At E3 this year, Stevivor had a chance to check out the rebooted Master of Orion.
World of Everything publisher Wargaming has recently acquired the 4X franchise’s license, and has employed its lead designers to help create a modern version of the game. For those unfamiliar with a 4X game, the Xs stand for explore, expand, exploit and exterminate; each X stands for a victory condition. Those of you still unsure can look to Civilization as a good example of the genre, though Master of Orion literally inspired journalists to coin the 4X phrase. No joke. Look it up.
At any rate, it’s better to look at the recently-released Civilization: Beyond Earth when talking about Master of Orion, because what I’ve seen of this new title cements it as the game I wished Beyond Earth would have been.
The original franchise had three proper releases, though most ignore the third while the arguing over which of the first two were better. Regardless, the franchise is known for being difficult to learn and even harder to master.
From what I was shown with the rebooted Master of Orion reboot, that same level of complexity exists – like Beyond Earth – but things are laid out in a way that makes the complexity easier to understand. As the Wargaming developer was showing me ship deployment, planet resourcing and combat UI, I immediately understood where I currently was, what I could do, and to be honest, I was quite surprised about that.
When we jumped again to 330 turns into the turn-based game, that wasn’t the case any longer… but the developer explained that was many, many hours into the game. I can tell you that hours and hours into Beyond Earth, I will had zero idea what I was doing… but that was exactly true when I started the game.
True to the original, key moments of the title – like meeting one of the game’s ten races, declaring war or being warned of an upcoming catastrophe — are accompanied by cutscenes that help to flesh out the moment. They’re insanely detailed and quite humourous; the humour, most importantly, is quirky in bright, but more in the way of 90s adventure games rather than the schlocky Borderlands-style way that’s sweeping across titles of late.
Going to war with one of the races that’d occupied a lucrative corner of the galaxy, we saw intuitive menus go into action. A simple drag and drop of a man, representing workers, shifted production of food into technology. A look to the tech tree started research into nuclear technology that would not only increase our propulsion systems, but condense the space taken by nuclear warheads, meaning we could carry more on our ships. After stocking up, we sent an armada to a nearby star system and easily wiped out our opponent’s forces before dropping 60 – yes, 60 – nukes on the planet, obliterating everyone on it before claiming it as our own.
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A release date for Master of Orion hasn’t been named, but make no mistake – this is the first 4X game in a long while that I actually find myself excited for.
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