2K Games Announce Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth

April 13, 2014

With PAX East 2014 concluding, there was one major “AAA” game announcement from 2K Games, and that was the latest effort by Civilization & XCOM developers Firaxis Games. The new game? A Civilization spin off titled “Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth“.

The game was announced at a panel held by Firaxis, and revealed quite a bit of detail on the game. While you may already be thinking of it being a spiritual successor to 1999′s Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, and you’d be correct in doing so, there’s quite a few differences here. For starters, the game has a much deeper “seeding” system than in prior Firaxis 4X games – you choose specific planets to land on, as well as what spacecraft and cargo you bring with you – all of which make a difference as to how you’ll start off settling a new planet.

Not to mention there’s also a brand new quest system which aims to develop the lore of the worlds you’re inhabiting, as well as allow the player to deploy various types of satellites to take advantage of various situations in orbit. Finally, Firaxis have confirmed that they’ll be taking advantage of some major new graphics technologies (specifically AMD’s Mantle tech) to ensure the game looks awesome.

Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth is scheduled to be released for PC/Mac/Linux later this year.