Is Beyond Earth 2 coming before Civ 7

[blackbutterfly]

1. The tweet is an excuse to use the "beyond Earth" pun. Since it's random information shared out of the blue which does not fit into a pattern of previous posts, it could be a "hint";

Firaxis is focused on Midnight Suns, now delayed, at least until the end of the year.

IDK if anyone has seen Take-Two's recent financials but they posted a loss for the quarter.
That is they say because of the Zynga merger/acquisition. But revenue for both should be higher but in actual fact both companies have seen a drop of 28%. That's almost a 3rd!

The Take-Two loss is despite one of their CEOs claiming that the rise they saw during COVID would continue post pandemic, but clearly people have bought less games as they return to normalcy.

Considering both these factors, it seems all Firaxis can do right now is drop hints of what is to come.
And considering the cash grab that was NFP, and the tighter financial situation of 2K+Firaxis' parent, greedy execs will be looking at raking in as much as they can. Hence BE2.

 

[KayAU]

@Oberinspektor Derrick
You're welcome to your opinion, of course, even though I disagree. Several of your points have something to them, though. I strongly disagree about the victory types, and the little popups where you customise your buildings a bit are not really a nuisance once you've done a couple of playthroughs, as they are very quickly done when you have a clearer idea of what you want to do. Boring buildings and wonders, probably kind of true. Boring units, disagree. Lack of variety between factions...somewhat agree, especially if you compare to something like Civ 6 where there are several civs which play very differently from the rest. Tech web, agree it is hard to grasp, but I don't think it is bad when you have learned how to use the search function and filters.

Here are a few other things I like about BE:
* Affinities - I love these both as a narrative and gameplay component. Getting affinity points gets you powerful upgrades and bonuses, while at the same time feeling like you are developing your society in a certain direction.
* Virtues - I just find this very enjoyable. The bonuses you get here are substantial, and there are synergy effects which gives you even more bonuses as a reward for getting bonuses.
* Exploration - Apart from the resource pods, you have expedition sites which are often very rewarding, and help extend the exploration phase of the game significantly. You also have planetary marvels, which basically require you to explore the whole planet to unlock a quest reward, and you have artifacts, which can be combined to yield bonuses, effects, special buildings, or even unique wonders.
* Covert operations - This system is more developed than in any main line civ-game, with more interesting actions and flexibility for how to use agents.
* Upgradable abilities for leaders
* Diplomatic agreements, these are really useful, upgradeable, and tied to leader abilities. There's a great deal of variety in which effects they have. One could give faster covert ops, another faster outpost development speed, another culture for destroying units, just to mention a few.
* Atmosphere and music. I think BE is beautiful. I also love the different biomes you can choose, and wish there were more of them. And it's not just a visual theme, the biomes have gameplay effects.

Note that I'm basing this on BE with the Rising Tide expansion, I know a lot of these features are missing or not as well implemented in the base game. I think most BE players would agree that RT is an essential expansion which improves the game significantly. I just wish they had made another one.

 

[Cuneiform]

But revenue for both should be higher but in actual fact both companies have seen a drop of 28%. That's almost a 3rd!

With Firaxis effectively contributing 0% revenue for over 12 months.

 

[blackbutterfly]

With Firaxis effectively contributing 0% revenue for over 12 months.

Why do you say that?

Sales of Civ VI Anthology through to old games like Civ III will have contributed to revenue. Along with Xcom franchise.

 

[Sostratus]

BE made financial sense for them because they recycled the entire Civ5 game infrastructure. Seriously, you could port assets directly from BE to Civ5. The development effort is vastly less than making something new.
If you're investing all this time and money on a new engine for civ7, which is the main event that draws in the big bucks, I'm not sure that kicking BE2 out the door first (a much riskier product) makes sense.

While I think civ6 would have been much better as the source material for BE than civ5 was - the district system would work amazingly in a sci fi setting - I do not think a successful BE2 will be able to be more than a spiritual successor (as in also civ set in sci fi space / new planet.)

The reason Beyond Earth was a semi flop is because they did not give it a solid narrative. So the factions had no soul. Real historical empires are like memes; we can intuit ideas about them almost instantly. People massively underestimate how important that free background material is to the narratives you make in your head when playing a civ game. Most people can't name the beyond earth factions at this point. The empires slapped together for Civ4 BTS's NextWar scenario have as much flavor as Brasilia and INTEGR and the Slavic Federation. (I'm serious: "America Inc," the "Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative" - they did the same thing.) They even said the writers wrote reams of fiction for the game, but it was all held back to maximize the player 'freedom' in coming up with our own stories. Wrong wrong wrong. You gotta lead the sheep to pasture sometimes.

I just don't see BE2 before civ7 given what has to happen in terms of building a functional next generation game.

