Polygon video report on BE unveiling

[Buster's Uncle]

Civilization: Beyond Earth - Reveal

I really need to make a "Video" thread icon...

[BlaneckW]

philosophical gibberish

[Buster's Uncle]

Blaneck, I appreciate your contributing to the conversation here; you're SO positive.  (The first part of the sentence wasn't sarcasm. )

[BlaneckW]

I'm always glad to state it like it is.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; I wish I could stay around and chat longer, but 2am here.  Bed has given up on me and is in the next room weeping - I gotta go.

[BlaneckW]

It's a forum.  You can respond to my message in ten years.

[Geo]

... you're SO positive.

 

[BlaneckW]

I think they're actually trying to do a word-for-word replay of the interview with Brian Reynolds on his development of Alpha Centauri.

But it was interesting in retrospect, not as a replacement for gameplay, which is what the trailer should be about.

[Buster's Uncle]

They're trying to have their cake and eat it, too.  -It's what I would do in trying to sell a 'sequel' I couldn't call a sequel - especially with it being no more than a reimagining.

[BlaneckW]

George Lucas tried to give the Star Wars prequels a phoney "poetic" mirroring of the originals because the former couldn't stand on their own.

The latest Star Trek movie tried to do it's own thing... and people liked it.  Even I didn't bash it.

But I'm afraid it's not a good sign when a trailer for a game doesn't talk about the game.  Not a good sign for them, anyway.  I couldn't care less, except for it being too bad that they couldn't make more than Civ 5 with gleaming robots... and a more complex colonization scheme, I guess.

[Buster's Uncle]

George and the prequels and his aesthetic blunders thereof is too potent a bit of OT to get into here.

What parallel are you drawing?  With the 'reimagining'?

[BlaneckW]

What parallel are you drawing?  With the 'reimagining'?

I think it's a commercial, nothing else.  The Star Wars prequels were a commercial from beginning to end: there wasn't a movie there, it was all a hollow plot with big drawing of parallels coupled with an attempt to build rapport with children, all of which ultimately didn't jive with with the originals

Of course, we know that BE will be closer to Civ 5 than AC.  The AC parallels are superficial, rather like the plot of the Star Wars prequels.  The plot of the Star Wars prequels was a covering (for nothing) much like all of BE's sci-finess is a covering for it's Civ 5ness.

[Buster's Uncle]

I have a theory about the central creative error of the prequels, but it doesn't bear on BE, I think.  I'll chat the heck out've it if someone starts a Rec Commons thread.  Uno will too, if I know Uno - and I do.

Commercials as in the promotion Firaxis/2K are doing?  [shrugs]  They're trying to sell something; that's almost never total honesty time.  Nature of the beast.

[BlaneckW]

There's nothing honest about it, they're advertising Alpha Centauri.  They don't have Alpha Centauri, they have Civ 5 with a "more complex colonization scheme" and today's modern game theory which is reminiscent of today's Spore and Will Wright's old theory that says that games should be finger painting more than anything else.  It's that more than anything else which turned the old Sim City into Sim City Societies.

Absolutely, turning the faction function into a "sandbox" would be an interesting addition to AC.  They're trying to establish the entire game as a sandbox without any kind of background meaning.  "We aren't trying to establish what the future would be."  The affinities don't have meaning!  They're a sandbox!  They don't reflect on the meaning of "Harmony", "Supremacy", "Purity"!  They're a sandbox!

[Buster's Uncle]

I suspect it's the exact same game they'd have made if the had the rights to AC, alas.  It's Civ in space - only in the style they like these days.  That's close enough for ethical wiggle room, arguably.