Ara: History Untold, by Oxide Games, released a new trailer during the week of Gamescom 2023. It shows more gameplay of this turn-based historical 4X game, though the marketing prefers the label “grand strategy”, which is what you’d expect from a deep, detailed sim associated with Paradox Games Studios’ titles rather than Civilization.
Speaking of Civilization, it really looks to be that Ara: History Untold is a riff on that particular flavour of 4X. The trailer shows various leaders which inlcudes Harun Al-Rashid of the Abbasid Caliphate, Sappho of Greece, Itzcoatl of the Aztec Empire and George Washington of the United States as well as a Japanese nation. Jeanne d’Arc is revealed in a seperate screenshot. Each leader has four traits and a unique unit, so very Civ IV-like.
There’s manual plot building where you pick a tile to develop it into better tiles like placing a farm, or building an academy. There is a tech tree that unlocks new buildings and this game’s equivalent of a World Wonder: Culture Triumph.
The tech tree in Ara will be a deck of cards thing, to stop players from min-maxing the best paths. So you would have a 3 choice each time.
Wars require a casus belli, one that was shown was for an Expansion War, available because the nation is sharing a border.
Ara: History Untold also has a lot of detail in its presentation. You don’t just see a unit displayed as an abstraction of one 3D model, you have hundreds of military people wage war. The buildings have people doing animation loops if you zoom in close. Ara is powered by the Nitrous Engine.
The Xbox Wire post noted that there are ex-Firaxis developers, with experience in making Civilization V, that are working at Oxide, which should explain how much Civ this Civ competitor feels like, as compared to Humankind which approaches the historical 4X in a different way.
Ara: History Untold is set to release in 2024 on PC (Steam, Microsoft Store) and is coming to PC Game Pass on day one of launch.
Source: Xbox Wire