By Joseph Luster

If grand strategy is your speed, you might want to keep an eye out for Ara: History Untold, which is currently in the works for PC and will also be available through PC Game Pass. This one aims to take players through every stage of human achievement, from the exploration of new lands to the development of arts and culture, diplomatic evolution, and clashes with rival civilizations. With no previously established paths to victory, there are myriad possibilities available to those who dream of experimenting with world creation and ruling.

Both the world and the people within Ara: History Untold have unique stories to tell. There are many different climates and landscape types to explore and even potentially develop, including vast deserts and tropical jungles. The citizens in your burgeoning community might even influence your next decisions with what they have to say. Combine those concepts with a procedurally generated environment and you have the recipe for countless possibilities that ensure no playthrough will be the same.

As your nation grows, you’ll need to be able to defend it, which will put your leadership skills to the test along with all your other tasks. When you’re not defending your nation, it will require your attention in more philosophical ways. Will you reap the strategic bonuses that come along with the construction of libraries, citadels and cathedrals? How will you invest your resources into efforts such as technological research? The direction your nation takes is up to you. This will either inspire you greatly or, if you’re anything like me, lead to some serious decision paralysis.

The developers behind Ara: History Untold seem keen on offering what they call an “evolution in historical grand strategy.” This entails a combination of the staples of the genre that have served as its foundation for decades, and some new features they hope will pave the way for the future of grand strategy. Some of those include the likes of a national crafting economy, true simultaneous turn resolution, cloud-based synchronous and asynchronous multiplayer, and a non-linear technology tree. The aforementioned countless possibilities this all presents sounds like the recipe for quite the time sink, so hopefully Ara will prove worthy of said time when the full version is available.

Genre: Strategy
Platform: PC
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Available: September

Back to the issue this appears in