《Humankind 2》公开首段实机演示 强调跨时代文化适配与生态改造

Egypt, we have a dogsled team

Not counting the slivers of footage tacked onto that baby's-eve-view reveal trailer, Humankind 2 devs Amplitude Studios have unveiled their first real footage of the history-spanning strategy sequel. Throughout its (nearly) seven minutes of maps and menus, we can see what appears to a greater focus on resculpting and adapting your chosen cultures to meet the challenges of each era, and less on sticking with preset archetypal bonuses.

There's still loads of cultures to work with – over 70, sayeth the trailer, spread across six eras – and as in the original Humankind, it's possible to take a single civilisation all the way through the game. The sequel, though, also throws up complications like biomes, where environmental dangers and opportunities must be dodged and seized.

This involves making use of the new Adaptations system, where you'll pick and choose specialised traits and skills to better match a biome's characteristics. Life in a parched desert, for instance, can be made more comfortable with developments in water gathering, heat protection, and specialist building materials. Adaptations can also be used, especially in more bountiful parts of of the world, to give new specialisations to a culture's settlements, like giving one city hunting skills while another becomes full of expert foragers - providing the civilisation, as a whole, with a balanced food supply.

The culture progression system has also been redesigned so that every culture gets its own upgrade tree, and its traits, customs and bonuses remain across eras. The cultures and progression options you'll be offered will depend on choices made in exploration, diplomacy, and the Adapatation system, so you probably won't be able to wrangle an invincible omniculture, but choosing to evolve a civilisation across eras will make it a unique melting pot of all your progression upgrade picks thus far. Assuming you've actually engaged with it, as Humankind 2 also makes cultural evolution optional, providing the chance to drag a single, unalloyed culture through the ages instead.

Frankly, though, combining cultures sounds more fun. The video's example sees settlers from Egypt making a home in snowier climes, building pretty ice-capped pyramids but facing chilly starvation without Adaptation help. Meeting the Thule peoples of nearby Greenland opens up the chance to learn more environment-appropriate skills, leading to the formation of the world's first Egyptian dogsledding units.

These changes should be of interest to Humankind players like our reviewer Nate Crowley (RPS in peace), who mostly appreciated the original but found certain civilisations too static and too limited in their bonuses to be worth picking at era switches. Making cultures more malleable during each era is a matter of survival, yes, but it does sound like there's more scope to cover for preexisting weaknesses, or expand into new strengths.

No release date for this one, beyond "2027," but eager alt-history beavers can join the Humankind 2 Insiders Program for the chance to playtest early versions.