Ara: History Untold maybe could've used a better title—it makes me think of a Las Vegas show, like the Luxor hotel's King Tut Experience—but it's interesting: a historical grand strategy game from developer Oxide Games (maker of Ashes of the Singularity), published by Microsoft, with ambitions to deliver "an evolution" in the genre.
Much of what we saw during Ara's segment in today's Xbox Developer Direct (embedded above) is very Civilization-ey, so I'm not quite convinced by the "evolution" talk yet. Ara's "Prestige" scoring system, for instance, just sounds like another way to frame the classic Civilization victory conditions: culture, military, science. Also mentioned were "Triumphs," monuments like the Great Pyramid of Giza, and leaders with special traits, which are also Civilization staples.
