Firaxis announces Civilization: Beyond Earth

Just heard the announcement on RPS. Happy happy, the spiritual successor of Alpha Centauri by the man who did Alpha Centauri.

But what about Galactic Civilizations III and when are we going to get @alex's coverage of it?

This is fantastic news, and I finally have a reason to upgrade my computer.

Holy shitsnacks! This is great!

And that trailer says fall 2014? That can't be release can it?

@blomakrans: Don't question it or they might take it back!

SPAAAAAAAAACE!

Yup, apparently it's coming out this year. The Polygon article hints at some pretty interesting concepts, like being able to choose how much you lean on technology vs. try to stay as "human" as possible.

@blomakrans: they are saying fall of this year. It's very much the civ 5 engine reworked. Also a spiritual sequel to Alpha Centauri

I also want to point out that it's great to see that this is NOT a kickstarter. Not that there is anything wrong with Kickstarter, just that having a real budget behind this, combined with a great team like Firaxis, means that it's not going to be scaled down. I really hope to hear some datalinks quotes and ominous secret project videos!

Also, it's THIS YEAR (barring delays). I love when games announce on the same year they release so I don't have to wait forever. Oh god, I'm happy.

So it's Civ in space. So it's Alpha Centauri. So it's going to end my social life.

USA in space mothafuckas! Manifest Destiny across the stars!!!!!

Awesome! I loved Alpha Centauri!

Sid Meier's "Totally not a sequel to Alpha Centauri" sounds like a great idea. I'd play that.

Civ in space, eh. Color me excited... really really excited!

Sounds like a great idea and perhaps also the natural progression from Civ 5.

Sounds great!

"Nah it's cool EA, it's Civ game. Totally not Alpha Centauri".

Glad they have decided to put the announce fairly close to the release. Hyped to see more of what this game is going to be.

Philosophical question for you all: is Space Napoleon less of an asshole than Earth Napoleon?

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

YES.

Somebody shut down my hype train before it goes off the rails.

I wish they could find a way to bring something like this to consoles.

Oh, fuck me. I'm excited about video games again.

Yes! 2014 is less terrible now! It might not even be terrible at all anymore!

One of the lead designers cited Civ:Rev as his favorite of the games, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.

My dream game would have been for a normal Civ game to lead directly into this once you launched Alpha Centauri, but I'll live with this for now.

Dude, fucking yeah! Fucking yeah!

Oh please god don't turn it into a F2P iOS app.

That's great. I've been waiting years for a new Alpha Centauri, official sequel or not.

I am ready

@wolf_blitzer85: EA can ruin Alpha Centauri, but Firaxis are not part of EA. They actually give a fuck about their classic IP and won't squander them on some pay to win bullshit.

That is perhaps a little alarmist. Firaxis has a great rep, though I suppose they do gate new features behind DLC, but those are expansion pack sized updates, not F2P microtransations and the vanilla game is usually plenty anyhow (i.e. Civ 5, X-Com).

Finally, the second part of the epic Too Human trilogy gets a release date! Weird about the name change, though.

is having two threads of everything the norm nowadays?

This thread was first. also, there are three threads on this.

The greatness of this announcement is to big to be confined to one thread.

Sign me up, ready for a new civ type game and I never played alpha centari so this will be a new experience for me.

I'm going to be that super-nerd who enjoys this game by always playing through Civilization V and winning with a science victory as a prelude to starting a Beyond Earth campaign.

My hat is off to you. I'm planning on doing that once before the game comes out.

Sounds fucking awesome! Love that cover art too, so I hope they keep it.

@chrissedoff: If you lose to another civ during that game, will you restart? Or just "one more turn..." until you build the rocket?

@chrissedoff said:

Same here. Maybe not every time, but i feel required to do this at least once.

Their description of the three technology paths sounds the best to me, though it also sounds as if they're not preserving nations or broad historical generalizations of cultures' comparative advantages. That's a bit sad, to me.