Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth Announced At PAX East

Firaxis Games (XCOM: Enemy Unknown) recently announced their latest title, Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth at a recent panel at PAX East.

Civilization: Beyond Earth has essentially been called a “spiritual succesor” to Alpha Centauri, a critically acclaimed strategy game released in 1999.

Not a whole lot of details are official, but according to VG247, NeoGAF was able to grab some bullet points that leaked early from a French gaming site but were pulled very quickly:

• Players will go beyond earth as with Alpha Centauri.
• The game starts on an alien world.
• Lush, Airy and Fungal are the three world types.
• Cities built can be expanded to other planets which will include outposts.
• The player can be the first human to explore a new planet and they may encounter neutral creatures and races.
• Relics are in the game.
• Diplomacy can be used with other players from the beginning of the game.
• Fog of War is still present.
• Orbital units can be commanded like satellites.

As of right now, Sid Meier’s Civilzation: Beyond Earth is coming out in the Fall of this year, but is only announced for PC. While it’s hard to imagine it not coming to consoles at some point, historically games like the Civilization series don’t get a whole lot of love on consoles. For whatever reason, the console gamers at large just don’t get into it and admittedly often games in this genre are very much optimized for a keyboard and mouse to the point where they just don’t transfer to a controller very well.

The only game in this style I remember working well on consoles was Dragon Force and that was a great game but incredibly simplified compared to virtually anything you’d find on PC in the same basic genre. Check out the trailer below and be sure to leave your thoughts in comments, GameSided readers!