Civilization: Beyond Earth trailer proves that krakens and polite society don't mix

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I'm going to try my hardest to get through this whole post without putting the words 'release', 'kraken' and 'the' in a particular order, but the soothing tones of the robotic Civ lady from Beyond Earth's latest trailer should help a lot with that. It's six minutes of calming narration about the game's affinity system, with a big lovely kraken fight roughly halfway through. Release the...no. No. I'm stronger than that. Stick around for the releasethekraken trailer after the break.

As the pleasingly named Master Control explains, Beyond Earth features a sort of quasi-morality system, which will see you heading towards one of three extremes—or, indeed, hovering somewhere in-between—with seemingly no judgement from the game about which is the best approach. Purity types, like the Civ in the above trailer, believe that humanity should terraform or transform the environment to fit their needs, while Supremacy peeps feel that humans should fiddle about with their biology and graft on robot parts and that to assert their dominance over their new home. There's also Harmony, not shown in the above trailer, an affinity that believes humanity should become one with the aliens, with the effect that all the indigenous krakens and bugs and the like will then be on your side.

Civ: Beyond Earth has had lengthier videos before now , but this is a good one to watch if you don't have an hour to spare, and if you like listening to a roboticized lady talking softly over turn-based strategy footage. This...as it turns out...is incredibly relaxing. Roll on October 24th.

Tom Sykes
Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.