Firaxis' Shape Of Things To Come: BE2 or Civ VII?

[Zaarin]

To create a potential game-spanning backstory and then let it lie there, flopping like a dead fish, either shows an immense contempt for their audience or an immense ignorance of science fiction.
But then, I've said it before: BE looks to me like a science fiction game designed by a bunch of people who had heard of science fiction, but never actually read any of it.

Absolutely. "Something something bad things happened something something new home" is about as deep as the lore goes, and it's sad. When presented with a fictional universe, you have to have some detail to sink your teeth into to make you care about the world, and BE is just flippant about it. Cf. Endless Space (and its sequel), which conveys a lot more story and flavor in a lot less text.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Absolutely. "Something something bad things happened something something new home" is about as deep as the lore goes, and it's sad. When presented with a fictional universe, you have to have some detail to sink your teeth into to make you care about the world, and BE is just flippant about it. Cf. Endless Space (and its sequel), which conveys a lot more story and flavor in a lot less text.

I've never played BE, but I always just assumed that the history behind the world is what happens during the Civilization games, before they reach Alpha Centauri, or is that a different game?

 

[Zaarin]

I've never played BE, but I always just assumed that the history behind the world is what happens during the Civilization games, before they reach Alpha Centauri, or is that a different game?

The backstory of BE is basically "mumblegrumble bad things happen mumble mumble new civs on a new planet! Don't look too closely at their geopolitical situation or ask any questions about how they came together, please!" There's really no backstory, just an undefined cataclysm and "here we are on a new planet with civs that are just old civs mashed together because reasons."

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The backstory of BE is basically "mumblegrumble bad things happen mumble mumble new civs on a new planet! Don't look too closely at their geopolitical situation or ask any questions about how they came together, please!" There's really no backstory, just an undefined cataclysm and "here we are on a new planet with civs that are just old civs mashed together because reasons."

Maybe it would be better you did choose a faction at least with a backstory. Of course then that might end up turning into sterotypical situations such as the militant/expansionist faction who came from Russia, or the East Asian faction who is the most technology advanced, or the former Brazilians who have come to deforest another planet.

 

[Gorbles]

Yes, unlike the tree-hugging faction lead by a lady, the vaguely East Asian conscriptionist worker "Hive", the American-named commercial faction, etc, et al

But regardless @ the thread, these are job postings. Does anyone know how long it can take to fulfill a single job posting? I work in software, and depending on the expertise required it can take months. And that's assuming the hire is a good fit and passes evaluation (and also wants to stick around).

I'm not saying it means nothing - a developer scaling up is often indicative of project work. But it certainly means very little in the short term, and the postings like cross multiple projects (given the specifics for similar roles but with different technology bases, like UE4).

The backstory of BE is basically "mumblegrumble bad things happen mumble mumble new civs on a new planet! Don't look too closely at their geopolitical situation or ask any questions about how they came together, please!" There's really no backstory, just an undefined cataclysm and "here we are on a new planet with civs that are just old civs mashed together because reasons."

Alright fine, I'll dig in a bit deeper. If we're going to be this reductive (and I realise that I'm going to change no minds this late in the game about BE), SMAC is the oldest trope in the book. "leader dies and everyone becomes paranoid of one another" describes exactly how many science fiction (hell, fiction) novels or movie setups?

I realise the largest draw of SMAC in terms of plot is Planet and the way that story unfolds (also, those Wonder videos. Amen), but I was constraining my critique to the backstory, to make it a better parallel. BE certainly tells far less of a story as you progress, but to me this is either an inherent weakness or an inherent strength of the evolution of playing a TBS game your way. SMAC is perhaps my favourite TBS game of all time, but the story evolves the same way every single time. I'm not knocking the story (I love it, even if sentient planet is also one of the other oldest cliches in the proverbial book). The main Civilisation series has continually attempted to put more power in terms of decision making into the hands of the players each time (sometimes with greater and sometimes with lesser success). This is, absolutely, going to turn away some players who are interested in stronger worldbuilding - especially when you take what is a game rooted in history and transplant it into a fantasy future.

That isn't to say I think the worldbuilding of BE is great, either. I wish they'd done more with it as well (though they did probably as much as they could, time allowing, with the expansion, it's still obviously driven by generated, rather than crafted, systems). But in my experience people often confuse preference with competence. So they didn't make a plot you found engaging. And? What does that mean?

