Today on the official Xbox podcast episode, hosts Malik Prince and Jenn Panattoni spoke with Marc Meyer, President of Oxide Games, and Brian Stone, Head of Ara for Xbox Game Studios, to provide more detailed information about Ara: Untold Storyincluding new details about the multiplayer mode and – best of all – the announcement of a release date: Ara: Untold Story will be released on September 24, 2024 for Windows PC, Steam and will be available from day one with PC Game Pass!
Check out the full podcast below – the “Ara: History Untold” segment starts at 1:58:
As they explain in detail in the interview, the Oxide team really wanted We buy unique in the historical strategy game genre by looking at the landscape of strategy games to identify common pain points they could address and explore ways they could shake things up. There are many things the team likes to talk about when it comes to We buy and we’ve highlighted some of the most important news from today’s section.
Play in a living world
One of the outstanding elements of Ara: Untold Story This is immediately apparent when looking at the footage shown in the official Xbox podcast segment, as well as the screenshots, of how beautiful and detailed the world looks. At a high level, it’s easy to see how the regions are divided up, differentiating them from agricultural to industrial and resource-rich.
“We buy“At its core, it’s a classic turn-based historical strategy game that covers all of human history from ancient times to modern times and beyond,” explains Stone. “But it’s also a game that (Oxide) really incorporated a lot of modern elements into. They made the look of the game something completely unique that you’ve never seen before.”
However, upon closer inspection, you’ll see that it’s a “living” map with a huge amount of activity, from planes flying overhead, garbage trucks driving down the street, children playing in playgrounds, to wildlife living in dense jungles. This gives this game world character and allows you to connect with it in a way you may not have encountered in other strategy games.
“All of this is randomly generated every time you create a new game. Every time you replay, you get a different world. It’s going to be full of different biomes,” Meyer explains. “It’s the living world; it’s full of all kinds of interesting things that you want players to notice and see… And it’s a resource. That’s part of the game. It’s something that you harvest and get things from, and you’re going to create your nation here and use that resource to improve the lives of your people and your citizens.”
Multiple paths to victory with unique leaders
Because there are so many ways to play through We buyit was important to the team to make sure there were leaders for every playstyle, and that was shown to us in the official Xbox podcast segment. There are a variety of traits that help define who these leaders are, inspired in part by how they existed in the world.
“Each of the leaders has this unique hero trait that sets them apart from everyone else,” Meyer explains. “They have this set of traits that they share with each other, and they kind of determine the basic parts of their personality and they determine how they get along with each other… So we have a huge variety of different leaders that we offer, and so it’s very different to play each of them.”
Ultimately, the goal is We buy is to become the most prestigious nation on earth through your own means. And you can do that with many different game strategies, from military conquest to religious victories to industry. Or become a role model for other nations through prestige. “There are almost unlimited ways to invest in what you build from that first little village,” says Stone.
“As your nation grows and you attract people to you, you’ll make claims that allow you to take over pieces of land and expand your empire, find new places to build and new resources to exploit,” Meyer adds. “So the whole thing is this self-fulfilling system where you grow so you can grow more, and you can get more land and more resources. And then you take those resources and refine them through our crafting system to produce amenities that improve the quality of life for your people.”
Multiplayer and simultaneous rounds
In many large turn-based strategy games, multiplayer sessions can be challenging – taming a dozen players in a single game can be a daunting task. But Oxide may have a solution. They call it “Simultaneous Turns” and it involves all players taking their turns at the same time. While it’s not entirely new to the genre, the way simultaneous turns are implemented in Ara is truly unique.
“The way it works is you submit your actions and everyone else in the world submits their actions at the same time, and then they all get resolved together,” explains Marc Meyer, president of Oxide Games. “It’s not like you get the claim if you go first; the person who goes second doesn’t get the claim. In this model, everyone goes at the same time. So in multiplayer, you really have a fair shot at everything.”
“We’ve integrated all of the round processing into the Azure cloud, which means it’s all there and running all the time,” adds Brian Stone, head of Ara History Untold for Xbox Game Studios. “Anyone in any game can hot join or hot join. You can run games at any pace you want. If you want to play a game with one round a day or one round every 30 seconds, it doesn’t matter. You can do that. You don’t have to worry about who’s hosting – it’s almost unlimited flexibility in how you play.”
“We really wanted to remove all barriers to multiplayer,” says Meyer. “You can drop in and out of as many games as you want. You can take your turn when you have time and wait for it to be delivered. If your friend decides they don’t want to play anymore, an AI can step in and take over for them. It’s not the end of your world if you’re playing online and don’t want to do that, you can quit and not worry about breaking the game for all the other players.”
Check out the entire Ara: Untold Story Deep Dive episode about the Official Xbox Podcast to get more information about the details mentioned here and to see the game in action. Search for Ara: Untold Story will be released on September 24, 2024 on Windows PC, Steam, and PC Game Pass.
