After Civ 7's Stumble, Humankind 2 Looks Set to Smartly Carry the 4X Torch.

Very dialectical

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We all know the story of Civilization 7. This story came, saw, you picked a new save at dawn every evening and it really pissed off a lot of people. Sic transit gloria Meier-i.

So I was a bit surprised when Amplitude took us through Humankind 2 and focused so much on its culture system, which was rebuilt from the first game, but a big part of that is choosing new cultures to adopt over time – Egyptians become barbarians, or Romans, or even English (a terrible fate that a conspiracy game allows for in situations).

But I liked what I saw. Another important point in the demo I received was about climate and ecology and how that intersects and shapes culture. Humankind 2's view of history is a dialectical view, where a culture is shaped by a biome that is changed by a culture influenced by a biome...you get the idea. The weather is also not static. Just like in real life, depending on luck and the player/NPC's activity, it will have normal and abnormal disorders.

So all this is a complex and natural interpretation of (a kind of) materialist history. It's just, you know, a materialistic history where the Egyptians might wake up to snow one day.

Our demo started us seeing a world map - like Earth, the real world - filled with multiple tribes. The interplay of environment and culture begins immediately: each tribe receives a "first story" linked to the realm in which it begins, foundational myths that serve as the core of the complete cultures that will eventually develop. They offer buffs (+X Authority, +Y Learning, etc.) and changes to tiles and citizenship roles.

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No, the Humankind 2 trailer is accused of "altering AI": "real actors, practical sets and custom-made props," the studio says.

These are things that, from the jump, make you a little better than everyone else on the map in your chosen setting, and in doing so make your faction feel less fully formed out of nowhere. In the general vicinity of present-day Egypt we come to a tribe whose first story, appropriate enough for the banks of the Nile, was that of the "flood tamer"—the result being that they consumed less water and were better than average at using it and producing it.

Amplitude says that Humankind 2's different starting biomes will have a dramatic effect on how you play, especially as you begin to explore the wide-ranging rewards of your chosen First Tale and the more specific trees of "Adaptations" you can build to deepen your own. Culture's inclination to its chosen biome As ancient Egypt, sweating in the North African desert sun, we can take cultural cues to unlock adaptations like clay, Camel herding, heat tolerance, etc. - various ways to adapt to the extreme heat and scarce water of your chosen home.

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Our chosen culture and adaptations allow us to chew some water in the African Sahara, but Amplitude noted that this is no reason for us to rest. Climatic changes, such as a true Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, may occur, making ecosystems drier or wetter. Your carefully chosen adaptations can be dwarfed by Mother Nature, though that doesn't mean it's impossible to adapt to radical changes: late in the demo, we cut to Egypt's civilization enshrouded in snow, sheets of ice climbing up the sides of the pyramids. Its adaptations now focus on warmth, whaling, and long-term conservation of scarce resources.

The point of all of this is very wide-ranging: factions that feel more than just a different aesthetic and a set of distinct, starting rewards, and feel uniquely tied to and shaped by the world around them. Having only seen Ancient Egypt in action, I can't make any pronouncements on its success, but I can hardly imagine a player in the Tundra, Taiga, Forest, or Brush biomes making the same moves that our demo did.

Likewise, if our desert-adapted Egyptians were to suddenly enter the jungle, I think they would be at a serious disadvantage compared to the native inhabitants of the environment. This is something you can exploit one day. Amplitude suggests that if you had a culture that was incredibly good at managing arid environments, you might willingly set off some kind of nuclear apocalypse to make the entire Earth look like this. Great news for you, bad news for your snow-raised enemies (and for billions of vaporized humans, I suppose).

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Amplitude is trying to move away from what were called "unitary" cultures in Humankind 1 - essentially consisting of "one unity, one building, and one perk" - and into something more skill tree-based in the second game.

Each culture can unlock a set of customs, divided into tiers, and equip and activate them in a limited number of bonus slots. They do pretty much what you'd expect—Egypt could choose a pharaonic tradition to bolster its lineage of authority, or get better at coaxing water from desert sands—but it's another way the studio tries to make each group unique, tailored and specifically suited to its material circumstances.

Over time, your culture will approach "intersection" points, where you can choose to split based on shared history, shared land, or foreign contact (the first is free, the second has a culture bonus, and the third has more culture bonus). New cultures unlock new customs, new urban aesthetics, and new roles (Humankind 2 adds a pop and career system to your cities). The studio said there are 70 cultures in total.

In the small example shown, this doesn't seem as hard as Civ 7's implementation of the same concept, but it's just Amplitude's way of trying to make each of your encounters feel different in the game. Unlike the first game, the studio promised, “With Humankind 2 you'll build truly unique cities that won't repeat the same pattern over and over again.

Also a contrast to the first game: the production values. Amplitude touted new effects and animations while playing - for example, monsters now assemble themselves piece by piece in a dramatic fashion upon completion. It increased the game's load times even on older rigs. Maybe not the most important thing, but it looks really nice and makes the game feel more like a real competitor to Civ, with all the cutscenes and amazing animations of that series.

I certainly haven't seen enough of Humankind 2 to make any sweeping statements about it or its future place in the 4X canon, but I'll tell you this: I'm intrigued. Amplitude seems to have taken some good lessons from their back catalog and the overall 4X atmosphere for Humankind 2, and I'm excited to see how they all play out next year.

One of Josh's earliest memories is playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was too young to do so, and he has been irreparably addicted to the mind game ever since. His writing has appeared in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He plays just about anything, and has written extensively on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His deepest love is for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition exceeds its budget. He thinks you're too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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