Because it's one thing to identify flaws that people will agree with, but it's another to craft something that people other than yourself will find engaging. I certainly don't envy any developer working on an established franchise, the fans of which have often been fans for literally decades. Spin me a science fiction story, even a good one, and I could reduce it to its tropes in an instant. I like sci-fi, I've read a fair amount of it. I've played a fair amount more (through games). Especially if the focus isn't actually to make a story, but a game first and foremost. We can talk about how SMAC did it first all we like . . . SMAC did it, yeah. So what's the plan? Copy it? Imitate it? Hollow out its bones and brew a soup from it?

tl;dr: the setting of SMAC and its impact on gameplay is far more prescriptivist, and that resonates with different people differently. That doesn't make it a bad thing. But if we can't recognise that tropes are inherent to how we tell stories, or even criticise them consistently across games we do like, and games we don't like . . . then who are we (@Boris Gudenuf) to talk about what the developers read and how familiar they are with science fiction?

I get it, it's rationalisation. "if they read sci-fi then how come BE was so lacking". But there are plenty of possible reasons, and "ship the project" is regularly a big one. Rising Tide was a glimpse at how much more they obviously wanted to put in. Maybe that was their limit as developers, as writers, as both. But to assume that by default in my opinion suggests an imagination so lacking that I again ask: who are we to talk?

 

[Zaarin]

If we're going to be this reductive

Is it possible to be reductive about BE? If you reduce nothing, you're left with nothing.

That isn't to say I think the worldbuilding of BE is great, either. I wish they'd done more with it as well (though they did probably as much as they could, time allowing, with the expansion, it's still obviously driven by generated, rather than crafted, systems). But in my experience people often confuse preference with competence. So they didn't make a plot you found engaging. And? What does that mean?

They didn't make a plot I found unengaging. They didn't make a plot. At all. Preference isn't involved because when there's no content, it's not possible to form an opinion on it. There is no story to BE: they didn't tell a bad story; they didn't tell a story I didn't like; they didn't tell a story at all. Maybe BE is a decent strategy game, but as someone who plays even 4X games for the emergent story, they failed hard with BE. There has to be more to the story than "lol vague bad things happened now have some pew-pew-pew kaboom in space" for the player to feel invested in the story.

 

[Gorbles]

They didn't make a plot I found unengaging. They didn't make a plot. At all. Preference isn't involved because when there's no content, it's not possible to form an opinion on it. There is no story to BE: they didn't tell a bad story; they didn't tell a story I didn't like; they didn't tell a story at all. Maybe BE is a decent strategy game, but as someone who plays even 4X games for the emergent story, they failed hard with BE. There has to be more to the story than "lol vague bad things happened now have some pew-pew-pew kaboom in space" for the player to feel invested in the story.

No, I'm still going to say that they didn't make a plot you found engaging. They created a backstory, and then created personalities to carry the relative factional archetypes forward. However, they didn't make the characters you play with and engage with during the course of a game interesting, so for you personally building a plot out of them was also out of the question. I get that. But for someone who is engaged, it's different. In one game you can be exploring a frozen planet and come across a technologically-advanced marvel, while dealing with event chains that necessitate you to make specific decisions with regards to building and shaping your cities . . . that lets you craft a plot. A unique experience. It's not as coherent nor as good as SMAC's, but that doesn't make it nonexistent.

That said, I'm much the same with the Endless games, though as I understand it they've continued to build on their universe with each successive game. I'm only familiar with ES and EL, so that's probably why. I didn't really give EL a fair shot either . . . I just found it too bland. I loved how it looked (that new tile reveal was one of the best things I've ever seen, animation wise, in the genre), but I just couldn't get into it.

In Rising Tide, for example, I wanted to explore more. I wanted to find out more about these worlds, even if it was frustratingly RNG-based and I could uncover most of the details in a few playthroughs (thankfully you could control a lot of the RNG in advanced game options, and limit the number of AIs and their difficulty to increase the value in exploration). I wanted to see the quest lines through, as simplistic though they were. The base game was incredibly lacking in this regard, and I don't blame people for not picking up the expansion specifically for this. I got the expansion because I liked the mechanics, I was still very much into the CiV-style of a game. The reworked exploration and biomes, etc, were just icing on the cake for me. I already got value out of the Affinity system, and I liked the visual coherence each of the three main factions had (a good criticism of the expansion was that the hybrid Affinities were a lot less rooted in anything - the drive to adopt them was pretty much entirely for gameplay bonuses).

