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Paradox’s Space Strategy Game Stellaris Has Won Gamescom
If Paradox can deliver even half of what they're promising here, this game sounds like it will be absolutely insane. :shock:
Either way, I've got to give them credit for actually trying to be original here. The Master of Orion 2 model everyone's been trying to recreate for the last twenty years is fun and all, but it's high time that we left 1996 back in 1996. The genre can be much more than it is.
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The finest summary of Stellaris’ aims came mid-way through the half hour presentation and discussion in which Fåhraeus and Johansson unveiled the game. “We’re not creating one specific universe. It can be any sci-fi universe.” Johannson was referring to the way in which the procedural galaxies are more than a collection of planets and stars. By the late game you might find that one of your science ships has become the Event Horizon, ripping a hole in reality to a dimension of horrors. Before you know it, you’re scrabbling to militarise in order to survive a fight against invaders from beyond and you’ve accidentally fallen into Warhammer 40K.
Or maybe you train the world’s greatest scientist-adventurers, create the most advanced ships in the universe, and set up silent listening posts on the moons orbiting planets that are home to pre-spacefaring species. You can learn from them, guide them and eventually become their patrons. You are a Banksian Culture.
Perhaps you’ll direct your energies toward the founding of a galactic federation and create an alliance of species working together toward a greater good. You can even identify named characters within that galaxy and find your Kirk and Spock. That same federation might become something else entirely if its utopian vision involves the use of robotic workers, allowing the sentient population to live in luxury, philosophising and creating art rather toiling in factories and fields. Eventually, the push for greater and greater AI makes a Cylonesque uprising a distinct possibility.
The important word is ‘possibility’. In Stellaris, many things are possible but few things are hardcoded into the story of a new galaxy. Your actions and reactions to the mysteries and wonders that you encounter will help to determine the fate of your species and the others that you share the galaxy with, and even as you work toward your own goals, one of the other interstellar empires is likely to be meddling with technologies that threaten the balance of power and the equilibrium of reality.
It’s not only the large, game-changing events that can happen that set a new galaxy apart. They can contain up to a thousand systems but it’s what exists on those planets and between those stars that makes each playthrough unique. Every alien species that you encounter will be unique to your game, concoted from a long list of physical traits and social behaviours. You might discover a civilisation of aggressive, xenophobic moluscoids or an isolationist avian race who breed quickly and travel through the warp, spreading rapidly and unpredictably from planet to planet.
-snip
If Paradox can deliver even half of what they're promising here, this game sounds like it will be absolutely insane. :shock:
Either way, I've got to give them credit for actually trying to be original here. The Master of Orion 2 model everyone's been trying to recreate for the last twenty years is fun and all, but it's high time that we left 1996 back in 1996. The genre can be much more than it is.
