Populous: The Beginning

Populous: The Beginning

Populous: The Beginning is the third entry in the Populous video game series. The player controls a female shaman and the tribe which follows her. In the campaign, the player must fight the opposing Dakini, Chumara and Matak tribes for dominion over the solar system.

About Populous: The Beginning in brief

Summary Populous: The BeginningPopulous: The Beginning is the third entry in the Populous video game series. The game was released in 1998 on Microsoft Windows, and in 1999 for the PlayStation. The player controls a female shaman and the tribe which follows her. In the campaign, the player must fight the opposing Dakini, Chumara and Matak tribes for dominion over the solar system. Unlike the previous games in the series, The Beginning allows the player to directly control the action of followers, by ordering them to build structures or attack enemies. It is played from a third-person perspective with the camera at a variable height and capable of rotating 360°. Critics noted the excellent graphics, while complaints were directed at the artificial intelligence and the indecision in game design between being a real time strategy title and a god game. It was the first game to use 3D computer graphics, and was released four years after Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods. It has no formal resource management; new units are created automatically at houses, and training new troops costs nothing except Mana. There are twenty buildings in total, which are slowly learned throughout the campaign.

There is a maximum size of four players playing against each other in multiplayer. The first two games take place in a planetary system of twenty-five planets. These worlds are inhabited by four human tribes, represented by their color: green, yellow, red and blue. The fourth tribe, controlled by the player, is unnamed, and is represented by the blue color of the player’s character. The final game takes place before the unnamed player, and takes place on an unnamed planet in a solar system of 20-five unnamed planets. It can be played in 16-bit or 32-bit colour, with the map locally projected onto a sphere to give the illusion of a planet. On maps where there is no fog of war, players can see what opponents are doing at any time. On later levels, the enemy tribes also have shamans, and on later levels all inhabit the same world. Some spells will disappear after use. Other spells can slowly be replenished for continued use; the rate of spell regeneration depends upon the player’t number of followers.