Grand strategy games are a bit too big to demo. Building from a single settlement and a couple of farms into a vast nation is a time-consuming process, and even playing tens of early game turns can only show you so much. Even with that being the case, though, a little time with the opening of 4X game Ara: History Untold suggests a sprawling entry into the genre that brings along some new ideas that focus on offering lots of different paths for creating a thriving civilization.
I played about an hour of the massive turn-based strategy game Ara: History Untold at Xbox’s Gamescom preview event in Los Angeles. That amounted to about 35 turns–just enough to hit the end of the first era of human history and to get a sense of the way Ara approaches a game about being the most influential civilization on the planet. Like most entries in the genre, there are multiple paths to victory in Ara, like building a conquering military, constructing great works of culture, or amassing a ton of wealth.
What was interesting in those early turns was seeing the ways Ara lets you pick a specific path to victory, focusing your gameplay on what you think is most important.