Ten years ago, at the end of April, I published an interview that I conducted. A new game coming from the Paradox workshop, a space grand strategy with 4x elements. Very little was known about the game, so the interview contained a solid amount of speculation. A few days later, the game was released, and today it celebrates its 10th anniversary, still in development. Of course, that game is Stellaris.
Per aspera ad astra
The first time I launched it, I was thrilled. It wasn't a perfect game; it had many flaws and issues, but it was a game that awakened the idea of exploring space, which has always been appealing to me as a sci-fi fan. It wasn't a game with a fixed story, although it contained enough narratives. However, the stories I came away with after playing were deeply etched into my brain cells.
Stellaris continued to evolve, and it was interesting to see the ways the team added familiar sci-fi ideas to the game. Want megastructures or weapons of mass destruction? They added them. New races, new policies, or new crises that will hit the galaxy during your playthrough? That's there too. The game changed regularly, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It was as if the development team was in an unknown galaxy, searching for how to make the best of the hit they created.
As this is a Paradox game, all of this came through DLCs, which is great for people who wanted something new in their gameplay every now and then. But it is also a problem if you want to join in later – it's not very nice to see that Stellaris has over 200 euros worth of available DLCs. They realized that this deters players, so Paradox slowly started adding a subscription option to their games. Want to try everything? Here, for a low fee, you can do that for the next month (or longer, if you decide so). An idea I will also try in the coming days.
All of this is a historical look at what Stellaris has achieved. Including its arrival on consoles and over 3 million copies sold, with that number being a few years old already. I hope they will announce a new figure for the ten-year anniversary of the game. Still, I wanted to add some of my personal experience. One of the interesting things is that I have actually never played with anything other than the human race. I tried briefly, but this has been my favorite. That's something I need to correct in the future.
A few situations have stuck in my mind. I had just finished a war with my first neighbor, and then a Khan event appeared in his territory. It totally destroyed him, and I set up a brilliant defense in the border system, so he couldn't expand into my empire. In another save, my human race began to gain psychic abilities. And just when a major evolutionary breakthrough occurred, an artificial intelligence uprising happened. They took a third of my empire, the fight lasted about fifty years, but in the end, I regained control over everything. Mind over machine strength.
How will history view Stellaris? A very good and successful game, but one that probably won't be remembered as gloriously, partly because it has a fairly specific audience. It's not a game for the masses, but it's definitely one that I love and have no problem celebrating its 10 years on the market.
Note: The article was originally published on 227gaming.com, and we are reproducing it in full on our portal with the author's permission.
