By Ozzie Mejia
Copyright shacknews
While the Civilization series is still the leader among history-based 4X strategy games, Ara: History Untold capably stamped its footprint in that space in late 2024. A cooperative effort from Xbox Game Studios, Stardock Entertainment, and Oxide Games, Ara: History Untold opened the door to history through distinct peoples and open-ended approaches to building a civilization from the bottom up. With a year having passed, Stardock is now ready to put out the game’s 2.0 update, titled the Revolutions Update, and offer some intriguing new features.
The biggest addition in Ara: History Untold’s upcoming 2.0 update is the new Culture and Influence systems. Culture will be added to cities as a new quality-of-life category. By developing a city’s Culture trait, they’ll gain a new currency called Influence. Influence can be used to acquire different cultural traits and allow cities to expand in a way that’s totally different from the usual military might.
Influence can also mean undermining competing civilizations through subterfuge. Agitators are a new unit that can be used to infiltrate competing cities and bring them down from within by creating unrest and potentially starting a rebellion. Once those cities are weakened, Influence can be used to convince them to join your growing empire.
Look for some big adjustments to come to some of the game’s existing civilizations. For example, Japanese Samurai and Mongol Horse Archers are among the unique historical units being added to their respective nations. The game as a whole might also play slightly differently because Stardock is promising to overhaul every leader in the game with their own distinct mechanics, traits, and abilities. Whether this addresses some of the shortcomings found in our original review remains to be seen.
Current Ara: History Untold players on Steam can preview the upcoming Revolutions Update starting today. The final release is expected to release for all players across both Steam and Xbox on PC on Wednesday, September 24. More information on the big 2.0 update can be found over on the Ara: History Untold website.
