E3 2015 - Master Of Orion - Dev Demo

Wargaming.net have grown a lot in recent years, people from around the world know them for the amazing World of Tanks and the upcoming World of Warships, so it was quite surprising when they announced that they would be rebooting a 22 year old franchise in Master of Orion.



For those that don’t know, Master of Orion is a tactical turn based style space sim, where how you play affects the game you experience. In the past, the original game and its sequels were impacted by a massively clunky UI, which for its time was advanced, but looking back in retrospect was not that great. The plan with the reboot is to make the UI more intuitive and fresh for modern gamers, but the game will still maintain its complexity for those who played and loved the originals.

The game requires players to balance four different playstyles, but while you may not be able to do that, you can win using just one, if that is what you want. Players will need to Expand, Explore, Exploit and Exterminate in order to win, but if you are someone who would rather crush all who stand in your way, you can just use exterminate to win the game. Those who think diplomacy is the way to win can do so as well, if they are good at it, as forging relationships is not something you can do with a single click, all your actions will shape those outcomes.

The original six races will be making a return to the world, the Alkarr, Mrrshan, Human, Sakaka, Bulrathi and the Darlok, meaning fans who enjoyed playing as one of them can take up the battle again, but there will be new races, such as the Silons, if players want a different challenge. Each of the races has an advantage over another, but also a weakness against another one, so it's critical to pick your race to suit your playstyle.

The game will start you out at a planet view, giving you a chance to see your main homeworld and the planets or moons that surround it, from here you will need to start your campaign of galactic conquest. If you zoom out from there, you will see the larger galaxy view, which to begin with will be dull and inviting, but later on in the game it will be full of colour, to indicate which race holds which part of the galaxy. When you look at how you can win, there are 5 paths to victory, Excellence, Conquest, Technological, Economic and Diplomatic, with each path offering up challenges, it is possible to win using all 5 at once, something that will test even the most hardcore of players.

One of the first things to be done in our hands off demo was the building of a research station, this allowed us to research more advanced items like Fusion technology, which in turn gave us Fusion Bombs and Fusion Drives, meaning we could travel further than before. Of course as with all strategy games, managing your resources is critical and here it's not so much resources as people. If you want to accelerate the progress of a build or research, you can assign more people, taking them away from harvesting and placing them into building, but doing that means you get less food for your planet, so it's a balance to be worked upon constantly.

When you are ready to start exploring the vastness of space, you can do so by sending out a scout ship. These ships are small and easy to build, meaning you can lose one and replace it pretty fast, but they are not built for combat, so again it's a balancing act. Sending out a scout ship, to any part of the galaxy will have them search for planets and such, one thing they will find are anomalies, which can be valuable treasures that will help your race achieve things, or it could be unknown planets ripe for the taking.

When a scout ship has found a planet, you can send out the bigger space ships to help claim and then terraform the planet, doing this requires people though, so you need to have your priorities straight there as well. Some planets will help you achieve goals faster, others might just help expand your territory, but things will change when you encounter your first alien race. In our demo it was the Mrrshan, cat like people, whom we made nice with. As we progressed, we kept exploring and discovering, eventually our Fusion research was finished and we could go further into space.

Once we left our own space, we found ourselves to be blocked by a Star Base, a large ship capable of blocking the wormholes used for travel, it was owned by the Silons, so an agreement was met, in exchange for us using their Star Bases to move around, they could use ours, it worked out this time, but had our actions been different before that point, we might not have been able to reach that agreement. Another such action could have been to declare war, which could have resulted in us winning or losing.

Master of Orion appears to be sticking to it's core tenants very closely, but not too much so in that it ignores everything that has come between the original and now. Wargaming.net really do love this series, you can tell from the way that the people there speak of it and NGD in Argentina are working hard to ensure that fans of the old as well as new fans can both enjoy this game.