stifled replay-ability and faction uniqueness. Each faction is pretty much exactly the same, and with the affinity systems it pretty much makes it so that there are in reality 3 factions that you pick each game depending on you research choices. While SMAC factions have unique bonuses that happen to aid certain strategies and play styles.

If you look at SMAC your "affinity" so to speak is chosen organically via your actions in game. You can research Centauri techs, tame the native life, and create an eco friendly society by planting trees and xenofungus. Your terraforming and actions would lead you into the "harmony" path, not some arbitrary tech picks. In Civ:BE you can play as the harmony affinity while at the same time commit total xenocide on every alien you see with no consequences.

Or if you were going for a "Purity" like path in SMAC you could do something like terraform boreholes, solar mirrors, and etc not caring about how it damages the planet. You'd be rewarded by a massive resource advantage, but would then have to compete with fungal blooms and swarms of mindworms that recognize your society as a threat to Chiron's health.

Going for "Supremacy" in SMAC would be choosing to run a cybernetic society and the results would be something like a tech advantage for your society etc etc.

There were a ton of little things too, like if you didn't care about morals you could nerve staple your citizens to keep them under control, or build Punishment Spheres and run a dictatorship police state. You could use devastating nerve gas pods to gain an advantage over your hated rival, but commuting such an atrocity would lower your esteem in the eyes of the other factions (not to mention your rival would hate you forever). Heh, but if you used those terrible weapons on the alien factions, the humans would overlook it.

Terraforming was much more versatile as well. I had some fun with armored former strategies where I would send my Terraformers to change the terrain to my advantage, and when the enemy attacked thinking they would be easily destroyed, a nasty surprise awaited them.

 

[Thormodr]

BE isn't the spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri.

It's the spiritual successor to Civ IV: Colonization.

Yes indeed.

Ecclesiastes 1:9New King James Version (NKJV)

9 That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.

 

[FangFur]

Terraforming was much more versatile as well. I had some fun with armored former strategies where I would send my Terraformers to change the terrain to my advantage, and when the enemy attacked thinking they would be easily destroyed, a nasty surprise awaited them.

And you could raise the land to cause opponents cities to become arid whilst making yours nice and lush

 

[Kutuzov]

Yes indeed.

For Thormodr so hated 1UPT, that he gave up the precious gift of the time of his life here on Earth, that whosoever believeth in him should not suffer, but have MUPT forevermore.
Kutuzov 3:16 (KJV)

Moderator Action: Please make your point without mimicking a user's signature.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[GenyaArikado]

I think some folks fooled themselves into believing that this was going to be some sort of sequel to AC. They had to make sure that this game did not resemble AC in any meaningful way because they would be sued by the company that currently holds the IP for AC.

Pandora: First Contact says hi

 

[Drakarska]

Pandora: First Contact says hi

+1 to the irony. Well done.

 

[GenyaArikado]

XD

That bein said, I'm not claiming the game should have been SMAC 2.0 ft Suzanne Fielidng like Pandora is. Just that the "story" quality was the same. I wish there was a "canon" mode (or 8 of them) with a story for each expedition

 

[kingsbury]

BE isn't the spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri.

It's the spiritual successor to Civ IV: Colonization.

I would have to agree, but colonization was a game with extremely innovative gameplay aspects and was fun to play just messing around and not caring about winning or not.

 

[Dalerian]

Ecclesiastes 1:9New King James Version (NKJV)

9 That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.

I wonder how the author of that would respond to airplanes, cars, telephony, ...

 

[zerokarma]

BE isn't the spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri.

It's the spiritual successor to Civ IV: Colonization.

This x100

 

[Paszczak]

It seems that there's been that fad in the last couple of years, to release "spiritual successors" of 20 year old classic games. What the hell does "spiritual successor" even mean?

Tomb Raider, a spiritual successor to Tomb Raider!

It's just an empty phrase that means nothing and gets thrown around when an average game is released. Good games don't need to be advertised as "it's similar to XYZ, try it out if you liked XYZ!". Good games don't draw similarities to other games because they are quality of their own.

Which game was Alpha Centauri similar to? Civilization 2? Yeeeeah, uhm, no not really. AC was a truly unique game and that's why it was great. It was excellent. There never was and never will be a "spiritual successor" to AC, because by definition it would have to tread the same path. It would be an inferior game because we've seen that before. And now we're 20 years older, grumpy, bitter men who aren't amused easily.

...and Beyond Earth screwed itself doubly. Not only is it supposed to be a successor to an old classic, it also uses the same engine as a recently released Civ game. So it gets hammered by fans of both.

 

[GenyaArikado]

Semi unrelated but


Beyond this flesh,
Beyond this dream,
I have danced among the stars.
My children dance on endless worlds.
— Kavitha Thakur, "Glorious Key of the Exodite Sutra"

No longer mere earthbeings and planetbeings are we, but bright children of the stars! And together we shall dance in and out of ten billion years, celebrating the gift of consciousness until the stars themselves grow cold and weary, and our thoughts turn again to the beginning.
— Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations with Planet"

i see what you did there

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

The passion is lacking. That's the major difference.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I think some folks fooled themselves into believing that this was going to be some sort of sequel to AC. They had to make sure that this game did not resemble AC in any meaningful way because they would be sued by the company that currently holds the IP for AC.

Just wait a few weeks for the first balance patch and I'll bet a lot of folks will be happy with the game. It's now standard practice for forum frequenters to be unsatisfied when new games/expansions are announced for games they are so passionate about. I very much doubt that I'm the only person here who's having a blast playing BE. It's just not safe to say so here yet

I think the game is more or less fine mechanically. Some patches to shore up the serious gameplay deficiencies (OP trade routes, horrible AI, etc.) and it will be respectable. The real problem I have with it is that it just seems boring flavor-wise. People didn't "fool themselves" into believing that this was going to be an AC sequel. Firaxis straight up said at the beginning that it was a spiritual successor, THEY fooled us into believing that it would be. Now, anyone who thought this was going to be a sequel mechanically was fooling themselves, game play wise, it was always going to be CiV in space. But based on interviews given shortly after the game was announced I think people had a very legitimate expectation that in terms of flavor, in terms of atmosphere, the game would deliver, and it hasn't. Dull factions with no personality, mostly boring technologies with half-assed descriptions, an alien presence that is a roadblock to your expansion but otherwise serves no narrative purpose. It's just... dull. Lifeless. Game play wise it's currently out of whack but certainly fixable, but most of the time I feel like I'd rather just play CiV instead, even though I usually love sci-fi themed 4x games.

 

[UnlimitedBlades]

Wolf has the right of it. I never for one second believed BE would PLAY like anything other than a re-skinned Civ:V in space, and that's how it is mostly. However I had high hopes for the atmosphere and flavor the could put into the game with the space setting, especially considering how well SMAC did it. When I saw the Alien life and the way they hyped how you could interact with them differently, I imagined another story like Chiron's emergent hive mind. Instead we get NOTHING. You can interact with the aliens in 1 of 2 ways, kill them, or don't kill them. They serve no narrative purpose nor do they really impact game play significantly differently from barbarians. Also unlike mindworms and their psi-striking brethren they don't scale into late game.

 

[Drowsy Emperor]

I could have eaten up this game's crap mechanics if it only had some flavor to go along with it.

It has all the crippling flaws of Civ V, even the ones from BNW (pointless fluff mechanics = quests/archaeology, broken free resources = trade routes) but without the benefit of Civ V's excellent visual design and overall pleasing presentation.

Even SMAC's ugly voxel graphics do a better job of conveying an atmosphere of a hostile alien planet.