Amplitude celebrates its 10th anniversary of game releases with this Endless Universe franchise trailer. I've slowly warmed up to this so-called Endless Universe over the last decade. I'm usually left with the feeling that I wished I played more Endless stuff. Because there was a time when assembling a few starships and colonizing a few starry blips on a galaxy radar was all it took to keep me riveted to turn-based sci-fi strategy. But it takes more than that for me nowadays.
Nowadays, for me, the best sci-fi brings things back down to earth. Not planet Earth, but down to the people and places that populate the universe. While it's a mind-boggling scientific fact that space has a whole lot of nothing out there, what's more interesting is what is out there. Endless Space 1 & 2, and the unexpected tie-ins those have with the fantastical Endless Legend, looks at the social and political aspects of being a card-carrying member of the intergalactic. It's not just plop down an HQ and start churning out more colonists. It's about policymaking and interspecies relations as much as scientific pursuits and ecological terraforming.
And a ton of great artwork to keep the journey colorful and visionary and imaginative. That's what gets me in the end. Not so much lovely pics of gaseous planets and earthlike worlds from tens of thousands of miles away. It's the artwork of what's happening on the ground that brings the Endless universe to life.
As we look forward to Endless Dungeon—not to be confused with Amplitude's Dungeon of the Endless—here's a victory lap for a franchise that's survived the last 10 years. Hopefully it's got 10 more in it.
