All we want to do is keep throwing coal into the engine so whatever they’re imagining is rich and meaningful,” Spock tells us. “I think it’s more interesting to use text and 2D images, and allow the player to come up with the rest of the imagery. Quests are tales of monsters that you can hunt in haunting, misty oceans, or of species that worship mysterious beings that predate even the Endless. Instead, the Endless series relies on hand-drawn pictures and evocative prose. It’s the player’s story, not the designer’s story,” he says. “Because it’s a procedurally generated game, you don’t need a traditional storyline. It was important to maintain that Civ ethos of enabling the player to create their own narratives, all the while offering compelling stories. Spock believes that the 4X genre lends itself naturally to a subtle brand of worldbuilding, which still affords the player the agency they’ve come to expect from a 4X game. Even something as fundamental as researching technologies is a pithy lesson, as most techs in the game originate from the Endless. Instead, you learn about the lore by finding artefacts, carrying out quests and exploring planets and the vestiges of lost civilisations. There is no expository intro in any of the games. The Endless games have a strong narrative thrust, interconnected by a story about an extinct, advanced civilisation-the titular Endless-that destroyed itself through infighting. Two of the leading figures in this 4X supernova are Romain de Waubert, cofounder of Amplitude Studios, and Jeff Spock, narrative director on the series.
Amplitude Studios’ Endless Space (2012), Endless Legend (2014) and Endless Space 2 (2017) reinterpreted the 4X playbook, working within its strict rulesets to push the genre further than it had ever gone before.
Fill any gaps with meaty DLC, and repeat the cycle.īut between 20, a trifecta of games from an upstart French developer shook up this 4X hegemony. One year there’ll be a Civ game, another year there’ll be a Gal Civ and then an Age of Wonders. It’s rare enough to feel monumental, yet comforting in its cyclicality a sporadic dose of complexity reminding us PC gamers that, despite our growing propensity for couch gaming, there are some pleasures that remain unique to us. The arrival of a new 4X game is a special event in the PC gaming calendar, like a solar eclipse passing across a world split up into tiny hexes.
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