During today’s Xbox Developer Direct, we got a second look at the publisher’s upcoming tap into the grand strategy genre, Ara: History Untold. And we now know it’s coming out in Fall 2024.
During the look, the devs revealed some important new details, saying that they wanted to “challenge pre-conceived notions of the genre.” For one, they dove into their simultaneous turn system, which aims to eliminate the downtime in between turns that happens in other turn-based strategy games.
They also showed a bit of their “living world,” which is procedurally generated to reflect players’ choices. The Prestige System, meanwhile, is what will prove the players’ “worth as a leader,” allowing them to build up their score through several different avenues.
Some changes based on player feedback were showed off too, including making their wildlife a little less aggressive. The devs revealed that their Insider program will continue after release, still taking feedback from those early players.
Ara: History Untold was first unveiled in 2022 at the Xbox Games Showcase as a grand strategy game from developer Oxide Games, which is made up of a number of former members of Civilization studio Firaxis. It’s distinct from Xbox’s other history-focused strategy game, Age of Empires, as that’s more of a real-time strategy game while Ara is turn-based.
Previously, Oxide Games developed Ashes of the Singularity, which was itself an RTS similarly powered by the studio’s in-house Nitrous Engine. We gave Ashes of the Singularity a 7.7/10 when it launched in 2016, calling it a “challenging, engrossing, and cerebral exercise in strategy.”
For more, check out everything announced at Thursday’s Xbox Developer Direct.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
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