Age of Wonders: Planetfall's first expansion resurrects the ancient Heritor in November

YouTube

Paradox Interactive announced at PDXCON today that the excellent 4X strategy game Age of Wonders: Planetfall will get its first full expansion in November. Entitled Revelations, the expansion will reveal more about the history of the Planetfall universe and introduce the Heritor, descendants of the Es'Teq dynasty, who are attempting to use the ancient technology of their forebears to resurrect billions of followers and establish divine rule across the stars.

Revelations will add an estimated 10 hours of new content to the game spread across two campaigns, with more than 30 dangerous locations to explore, each with unique secrets and rewards to discover, courtesy of the new "Anomalous Sites Mechanic." The new Heritor Secret Techology sounds fun, too: It drains the "essence" of your enemies, which is then used to activate powerful abilities, summon new units, and create "strong Entropy weapons."

In case that resurgent existential horror doesn't put enough trouble on your plate, Revelations also adds a new NPC faction called The Forgotten. Made up of those too "broken, insane, or otherwise unfit" for the glorious future of the Heritor, they "were never meant to be resurrected" but apparently were anyway, with predictably bad results.

There are also Reapers, robotic assassins created in the distant past to hunt down the supporters of the Heritor cause, but who decided (as robotic assassins sometimes do) that the real problem is organic life in general and so now they just murder everything they see. And they might not be entirely in the wrong, because you'll also have to contend with the "equally deadly" Megasow and Piglets, bioengineered beasts that went rabid after the fall of the Star Union and now run around eating everything they see.

"The first expansion allows players to explore deeper into the Planetfall universe, uncovering how the collapse of the Star Union empire has awakened beings from its mysterious past," game director Lennart Sas explained. "With the introduction of Heritor Secret Technology, NPCs, and Essence, Revelations is a new chapter for Planetfall that will affect the rise and fall of empires to come."

Age of Wonders: Planetfall – Revelations will be available on November 19 for $15/£12/€15. Details are at up aow-planetfall.com/revelations. Now let's have a look at those Megapiggies!

TOPICS

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.