Not counting the snippets of footage added to the Baby’s Eve reveal trailer, Humankind 2 developers Amplitude Studios have revealed their first real-life footage from the story-spanning strategy sequel. Throughout its (nearly) seven minutes of maps and menus, we can see what appears to be a greater focus on recasting and adapting your chosen cultures to meet the challenges of each era, and less on sticking to preset archetypal bonuses.
There are still plenty of cultures to work with – more than 70, the trailer says, spread across six eras – and like in the first Humankind, it’s possible to take a single civilization throughout the game. However, the sequel also raises complications such as biomes, where environmental dangers and opportunities must be avoided and seized.
This involves using the new adaptations system, where you’ll choose specialized traits and skills to better match the characteristics of a biome. Life in an arid desert, for example, can be made more comfortable with advances in water harvesting, heat protection and specialized building materials. Adaptations can also be used, particularly in wealthier regions of the world, to give new specializations to a culture’s settlements, for example giving one city hunting skills while another fills with expert gatherers – thus providing the civilization, as a whole, with a balanced food supply.
The cultural progression system has also been redesigned so that each culture has its own upgrade tree and its traits, customs and bonuses remain unchanged across eras. The cultures and progression options available to you will depend on the choices made in exploration, diplomacy and the adaptation system. So you probably won’t be able to fight against an invincible omniculture, but choosing to evolve a civilization through the ages will make it a unique crucible of all your progression upgrade choices thus far. Assuming you’ve actually committed to it, Humankind 2 also makes cultural evolution optional, providing the ability to drag a single, unadulterated culture through the ages.
Honestly, combining cultures sounds more fun. The example in the video shows Egyptian settlers moving to snowier climates, building attractive ice-covered pyramids, but facing freezing starvation with no help to adapt. Encounter with the Thule peoples of neighboring Greenland opened up the possibility of learning skills more suited to the environment, leading to the formation of the world’s first Egyptian dog sled units.
These changes should be of interest to Humankind players like our reviewer Nate Crowley (RPS in peace), who mostly enjoyed the original but found some civilizations too static and too limited in their bonuses to be worth picking during era changes. Making crops more malleable during every era is about survival, certainly, but there seems to be more opportunity to cover pre-existing weaknesses or develop new strengths.
No release date for this one, beyond “2027”, but beavers with a passion for alternative history can join the Humankind 2 Insiders Program to have the chance to test the first versions.
