What is "The Great Mistake"?

[otaman1]

I think the Greatest Mistake is determined by the player itself. If the player decides to blow Earth up, sobeit.

 

[Krajzen]

I think the Greatest Mistake is determined by the player itself. If the player decides to blow Earth up, sobeit.

The Great Mistake = the apocalypse which caused humanity to go Beyond Earth prior before the events of game

Also:

Mining the moon resulting in it's destruction, which made a mess of earth


WHAT?

Even if we accept the absurdity of exploding moon, explosion of the moon would result not in mess of Earth but in total apocalypse which would made even launching rockets impossible

(I mean mainly, you know, thousands of immensely giant rocks shot in random directions including Earth)

(I assume EXPLOSION because I cannot imagine any other 'destruction' of moon which would have sudden and dramatic consequences )

 

[cpm4001]

I would say The Great Mistake was a little bit of everything - runaway global warming (hence the flooded Pyramids), overcrowding of cities (look at New York in the trailer), pollution (Rio and Paris), and almost just a general decline.

 

[Lyoncet]

If they're modeling it off Simmons like they hinted, it wouldn't be a long, over-time buildup (environmental degradation) or something as blunt as a war. It would more likely be an 1) acute event 2) resulting from technological hubris. (Trying not to give much away from Hyperion.)

Then again, I may be reading too much into the parallel. It's completely possible they just lifted the idea of the mistake and not any of the characteristics. Plus, I like the idea of it being either player choice or going entirely unmentioned, maybe with little hints dropped along the way. Letting/making the player's imagination run wild with it seems more powerful than any event they could script.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

If they're modeling it off Simmons like they hinted, it wouldn't be a long, over-time buildup (environmental degradation) or something as blunt as a war. It would more likely be an 1) acute event 2) resulting from technological hubris. (Trying not to give much away from Hyperion.)

Then again, I may be reading too much into the parallel. It's completely possible they just lifted the idea of the mistake and not any of the characteristics. Plus, I like the idea of it being either player choice or going entirely unmentioned, maybe with little hints dropped along the way. Letting/making the player's imagination run wild with it seems more powerful than any event they could script.

Yeah, I'm with everyone else that says it'll be better if we don't know. Alien was a great movie partly because you never did see the monster (until the end).

 

[GeoModder]

Genetic manipulation of the world's staple crops gone awry, resulting in a partial collapse of the biosphere.

 

[Lieu]

The increasing costs of climate change with lengthy and demoralising economic stagnation, bitter feelings develop, suspicion grows, and we'd rather blame others. Nations become more selfish, political instability abound, and the same old problem areas on our globe are barely any better after 50 years. Confidence in global cooperation falls apart and with it the chance to solve our problems. The greatest setback to human progress in modern history. We needed a kickstart to overcome our own crippling attitudes.



I hope that was plausible(or do I?!), yet severe enough.

 

[Callonia]

The great mistake = we have too many cows farting methane into the atmosphere and our refusal to have less cows because of delicious hamburgers so we decided to drown in rising seas with our beloved cows.

That's my guess.

 

[Traejun]

The "Great Mistake" is what we're doing now, fast-forwarded 50 years or so. We've destroyed and overpopulated our planet. Now we need to leave.

 

[Lyoncet]

Actually, it looks like this was directly addressed in the Polygon piece:

THE GREAT MISTAKE
From its very first incarnations, the Civilization series has always been grounded in human history. Since 1991, it's tasked players with building empires that would survive and thrive the test of time. Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth focuses not on the past, but on the future. And it needed a reason to be different, a narrative justification to take the franchise where no Civilization game has gone before.

Firaxis calls it The Great Mistake.

"The state of Earth a couple hundred years from now becomes rather dire," lead designer Anton Strenger told Polygon. "There's a series of events which we call The Great Mistake."

In the science fiction that forms the foundation of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, our home planet is no longer what it used to be. Humanity's future among the stars flows from those events, but Firaxis is making a choice. It knows what happens — everybody there knows what happens, so they can work from a common foundation — but Firaxis isn't going to tell players everything.

"Internally, we've written out exactly what those events are, but for the player, we're leaving it vague and allowing their imagination to fill the gaps," he said.

