![]() ![]() In interludes, a mysterious voice is communicating with the player. No matter the side that one chooses, he/she is beset by fungus. ![]() That conquering is not only the conquering of human civilization but also of the Xenofungus. Playing SMAC becomes the story of settling and conquering an alien world. Reynolds had initially wanted these to be cutscenes, but money wasn’t there. There are also interludes where a bit of text narrative is presented that adds tons of “feel” to the game. This definitely gives me a bit of a Soylent Green vibe. "It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks, and become one with all the people." The most memorable voice over for me when completing a base facility is the one from the recycling tanks: This voice acting is heard upon completion of a Secret Project or when completing a base facility. The game features quite a bit of voice acting to provide depth to the world. Diplomacy is upgraded over the game’s predecessor, and the map editor is likewise better. The player has the ability to customize units (to a point), terraform the landscape, and install governors at bases. On the improvements front, there are new mechanics. Yet, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC) has a fanbase that is more vocal than most other games in the Civilization series, and this due to two things: improvements over the first two entries, and the story. Cities are called bases, city buildings are called facilities, wonders are called secret projects, barbarians are mind worms, but the overall gameplay remains explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. This is still a Civilization title, but things have new names. They then descend to their “new” planet, Chiron, and they start repeating the mistakes of the Earth they left behind, battling for supremacy of the new world. In a bit of rather dark commentary on the nature of mankind, the captain of the starship Unity is assassinated, the ship damaged, and the people on-board split into seven different ideological factions. In Civilization II (and other Civilization titles), there is a victory condition in which a player sends a manned flight to Alpha Centauri. Once they had something that was working well, they started “surrounding the fun.” This means that they leaned into those parts of the game that were fun, and they removed all of the parts that weren’t fun. At Firaxis, and at MicroProse before it, development of any new game started with a rapid iteration of many playable prototypes that enabled the development team to test ideas. The first year of development was largely a year of prototypes due to work on Gettysburg! taking the majority of the developers’ time. Development of a sequel to Civilization II started in July of 1996 with Brian Reynolds leading development just as he had on the most recent Civilization title. Ultimately, they chose to publish their games with Electronic Arts under the Origin Systems label. From the start of their new venture, they knew they’d do just game design and development leaving distribution and marketing to outside contractors. Firaxis Games was founded on the 1st of May of 1996 by Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs, and Brian Reynolds after they finished up their work on Civilization II and left MicroProse. ![]()
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