Anno 1404 (as I mention in my review, which should be up soon) is a dramatic evolution for the Anno series in a lot of very important ways. The game is smoother, the graphics are better, etc. but the really interesting evolutions are in the gameplay and the assumptions which seem to underpin it. Old versions of Anno relied on a one-way, Eurocentric theory of colonization to inform its mechanics. This meant that the player, representing the inexorable forward progress of European rationality, traveled to the uncivilized and largely uninhabited New World, brought civilization to it and populated it. Of course, this has more to do with the quaint kindergarten-textbook myths than the actual history of colonialism worldwide, where the kind of virgin-land settlement the previous Anno games depicted was relatively rare. This new Anno has the player coming into contact with a civilization just as advanced as his own and building up his colonies along two lines- Occidental and Oriental- and oftentimes having to mix buildings of the two cultures in order to succeed. Most islands (for gameplay reasons, it seems) are still uninhabited but at least in 1404 we’re getting a somewhat more accurate approximation of how colonization actually occurred. What’s next for the Anno series?
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