Civilization: Beyond Earth Eyes-On Preview

We took a few minutes out of our schedule this year at E3 to sit down and watch a few reps from Firaxis play and discuss a bit of the upcoming Civilization: Beyond Earth.

This entry in the Civ series, as the name suggests, takes the empire building struggles into space and on other planets. As the Earth dies, humanity takes to the stars to find a new home. Depending on the faction you choose to build up, you’ll either aim to be harmonious with the world, adapt to the world, become like the world or remain independent of the world.

That survival methodology dictates your play, your diplomacy and even your look. The Supremacists, which is what we saw played, try to keep humanity independent of its new world. Rather than become one with the space, Supremacists aim to learn from their lessons and create a home on these new planets that can be moved.

What if the world goes wrong again, right?

In the brief demo, we also saw the exploitation of a new element. Firaxite is this gold-ish mineral that seems to float to the surface of this new planet. You want to harvest it, bring it into your brand new skill web and use it to advance your civilization. That means it’s a resource that factions compete over, and we saw the Supremacists declare war on a group holding Firaxite, kill them and resettle the territory.

It’s Civ in space, folks. There is alien wildlife, genetic research, ways to turn alien finds into friends and a whole lot more that takes the game we know and gives it a sci-fi spin. Which, hey, is why it looks like this will work.

In the 15 minutes I saw played, I was convinced that Civ in space is where I want to go. It’s the next logical evolution for the series, and it seems like it’s one that Firaxis is more than capable of knocking out of the park.

Civilization: Beyond Earth is set to release this fall. We’ll have more on the game as it comes.

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