Source

So a series of specific events, but largely written out of the story. I can get behind that.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Yeah, it helps US create the storylien (US as in us not as in USA xD)

But I think the "idea" behing the Mistake is Global Warming... flooded Pyramids, foggy Rio de Janeiro etc.

 

[Civking5]

Here I voted for genetic maniupulation of a virus as " the great mistake". Obviously too much under influence of walking dead series.

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[janboruta]

I also like the obscurity of those events that form the Great Mistake. But I also have a vague feeling (and hope, of sorts), that those events will be hinted by what cargo the player will be able to equip the colony ship with, when setting up the game. Or even when the player decides to go back to Earth to rescue the remaining population.

 

[TPangolin]

I'm guessing Australia made a bunch of genetically engineered giant battle wombats that somehow escaped into Central Asia and proceeded to eat half the population in rural areas for sustenance.

I'd actually rather them be vague and have them randomized in every game. Each time you zoom off, you find out what happened to Earth halfway through the game, this could in turn influence player's decisions and change how you play the game with the knowledge of what happened back on Earth.

 

[Sonereal]

If I could vote multiple times, I would pick the first two options, and the second to last, as potential mistakes.

I don't think they'll actually tell us though exactly what happened. They'll just show us the results, such as what we got in the trailer.

 

[Lheim]

One of Spider Robinson's books had time travelers coming back to 21st century earth to give us a few gifts to get us through the rough years ahead.

They didn't go into great detail about the catastrophes that had doomed humanity in their timeline, but one of the details they did give was both a funny and horrifying thought.

Nanotechnology with software errors.

Imagine bluescreening nanobots turning half the planet into grey paste.

 

[Antilogic]

I hope they don't say.

I'm in agreement. I thought this was really compelling in the old SMAC game--the first few times I played, I figured if I got enough technology or if I put some satellites into orbit I might be able to contact Earth. Never knowing what happened builds the suspense.



Also, that story is going to leak. We are going to know what they think will happen.

 

[KevinLancaster]

One of Spider Robinson's books had time travelers coming back to 21st century earth to give us a few gifts to get us through the rough years ahead.

They didn't go into great detail about the catastrophes that had doomed humanity in their timeline, but one of the details they did give was both a funny and horrifying thought.

Nanotechnology with software errors.

Imagine bluescreening nanobots turning half the planet into grey paste.

If it was nanobots how did we not all die? Did we build nanobots to kill nanobots?

Apparently we can't actually have grey goo because they would generate too much heat, but I read that on the internet somewhere so take of that what you will.

The SMAC solution according to the that one wonder movie was that they didn't do anything unless you slid in a programming transponder, which makes sense, but it makes me wonder why they couldn't have put in more dramatic technology turns against man scenarios in the game. What's stopping a scientist at the University from building a nanorobot which has its own power source and programming which is to build more of itself?

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I believe that the Great Mistake was giving Gandhi nukes, constructing the Internet wonder, and clearly building the Pyramids in a coastal city in CivBE Earth so that they would end up in the water.

Not sure that they thought so hard to adjust the night sky shot of the Earth though.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

If it was nanobots how did we not all die? Did we build nanobots to kill nanobots?

Apparently we can't actually have grey goo because they would generate too much heat, but I read that on the internet somewhere so take of that what you will.

The SMAC solution according to the that one wonder move was that they didn't do anything unless you slid in a programming transponder, which makes sense, but it makes me wonder why they couldn't have put in more dramatic technology turns against man scenarios in the game. What's stopping a scientist at the University from building a nanorobot which has its own power source and programming which is to build more of itself?

-----

I believe that the Great Mistake was giving Gandhi nukes, constructing the Internet wonder, and clearly building the Pyramids in a coastal city in CivBE Earth so that they would end up in the water.

Not sure that they thought so hard to adjust the night sky shot of the Earth though.

Well the nanobots were poorly designed... they caused a lot of problems, but they died out, now there is a buch of dead grey goo everywhere.

 

[s0nny80y]

Neil Armstrong has yet to be resurrected by modern medicine for mass media observers despite having been the first to shrink our planet from another heavenly planetary object.