Stellaris, like most Paradox games, is an endlessly complex experience thanks to its intricate systems, deep faction customization, and emergent storytelling. The fact that it’s set in its own universe, as opposed to real-world alternate history, has helped earn it a devoted fanbase since its launch in 2016. Players can create a star-spanning empire with any species they can dream up, inspired by fiction or something truly their own. It also bears the other major hallmark of Paradox’s biggest hits: a staggering amount of DLC.
The Machine Age is the latest expansion to hit the nearly eight-year-old strategy title, and it’s the biggest in recent memory. While the last few expansions have been largely limited to new subplots and quest chains alongside a rework of Stellaris’ leader system, The Machine Age offers some exciting new options for longtime players, but also feels like it’s cramming even more content into an already-overstuffed game.
Like 2017’s Synthetic Dawn story pack, The Machine Age primarily focuses on robots, cyborgs, and synthetics. Given that these have always been among the most popular playable archetypes, that’s not especially surprising. While, unlike previous expansions, it doesn’t overhaul or introduce any core mechanics, it does provide a welcome rework to existing gameplay while adding additional scenarios to test your skills.
The biggest change is to the Synthetic Ascension Path. Implemented since launch, Synthetic Ascension is one of three ways to transcend your species’ biological limitations. Your people would first augment their bodies with cybernetics before ultimately transferring their consciousnesses into immortal, fully-synthetic bodies en masse. With The Machine Age, this path is split into five distinct options.
Rather than transitioning from cyborgs to synths, your empire now has the choice of fully embracing one or the other, each with a full suite of benefits. Alternatively, you could leave the real world behind for a virtual utopia, devoting entire planets to server banks to keep the inner world running. You can create a controlled technological singularity, spreading across the galaxy with nanites capable of converting materials into just about anything, or you can use the Modularity Path to develop advanced robotic components unavailable to other empires.
Of course, Stellaris is always more than happy to portray the existential threats posed by advanced technology, and all these fancy new upgrades for your empire also bring a new endgame crisis: the Synthetic Queen. Originally designed to provide safety and comfort for an advanced civilization, the Queen and her fleets are singularly focused on ending suffering across the galaxy… permanently. Of course, if you’d prefer to be the villain you may try the new Cosmogenesis Project, rewriting reality for the good of all, whether anyone else wants it or not.
Don’t get me wrong; this is all good content, and certainly worth playing for longtime fans, but it doesn’t really add anything new or groundbreaking. It’s just morestuff. Like most of the DLC before it, it focuses on the mid-to-late game, and apart from three new Origins that highlight some new options, you’ll have to play for hours before you get to any of the new content in any meaningful capacity. That’s a problem.
If, like me, you’ve got hundreds of hours in Stellaris, chances are good that you’ve started a lot more campaigns than you’ve finished. That means you’ve seen the early-game loop dozens of times; explore local star systems, play the same exploration events, deal with the first pirate spawn, meet the neighbors, excavate the same archaeological sites, play the same early quest chains, and all the while hope that you don’t trip over an advanced, aggressive neighbor that can debilitate your run. The fact that there are new Ascension Paths at the end of that slog might not be enough to keep your attention as you push through the game’s first fifty or so years once again.
We’ve reached the point where Stellaris has become the Spaceship of Theseus, almost unrecognizable from how it was at launch. The Machine Age is a breath of fresh air in that it’s not ticking the version number up yet another integer, but each new DLC still begs the question; do we really need Stellaris v.3.12, or has the time come for Stellaris 2?
Stellaris
WHERE TO PLAY
Stallaris is a space-based 4X game from Paradox, launched in 2016 fopr PC and consoles. You take control of a corner of the galaxy, and must build and expand your civilization through exploration, research, trade, and warfare.
