Xbox had a huge booth at Gamescom, and the upcoming strategy game Ara: History Untold was also showcased there. Unfortunately there was no practical demo, but one of the developers played it live in front of the audience. I was lucky enough to get to it only at the very end of the day, which increased it from the usual 30 minutes to about 45 minutes, so I was able to see a pretty solid portion of what the game had to offer.
The studio behind the title is Oxide Games, which is responsible for the real-time strategy game Ashes of the Singularity. However, there are a lot of Firaxis veterans involved in Civilization V, so they decided that the next project would be a game in the same vein. At first glance, it becomes clear that the core of Civilization has remained the same: a randomly generated map with tiles, gathering raw materials, building, researching, and many other aspects. However, it’s not that Ara just copies them, because you will find a lot of new things in it.
Once you’ve chosen one of the nations and created a map, you’ll be taken straight to the game, which (unlike Civilization) starts as soon as you have a city. Of course, your task will be to expand and build different buildings or areas. There are plenty of resources on the map that can help if you get to them first. At the same time, you may encounter unknown raw materials, the essence of which you have yet to discover with the help of researchers. Only you have the information about it, with which you can use different tactics.
By the way, raw materials are used not only for collecting, but some items can be made from it, such as weapons. You do not have to create an army and constantly maintain it. If you have enough weapons, you will only be able to build an army when needed. This will save you a lot of money and can confuse your opponent to some extent. Unfortunately, we did not know about the battles themselves, but they will probably be described in sufficient detail, because for each squad you can create your own formation from different types of soldiers.
The research here is somewhat different. Unlike the classic tech tree, Ara has a deck of cards. When you finish researching one technology, several others from that era are discarded from the deck, leaving you to choose only one. When you reach the end, you can move on to the next era or return to technologies that have remained unexplored. Once you move on, you won’t be able to return to them. While I really like tech trees, I find this mechanic very interesting. In addition, external factors may also influence research. During your exploration, you may come across various neutral cities that will give you quests to gain their favor (and thus potentially gain control of the city). One of them may be the research of a certain technology.
Gradually, of course, you will also come across full-fledged opponents controlled by artificial intelligence (although multiplayer will also be available). It’s up to you how you approach them: you can trade and befriend them or fight them. Interestingly, the personality of your nation’s leader also plays a role here. If they share a quality with someone you just met, your relationship will automatically move to a higher level.
Another feature worth mentioning is the moves themselves. If in most of these strategies each player has his own turn, then here you only plan what will happen during it, and the actions of all players are performed simultaneously. However, it’s still hard to say how much this will change the whole experience, because during the demo we didn’t quite get into a situation where it could play a role.
As for the gameplay, I left the presentation in awe: the game offers really complex mechanics and looks like fun. Only the graphics and user interface, in my opinion, do not have the quality that I imagined. Macaw looks, at least in my opinion, a little inaccessible and unnecessarily complicated, although she is relatively easy to understand. Personally, I’m still looking forward to it and can’t wait to see the full version next year.
Source :Indian TV