"lol vague things happened now here's the gameplay" ignores the value in choosing your leader, choosing your Affinity, and so on. Sure, you don't get enjoyment out of it, or that enjoyment has waned, or some other reason. I respect that. But "lol no plot" is as substantial as you're saying BE is in the first place. In that it's not. Or maybe we have different qualifiers for what constitutes plot in a video game, especially emergent storylines, I don't know.

 

[Zaarin]

They created a backstory

The back story is literally "something bad happened, we won't tell you what, the end."

"lol vague things happened now here's the gameplay" ignores the value in choosing your leader, choosing your Affinity, and so on. Sure, you don't get enjoyment out of it, or that enjoyment has waned, or some other reason. I respect that. But "lol no plot" is as substantial as you're saying BE is in the first place. In that it's not. Or maybe we have different qualifiers for what constitutes plot in a video game, especially emergent storylines, I don't know.

I've used the term "plot" a couple times, and while I will maintain that it's true that BE has no plot ("a nameless bad thing happened" is a hook, not a plot), I think the real issue I'm driving at here is the complete lack of world building. World building is hard. I know; I've invested years in it on several different projects. The funny thing about world building is that most of it is creator-facing because the audience doesn't want lore dumps; instead the world building should shine through the audience-facing narrative mostly as flavor. This is the most telling part of the complete lack of world building in BE because it feels like an AI-generated average of the most pop culture sci-fi. At the end of the day, the world is the main character in a 4X game. Civ has the benefit that that character has already been very well developed by real life. In BE, the main character feels like it was written by JJ Abrams and played by Kristin Stewart.

Or maybe we have different qualifiers for what constitutes plot in a video game, especially emergent storylines, I don't know.

I'll be honest: I'm not a strategy game player per se, or at least I don't play strategy games for the strategy. Most of my gaming time is spent in RPGs, point-and-click adventures, and walking sims--games that are mostly about the story. When I play a strategy game, it's about 50% for the emergent story and 50% because I like to make things. I'm mostly drawn to historical strategy games because I also love history (obviously), but I do also enjoy non-historical strategy games like Stellaris and Endless Space (2)--but only if the story is good. (Stellaris is an interesting case because it doesn't really have a story but somehow manages to fake it? I think it's the narrative events that make it feel like your people and the peoples you encounter actually have a history.) This is where BE fell flat for me. The graphics and audio were beautiful, the game itself was reasonably fun, but I was consistently left wondering why I should care. Vagueness and mystery have a place in storytelling, but you can only use so much before you end up saying nothing at all.

 

[Gorbles]

The back story is literally "something bad happened, we won't tell you what, the end."

Like I said. That's also SMAC. I suppose "the captain died and everyone else left is arguing" is more explicit than "the earth effectively blew up and everyone left is arguing", but reducing them both to that kind of level makes them far more similar than not.

I dunno exactly why I'm dying on this hill. I think it's because I feel people have blind spots for things they don't like - especially when those things are pretty old. BE's story and setting was always going to be on an uphill struggle against SMAC's legacy, regardless if it was good at describing it or not. And ultimately, people liking it or not is an entirely valid personal choice. I guess it's just the reductive approach that's bugging me, hah.

I've used the term "plot" a couple times, and while I will maintain that it's true that BE has no plot ("a nameless bad thing happened" is a hook, not a plot), I think the real issue I'm driving at here is the complete lack of world building. World building is hard. I know; I've invested years in it on several different projects. The funny thing about world building is that most of it is creator-facing because the audience doesn't want lore dumps; instead the world building should shine through the audience-facing narrative mostly as flavor. This is the most telling part of the complete lack of world building in BE because it feels like an AI-generated average of the most pop culture sci-fi. At the end of the day, the world is the main character in a 4X game. Civ has the benefit that that character has already been very well developed by real life. In BE, the main character feels like it was written by JJ Abrams and played by Kristin Stewart.

I don't really get the hate Stewart gets, but that's very much an aside.

I agree that worldbuilding is hard, and I agree that the audience in general doesn't seem to want lore dumps. And I agree that BE feels very generic in that regard. But that's why I'm still saying it's story. There's a setting, and a playthrough that defines the start, middle and end. Now that I'm typing this, maybe we're approaching story differently. I'm insisting that it is a story, while you're saying (as you reaffirm below) that it's not saying much of anything at all. Which in turn disqualifies it as a story, even if it technically may qualify. Is that a better read of it?

