Populous: The Beginning
Populous: The Beginning is a strategy game and a god-style video game. It is the third part of the Populous video game series, developed by Bullfrog Productions in 1998. The PC version of the game was released on November 30, 1998, and a PlayStation version was developed later and released on April 2, 1999. Unlike previous games in the series, in which the player took on the role of a god who influences his faithful followers, The Beginning chose a radical departure, placing the player in the role of a shaman who leads her tribe directly against the enemies. In the campaign's twenty-five missions, the player leads his tribe through a solar system, defeats enemy tribes and taps into new sources of magic, with the ultimate goal of the shaman herself attaining godhood. Populous: The Beginning was the first installment in the series to use true 3D computer graphics; Bullfrog waited four years after Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods for graphics technology to catch up with their vision for a new and different game in the series. The developers felt that adding terrain deformation and manipulation, combined with "intelligent" villagers that automatically performed tasks, would add a whole new dimension to the series. The original title of the game was Populous: The Third Coming, before it was changed before the beta was released. Populous: The Beginning plays quite differently from the previous titles and received mixed reviews. Critics positively highlighted the excellent graphics, while complaining about the artificial intelligence and the indecision of the game design between a real-time strategy title and a god game. Peter Olafson of GamePro wrote that Populous: The Beginning was not a bad game, in fact it was a good game, "but it's a different game - one without the essential qualities that made Populous."
Story
Populous: The Beginning takes place before the first two games in the series. The player controls the Blue tribe, which competes against the three enemy tribes that control most of the solar system. The player's destiny as a shaman is to become a deity; only by defeating all the enemies in the system can the player's shaman become all-powerful. The player starts on the planet farthest from the sun and attacks each planet in turn. Along the way, the shaman can learn new skills and magic to defeat her (usually) much more powerful enemies. To achieve victory, the player must either destroy the enemies or occasionally perform special actions. The player loses if his/her shaman is killed and there are no remaining followers, if the shaman is killed and there is no circle of reincarnation, or if the player runs out of time in timed levels.[16] Once the shaman has defeated the other tribes, she ascends to deity and helps her people defeat the Matak, Chumara, and Dakini in a final conflict.