 

[blackbutterfly]

BE made financial sense for them because they recycled the entire Civ5 game infrastructure. Seriously, you could port assets directly from BE to Civ5...
If you're investing all this time and money on a new engine for civ7, which is the main event that draws in the big bucks, I'm not sure that kicking BE2 out the door first (a much riskier product) makes sense.

Actually it's pretty easy (and a relatively cheap investment) to hire a bunch of artists to produce graphics and animations for leaders and units for BE2 based on Civ VI game engine.
Then charge an arm and a leg!

The reason Beyond Earth was a semi flop is because they did not give it a solid narrative. So the factions had no soul.

Absolutely right!
Spot on.

BE's "The Great Mistake" was this vague, B/S narrative. Whereas global warming and climate change is unfolding before our eyes with heatwaves and wild fires. (I woke up cos I couldn't sleep it was so hot!)
This is the perfect narrative to start over in another planet.

Especially as there is the Climate System in Civ VI and at least in Apocalypse Mode the Earth is destroyed by it.

 

[UWHabs]

The slightly ironic part of this chatter is that if they wanted to do a BE2, they could potentially already have factions ready to go by re-using the Red Death factions. It wouldn't take too long to write a story of a Red Death game where instead of the fallout consuming all the factions, they race to a supply ship that's heading off-planet, and then you can even essentially merge in the Alpha Centauri story which if I recall was splintering of a mission on the way to the planet. I mean, I don't play Red Death so I don't actually know the factions in there, but sharing lore between the games would be even better cross-promotion. Plus, a lot of the NFP items could easily be adapted to a scifi setting - apocalypse mode becomes a lot less jarring when you have it on an alien planet. And secret societies make more sense when you start them in a modern or future setting rather than having steampunk vibes in 3000 BC.

Whether it happens is really a question if they feel they can allocate the resources to building out the rest of that lore and features, and allocate the art teams to that work, to pay off, knowing that it will likely delay civ 7 by a certain amount of time. I'd probably lean towards the idea mentioned by @Zegangani that NFP is kind of like that "weird extra release between games". I'd disagree since I think that NFP added to the game for me. The only parts I could argue about could be, for example, if they were designing a Zombie spinoff game, maybe as they were putting out NFP, they decided they could bake that into NFP without a lot of trouble, and so that's why we got a mess of scifi/fantasy half-baked additions in NFP. But yeah, given that they aren't necessarily fully fledged out, if they were stealing from work in progress, they could probably have done a lot more with some of the modes.

Or, alternately, they created those modes as a test best to figure out whether people liked Apocalypse vs Secret Societies vs Zombies vs Heroes most. If they discover that everyone loves playing Zombie mode, maybe they decide to spin that off into a Zombie game later on with a deeper history. But even in idle speculation threads, that's a real reach.

 

[uhu]

You know Intel used to have a "Tik Tok" development methodology. Firaxis could be doing something similar.

Sure, they could. But in respect to Twitter tweets I'd strongly prefer they use Tiqui-taca style, which was made famous by Luis Aragonés and Vicente del Bosque ...

 

[blackbutterfly]

The slightly ironic part of this chatter is that if they wanted to do a BE2, they could potentially already have factions ready to go by re-using the Red Death factions. It wouldn't take too long to write a story of a Red Death game where instead of the fallout consuming all the factions, they race to a supply ship that's heading off-planet...

Some of the Red Death factions could certainly form a basis for BE2. E.g the Cultists, the Mutants, the Aliens, the Pirates (there's always gonna be pirates even in space).

Firaxis should get the guy who designed Red Death to do the sponsors for BE2. Bradley Olson.

Actually if I recall the victor get airlifted off planet. So that could also be an entry point into BE.

 

[shaglio]

Some of the Red Death factions could certainly form a basis for BE2. E.g the Cultists, the Mutants, the Aliens, the Pirates (there's always gonna be pirates even in space).

In space, I believe they're referred to as Vampirates

 

[Cuneiform]

Why do you say that?

Sales of Civ VI Anthology through to old games like Civ III will have contributed to revenue. Along with Xcom franchise.

Thats why I used the word 'Effectively'.

Heavily discounted sales of 5+ year old games is not enough to sustain a studio the size of Firaxis. Any small tempory cash boost they received would have been burned through by the end of last year.

Fortunately they have a sympathetic parent company that for the time being is prepared to be patient.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It's an interesting conundrum now that MMS has been delayed again. Ideally, they'd want whatever transferrable resources going to the completion of that title. But perhaps they'd also like to get something out in the meanwhile for the revenue. Civ VII is going to have to wait because it needs a lot of resources, and they don't want it to compete with MMS for marketing bandwidth. A low-key spin-off game would be just the ticket. It wouldn't require a great deal of resources or time compared to a whole new game, it would make some money, and it could be advertised on the cheap through social media. I think it's plausible that they could be trying to get a BE sequel going. It's not a certainty though.

