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![]() Usually referred to simply as 'Planet', the world of Chiron also serves as a sort of NPC faction. But there's still one thing no other 4X has been able to match: Chiron. You could probably get a decent Alpha Centauri if you took the speculative fiction and exclusively human factions of Beyond Earth and combined them with the narrative focus and faction design of Endless Legend. It's not magic, and we've got the ingredients it's just been a while since they've been mixed together. Maybe it's something we can only ever have one of-a singular thing that defies replication-but probably not. The occasional cinematics and spot-on voice acting makes such a huge difference, elevating the already sharp writing. And Alpha Centauri is absolutely full of stuff like this, littering nuggets of lore, comical asides and short stories throughout the campaign. Even 500 would be pretty nice." With just a line in an ad, Morgan gives us a pretty clear idea of who he is. "I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that, I'll take a couple thousand years. Nor will I ever be able to forget the advert for the Longevity Vaccine, which gives us a brief glimpse of what the Morganites watch on TV. I can, however, instantly bring up the face of Alpha Centauri's Academician Prokhor Zakharov, with his long, messy hair and stylish cybernetic augmentations. The factions and broad strokes of their unique stories are clear in my mind, but not much else. I'm drawing a blank, however, now that I'm trying to remember a character-aside from Horatio, a guy who thinks he's so swell that he creates a civilisation of clones-or specific piece of writing from the series. Amplitude experimented with narratives both scripted and emergent, and built factions where the attraction was the roleplaying possibilities, not just the stats. Endless Legend and Endless Space 2's personality seeps out of every quest pop-up and lavish piece of art, and its factions are just as defined by their ideologies and malleable political views as they are by their species. Sometimes we can catch a glimpse of Alpha Centauri in Amplitude's Endless series, with its exceptional faction design and love of a good yarn. We've had to look to other studios and games to pick up the torch. I couldn't tell you a single identifiable feature of a faction right after I'd finished playing it-let alone years later-and I'd almost rather it hadn't bothered exploring ideologies at all, given that all nuance was tossed out of the airlock.Įven when you've got injections that make you immortal and psychic warfare, Alpha Centauri is grounded by ambitions and drives that are exceedingly familiar. It sort of half-heartedly does away with nations and lets you pick a broad ideological affinity, but it trips up by making all of this incredibly dull. Instead of making Alpha Centauri 2, Firaxis gave us Civ in space. ![]() Civilization is never going to satisfy anyone looking for that Alpha Centauri high, which became even more evident when Civilization: Beyond Earth appeared.
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