Reef madness.
Following the reveal of the Kin of Sheredyn, today Amplitude has shown off a much stranger Endless Legend 2 faction: the Aspects. While the Kin are deeply connected to the lore of the Endless series, the Aspects feel a bit more novel and peculiar, which makes them a good fit for the sequel to one of the 4X genre’s most unusual games.
The Aspects are a diplomacy and economic-focused faction that favour cooperation over planet-spanning wars. They are a fusion of organic and machine life, and their fancy faction trait is coral, which can spread across terrain via coral spores. This coral serves a bunch of different purposes.
Coral is sacred to the Aspects because, not only does it grow on them and everywhere they live, it connects them to a gestalt mind known as the Chrous, allowing them to communicate with each other through the coral and reach consensus.
It can also be turned into cities, which have an east Asian theme, but one infused with the all-important coral. The coral also helps cities grow, and it can harvest dust—the Endless series’ primary currency—bringing wealth to the Aspects. It helps the faction’s units, too, healing them and allowing them to move faster, or even cross the ocean.
The coral’s most notable trick, however, is the effect on other factions. If it spreads into their territory, it gives the Aspects diplomatic bonuses when dealing with those factions. If it’s a minor, non-playable faction, it will prime them for assimilation, making it easier for the Aspects to bring them into the fold. Major factions, meanwhile, will be more likely to accept deals and peace treaties.
While you might think this would make other factions suspicious of any coral that starts growing in their territory, they can actually benefit from its spread, as the Aspects can give special perks to their allies thanks to this infestation.
“We wanted to move away from the classical trope of a diplomatic pacifist faction and make them something more like ‘deal with the devil’,” says Amplitude. “They don’t want this world to be safer but manipulate people for their own good.”
Originally, Amplitude wanted to make them “evil landlords”, grabbing and selling territory, but that transformed into the coral mechanic, allowing them to more subtly manipulate the other factions.
“The main difficulty dealing with the development of this faction was the fact that the coral is a common resource shared by all Aspect empires in the game,” the studio adds. “This creates drastic changes in how you will play this faction whether there is another Aspect empire in your game or not.”
It’s a neat feature, even if the faction isn’t one you end up playing. As one of their rivals, you’ll need to decide whether the benefits of the coral outweigh the risk of becoming another faction’s puppet. Embrace it, or burn it all down.
If you decide to make the Aspects your enemy, you’ll need to deal with hostile forces that find equilibrium through a mix of defensive and offensive tactics. When an Aspects unit defends, all allied units then receive a bonus to their damage. They’ve got swarming units, support units who help armies move faster, short and long-range attackers, and deadly flying behemoths designed to handle either swarms of enemies or single targets.
Like all the major factions, the Aspects have their own bespoke campaign narrative, too, which sees them dealing with a “strange affliction” that’s infected their coral reefs, weakening their connection to the Chorus.
The Kin’s turtling mechanics made them seem like the perfect faction for me, but the Aspects are such an unusual proposition that I find myself really vibing with them. Endless Legend 2 is hitting early access later this year, featuring four factions, so we’ve still got two more to learn about.
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