 

[bbbt]

The reason Beyond Earth was a semi flop is because they did not give it a solid narrative. So the factions had no soul. Real historical empires are like memes; we can intuit ideas about them almost instantly. People massively underestimate how important that free background material is to the narratives you make in your head when playing a civ game. Most people can't name the beyond earth factions at this point.

Maybe I'm biased as I prefer fantasy to scifi genre-wise, but I'm not sure why Firaxis hasn't done a fantasy-based 4x spin off of Civ. I feel like there's a ton more scifi/space-based 4x games already, and fantasy has less. But additionally, fantasy has a bunch more out of the box "tropes" they can use - tolkein esque elves vs orcs vs humans vs dwarves etc, or straight up mythology based - that have "built in" flavor (like the historical flavor of Civ) while scifi generally requires much more world building, which as you noted, Firaxis doesn't seem to do very well.

Having said that, a quick "fantasy reskin" of Civ might be too obviously close to the original (look, it's wizards with lighting bolts instead of apostles) to charge $60 for, so the scifi-esque reskins might be easier for them to do with less development resources. I'd love for them to get a lot more creative with it.

I think if they attempt a BE2 - or another scifi reskin of Civ - they might be better off just straight up licensing a franchise for it (Star Trek? Dune?) or something along those lines.

 

[blackbutterfly]

I think if they attempt a BE2 - or another scifi reskin of Civ - they might be better off just straight up licensing a franchise for it (Star Trek? Dune?) or something along those lines.

Actually this is a good point!

Now that Firaxis have partnered with Marvel/Disney on Midnight Suns (which they hope will be Firaxis' tentpole game) perhaps they might be willing to partner with others.

Star Trek is less of a match as it's very interplanetary.
Dune: Spice Wars has that market covered.

Star Wars on the other hand is also Disney so 2K+Firaxis have the foot in the door there. Play as Ewoks, Gungans or Wookies

Having said that making BE2 first and then pitching it to Lucasfilm/Disney might be the way to go. I expect like Midnight Suns vs. XCOM, it might well turn out to be a very different game.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Maybe I'm biased as I prefer fantasy to scifi genre-wise, but I'm not sure why Firaxis hasn't done a fantasy-based 4x spin off of Civ. I feel like there's a ton more scifi/space-based 4x games already, and fantasy has less. But additionally, fantasy has a bunch more out of the box "tropes" they can use - tolkein esque elves vs orcs vs humans vs dwarves etc, or straight up mythology based - that have "built in" flavor (like the historical flavor of Civ) while scifi generally requires much more world building, which as you noted, Firaxis doesn't seem to do very well.

Having said that, a quick "fantasy reskin" of Civ might be too obviously close to the original (look, it's wizards with lighting bolts instead of apostles) to charge $60 for, so the scifi-esque reskins might be easier for them to do with less development resources. I'd love for them to get a lot more creative with it.

I think if they attempt a BE2 - or another scifi reskin of Civ - they might be better off just straight up licensing a franchise for it (Star Trek? Dune?) or something along those lines.

Maybe because Amplitude already has that with Endless Legend, released the same year as BE. They didn't want to have a directly comparable game.

 

[KayAU]

@bbbt

Fantasy 4x is certainly something I would love to see more of, and it's been a while since we had any notable ones, I think. There was Endless Legend, which I could never quite get into, way back in 2014. Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes came in 2013, and I really liked it. Then you have the Fall from Heaven total conversion for Civ 4, which was fantastic, but feels quite old these days.

 

[CoconutTank]

Given that with NFP introduced some weird ahistorical stuff, if the devs wanted to continue making more content along that rail, then a BE2 would be a better setting to let them be less constrained by historical accuracy. That's basically my stance ever since Secret Societies were introduced.

 

[Patine]

Although I know it's not going to happen, an Alpha Centauri 2 would be FAR preferable and more interesting and engaging than a Beyond Earth 2.

 

[Jkchart]

I think I would be more happy with a Beyond Earth 2 announcement than a Civ 7 one at this point. I realise I am probably in the minority about that, but BE had so much potential, and I am really curious as to where they would take it with a sequel.

Would absolutely love BE2. The idea has so much potential, clearly they wanted to expand on it more (after all they did the Spaceships thing). BERT is incredibly underappreciated and I go back to it more than Civ V personally.

EDIT: Plus I'd like a bit more time to enjoy Civ VI anyway. It's only been recently "complete" for a year-ish and it was a lot of money dropped for the game and all its content, so to have Civ VII already would make me feel sour and like a cashgrab tbh...

 

[jozef57]

It feels like Beyond Earth 2 could be in the making or announced soon considering tweets like this:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1554180168998068229

I feel like that if Civ 7 was coming soon it would've been announced already but on the other hand Beyond Earth could still be announced and released by early 2023.
Could what feels like waiting extra long wait for civ 7 be due to the fact that they are focusing on Beyond Earth 2?

i would love a BE2