I'll be honest: I'm not a strategy game player per se, or at least I don't play strategy games for the strategy. Most of my gaming time is spent in RPGs, point-and-click adventures, and walking sims--games that are mostly about the story. When I play a strategy game, it's about 50% for the emergent story and 50% because I like to make things. I'm mostly drawn to historical strategy games because I also love history (obviously), but I do also enjoy non-historical strategy games like Stellaris and Endless Space (2)--but only if the story is good. (Stellaris is an interesting case because it doesn't really have a story but somehow manages to fake it? I think it's the narrative events that make it feel like your people and the peoples you encounter actually have a history.) This is where BE fell flat for me. The graphics and audio were beautiful, the game itself was reasonably fun, but I was consistently left wondering why I should care. Vagueness and mystery have a place in storytelling, but you can only use so much before you end up saying nothing at all.

It's interesting. What you're describing in Stellaris (never tried, just seems like too much DLC to get the intended experience - I have too much investment in Civ to branch out again in that regard) is what I feel from BE - though specifically through the expansion. The base game is a lot more lacking and the game is first and foremost, rather than any approximation of plot at all.

 

[blackbutterfly]

No, there's a very important lesson they should take from BE1: vague writing and bland, ultra-generic worldbuilding are bad.

Yes, I agree BE lore was appalling, truly. I think that has been established.
Civ V/VI builds a spaceship to an exoplanet rather than Alpha Centauri (as we have now discovered a ton of planets since 1999). So why even was there a need to describe a "Great Mistake" in BE. Like SMAC/X just get on with it...

In SMAC/X you had this dude:

Who in BE got replaced by this:

Space pirate vs. philanthropist.
Fun vs. boring.

If they do BE2, Firaxis certainly needs to bring back (or replicate) SMAC/X factions, for their zest, fun (and simplicity), instead of BE's boring sponsors.
Civ VI's Red Death scenario is an example of a good set of factions. I was genuinely impressed.

 

[Zaarin]

Like I said. That's also SMAC. I suppose "the captain died and everyone else left is arguing" is more explicit than "the earth effectively blew up and everyone left is arguing", but reducing them both to that kind of level makes them far more similar than not.

I dunno exactly why I'm dying on this hill. I think it's because I feel people have blind spots for things they don't like - especially when those things are pretty old. BE's story and setting was always going to be on an uphill struggle against SMAC's legacy, regardless if it was good at describing it or not. And ultimately, people liking it or not is an entirely valid personal choice. I guess it's just the reductive approach that's bugging me, hah.

To be clear, I'm not comparing it to SMAC, which I've never played. When SMAC came out, I was cutting my 4X teeth on Birth of the Federation.

I agree that worldbuilding is hard, and I agree that the audience in general doesn't seem to want lore dumps. And I agree that BE feels very generic in that regard. But that's why I'm still saying it's story. There's a setting, and a playthrough that defines the start, middle and end. Now that I'm typing this, maybe we're approaching story differently. I'm insisting that it is a story, while you're saying (as you reaffirm below) that it's not saying much of anything at all. Which in turn disqualifies it as a story, even if it technically may qualify. Is that a better read of it?

Yes, that's more or less what I'm saying, I think.

It's interesting. What you're describing in Stellaris (never tried, just seems like too much DLC to get the intended experience - I have too much investment in Civ to branch out again in that regard) is what I feel from BE - though specifically through the expansion. The base game is a lot more lacking and the game is first and foremost, rather than any approximation of plot at all.

I was so disappointed by the base game I never picked up the expansion; I didn't feel like it was worth it to me. Stellaris was a tough sell for me, and I only have a couple of the DLC, but I've enjoyed it. I like CK3 better, which was also a tough sell because I did not enjoy CK2 or EU4.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Full disclosure: I never acquired or played SMAC/X. I do play and enjoy BERT.

When I play mainline Civ games (3, 4, 5, just starting 6), I'm trying to rewrite history. I really don't know much about the Mongols, Persians, Inca, Shoshone, or Arabia. I know a little more about England, France, Germany, Rome, or China. As a citizen of the USA, I know something about the different leaders that "America" has had across the franchise -- Lincoln, Washington, both Roosevelts -- so I can emulate them a bit. But the fun lies not imagining what Kublai Khan would say to Suleiman, or what Gorgo would say to Pachacuti, but in trying to build a warlike empire with a peace-leaning civ, or ramping up a science-loving tribe to be a research monster.

