It tells how much quality depth was given to the lore, factions and leaders that even more than 20 years after release people are still discussing Alpha Centauri characters and faction ideologies.
Really one of the most brillant 4X game around even after so many years.
Sad that no other 4X had this level of writing depth and quality.
It blew my mind one day when I was playing SMAC and opened up diplomacy dialogue. Then I noticed the flashing screen icons in the HUD on the bottom left were actually flashing scenes from the faction leader's life. These were all things you, as your faction leader, would have gotten one of your underlings to collect every piece of information on your rivals to give you an edge. It's literally an intelligence dossier. They put all this work in for a minor detail most people forget, just so they could tell even more story
through a UI.Deidre Skye shows pictures of her childhood family photo albums. Pictures of her in her boarding school, or her being a champion at lacrosse - with newspaper titles of "Skye won't fall." Pictures of her becoming an astronaut, then resuming a career as an astronaut. Pictures of her becoming an eco-activist and joining picket lines in her adolescence, failing to avert the fate of Earth.
Sheng-Ji Yang shows pictures of his childhood in poverty, his parents going through school, him going through education and joining city life & partaking in revolutionary party actions. Amusingly it features a picture of Yang as a glam model, which does go some way to explaining why the U.N. felt Yang was a safe pick for the U.N. mission and could be trusted, as they presumed he may have mellowed out.
Fashion Yang isn't real... He can't hurt you...
Zhakarov's shows clippings of his work as a rocket scientist. His past as a champion chess player, and one really adorable pic of him going to his last day of school.
Protect that smile! I do love how Zhakarov's dossier has one where they have to circle Zhakarov's face because he blends in seamlessly in the background.
Morgan's is special. Some like Yang show their family, but Morgan actually seems to have had a wife, kids, brothers, sisters... Makes him leaving them all behind to save himself seem even more in character for "Morgan." Like Deidre and Zhakarov he is a champion athlete, only this time it seems to have been American football of all things.
Corazon Santiago seems to have had an especially accomplished life. She was born into a military family, a basketball player, a kickboxer, an MMA fighter, a boxer, a marine, a peacekeeper and an astronaut. Seems to have spent some of her youth hitchhiking and camping around the world.
Miriam Godwinson seems to have been the most "public" of the seven, as whereas some of the other faction leaders only have "snippets" of their life, Miriam's seems to have been well-documented with her family life, her religious career, academic carerer and astronaut career all being well-recorded. She seems to have actually had hobbies and a documented normal social life with friends whilst she was in her young adulthood.
Like Morgan and Lal, she was married and had a kid!
I do love how Yang and Miriam both have their own version of the embarassing young photo which dispels the whole notion of "we were born stern figures of invincible stoicness."
Lal was a cricket player, a gymnast, a football player, a doctor, a marathon runner - and when he began his astronaut career, something of a stud.
And he had a family!!! Interestingly his dossier makes lots of references to his hindu faith, he's about on par with Miriam for religious references.
Interesting common features:
-Plenty of embarassing childhood pictures. Some of our faction 7 were wallflowers in school like Zhakarov or Lal, whilst others stood out and were the centres of their childhood social circles like Miriam and Santiago. Ones like Morgan and Yang didn't seem to have common school upbringings or childhoods.
-Every member of our starting seven went to University, except for Santiago, who seems to have gone straight into the military the moment she was fighting age.
-Zhakarov and Deidre may have prioritised their scientific careers over starting a family, or perhaps they did not want to start one, or that information was lost.
-All of them were athletes in some way, except for Miriam, Yang and Zhakarov (unless you count chess).
-All of them were experienced astronauts, except for Morgan. This does suggest that the six astronauts were selected by the U.N. for their merits, but Morgan may have used his clout as head of Morgan Conglomerate to buy his way off the planet.
-Morgan and Yang came from impoverished backgrounds, one rising through economic means, the other through political. Lal and Miriam came from middle-class backgrounds, and both seem to have had the most "normal" lives in the sense that they both started families, went to school & university before joining the U.N. or becoming the head of a religious movement respectively. Deidre seems to have come from a posh upper-middle class background, going to boarding school & managing to engage in eco-activism and then transition into a career as an astro-botanist... Something made much easier by coming from a well-heeled background
-Lal, Miriam and Deidre had active social lives with friends. Yang probably was a wild child & bohemian at some point, before taking things more "seriously." Zhakarov & Morgan seem to have been loners, or associated mainly with family, rivals & colleagues. Lal, Miriam & Morgan probably left behind their family when they joined the U.N. mission. Pretty sad if you think about it :[
-Yang, Lal and Miriam (obviously) were living explicitly religious lives at some point in their lives. But Miriam's special - in some of her pictures as an astronaut working in space, you can clearly see her religious iconography reflected in her helmet. She is the only one who didn't leave her faith behind on earth.
-ALL OF THEM won awards, trophies, medals and cups for unspecified things. Needless to say, this is to show us that they were all at the top of their game, and they're playing for first place.
PERFECT YANG EFFICIENCY TOTAL PLANET HARMONY OVER 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 DRONES STAPLED
That looks like a big headache management nightmare
Surprisingly not, one of the very many considerations I put into this design was "standardisation" so that every key node and borehole grid was interchangeable and easily adaptable if they ran over complications or a landmark
i think its really really cool that this game can still spawn discussion around the philosophical interpretations of the factions... and the morality of the gamestates... you don't really get that from Civ, do you? hehe
Civ beyond earth was... Lacking this flavour
I still want to properly learn this since i missed the boat as a youngling. I know this is rich coming from a bay12forum poster, but the UI is kinda horrendous, particularly the unit creation stuff.
isn't there some overhaul mod, too? hmm
I don't know of any UI overhaul mod. I personally love the UI, but you may want to mess with the preferences options. I turn off "auto-design units" because I personally find it annoying whenever the AI keeps trying to fill all my design slots with 300 variants of chopper