Fielding (the leader of ARC in BERT) had no more "personality", verve, or zest than Lincoln did in Civ 3, than Washington did in Civ 5, than FDR did in Civ4. Which was OK, because it was never about the leaders for me. Correction: Montezuma and Gandhi had their own, in-Civ-universe lore, that made them fun to play or play against.

I viewed the groups in BERT as tribes who had "won" a space victory in traditional Civ, and were now competing on a new planet. Launching an interplanetary expedition is expensive, so nations teamed up. Or their path to victory included conquering other Civs (as mine usually does ) so France and Spain become "Franco Iberia."

Where I have an issue with BERT is the variability of behavior within the same sponsor/leader. One knew that Monty or Shaka would attack sooner or later in Civ; none of the BERT sponsors are consistently warmongers. Hutama usually starts friendly but will backstab me in nearly every game. Most of the wonders in BERT are available later in the game, so none of the BERT sponsors can be wonder-obsessed as several leaders were in Civ 3 and 4. Daoming could be that way, but not consistently. It's a decision they made: keep the AI tendencies hidden, to let the player discover them, similar to hidden agendas in Civ 6.

Summary: I don't need an overarching story to have fun. I would prefer more differentiated leaders among the ones we have.

 

[Thormodr]

SMAC was and still is truly awesome.

 

[Leucarum]

For me, I feel like the biggest mistake in BE was to tie leaders to nationalities that didn't exist any more. Their personalities were presented as stereotypical of some societies we couldn't see develop properly and didn't really have a full idea of how they emerged in the first place. It was especially glaring compared to SMAC where leaders were exemplars of ideologies - even if they did have a national origin; that was rarely important to their personalities. For whatever reason, the SMAC option felt much more natural and easier to personify.

 

[bbbt]

To be clear, I'm not comparing it to SMAC, which I've never played. When SMAC came out, I was cutting my 4X teeth on Birth of the Federation.

Funnily enough, instead of making a BE2 or any other homebrew scifi universe, I think Firaxis would me much better off licensing an existing one - like Star Trek - and hiring an associated writer.

 

[Xur]

Getting a writer or getting a license for Star Trek would mean an entirely new game that is character driven and not the current cookie cutter leaders civ has. They’d have to do something like ck3.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Funnily enough, instead of making a BE2 or any other homebrew scifi universe, I think Firaxis would me much better off licensing an existing one - like Star Trek - and hiring an associated writer.

Well Firaxis is now diving into the world of Marvel, so I guess anything is possible.

 

[Zaarin]

Funnily enough, instead of making a BE2 or any other homebrew scifi universe, I think Firaxis would me much better off licensing an existing one - like Star Trek - and hiring an associated writer.

My general impression is that the licensing situation with Star Trek is a mess. Plus a modern Trek game would have to tie in with Disco and Picard, which would make it a hard pass from me.

Getting a writer or getting a license for Star Trek would mean an entirely new game that is character driven and not the current cookie cutter leaders civ has. They’d have to do something like ck3.

Birth of the Federation just took static pictures from TNG for the leaders; they were far more "cookie cutter" than Civ's leaders. (In fact, I suspect they only had the license for TNG, as they did not use supplemental information or images from DS9--for the Bajorans or Cardassians, for example.) I personally would be ecstatic for a modern Birth of the Federation (and yes, I'm aware of the fan remakes).

 

[Linklite]

Bajorans and Cardassians were in TNG, so that can't be the reason - or at least, not the only reason.

 

[Zaarin]

Bajorans and Cardassians were in TNG, so that can't be the reason - or at least, not the only reason.

No, I was saying they could have added more to the Bajorans and Cardassians from DS9, which they did not do. In particular, everything the Cardassians use either appeared in TNG or was made up. There's no reference to the Dominion or anything explicitly from DS9. There are things that appeared in DS9 like the Nor-class starbase and the Defiant-class heavy escort, but they also appeared on TNG (or at least the TNG films, much to the displeasure of the DS9 staff, who was never consulted about the Defiant's appearance in First Contact). So nothing appeared in the game that appeared in other series unless it also appeared in TNG, and all images used are from TNG (the Bajoran is one of the Bajorans from "Ensign Ro," I believe, and the Cardassian is a random Cardassian; the one exception, strangely enough, is that the Ferengi are represented by Grand Nagus Zek--also an exception to their general avoidance of using major characters, e.g., not using Tomalok or Sela for the Romulans or Picard for the Federation).