Setting Space-race victories in the
Civilization series conclude with a journey to
Alpha Centauri. Beginning with that premise the
Alpha Centauri narrative starts in the
22nd century, after the
2060 launch of the United Nations colonization mission "Unity" to Alpha Centauri's planet Chiron ("Planet"). Unbeknownst to humans, advanced extraterrestrials ("Progenitors") had been conducting experiments in vast distributed nervous systems, culminating in a planetary biosphere-sized presentient nervous system ("Manifold") on Chiron, leaving behind monoliths and artifacts on Chiron to guide and examine the system's growth. Immediately prior to the start of the game, a reactor malfunction on the Unity spacecraft wakes the crew and colonists early and irreparably severs communications with Earth. After the captain is assassinated, the most powerful leaders on board build ideological factions with dedicated followers, conflicting agendas for the future of mankind, and "desperately serious" commitments. As the ship breaks up, seven escape pods, each containing a faction, are scattered across Planet. In the
Alien Crossfire expansion pack, players learn that alien experiments led to disastrous consequences at
Tau Ceti, creating a hundred-million-year evolutionary cycle that ended with the eradication of most complex animal life in several neighboring inhabited star systems. After the disaster (referred to by Progenitors as "Tau Ceti Flowering"), the Progenitors split into two factions: Manifold Caretakers, opposed to further experimentation and dedicated to preventing another Flowering; and Manifold Usurpers, favoring further experimentation and intending to induce a controlled Flowering in
Alpha Centauris Planet. In
Alien Crossfire, these factions compete along with the human factions for control over the destiny of Chiron.
Characters and factions The game focuses on the leaders of seven factions, chosen by the player from the 14 possible leaders in
Alpha Centauri and
Alien Crossfire, and Planet (voiced by Alena Kanka). The characters are developed from the faction leaders' portraits, the spoken monologues accompanying scientific discoveries and the "photographs in the corner of a commlink – home towns, first steps, first loves, family, graduation, spacewalk." The leaders in
Alpha Centauri comprise: Lady Deirdre Skye, a Scottish activist (voiced by Carolyn Dahl), of ''Gaia's Stepdaughters
; Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, a Chinese Legalist official (voiced by Lu Yu), of the Human Hive
; Academician Prokhor Zakharov, a Russian academic (voiced by Yuri Nesteroff) of the University of Planet
; CEO Nwabudike Morgan, a Namibian businessman (voiced by Regi Davis), of Morgan Industries
; Colonel Corazon Santiago, a Puerto Rican militiawoman (voiced by Wanda Niño) of the Spartan Federation
; Sister Miriam Godwinson, an American minister and social psychologist (voiced by Gretchen Weigel), of the Lord's Believers
; and Commissioner Pravin Lal, an Indian surgeon and diplomat (voiced by Hesh Gordon), of the Peacekeeping Forces''. The player controls one of the leaders and competes against the others to colonize and conquer Planet. Each faction excels at one or two important aspects of the game and follows a distinct philosophical belief, such as
technological utopianism, Conclave Christianity, "free-market"
capitalism, militarist
survivalism,
Chinese Legalism, U.N. Charter humanitarianism, or Environmentalist
Gaia philosophy. The game takes place on Planet, with its "rolling red ochre plains" and "bands of lonely terraformed green". The seven additional faction leaders in
Alien Crossfire are Prime Function Aki Zeta-Five, a Norwegian research assistant-turned-cyborg (voiced by Allie Rivenbark), of
The Cybernetic Consciousness; Captain Ulrik Svensgaard, an American fisherman and naval officer (voiced by James Liebman), of
The Nautilus Pirates; Foreman Domai, an Australian labor leader (voiced by Frederick Serafin), of
The Free Drones; Datajack Sinder Roze, a Trinidadian hacker (voiced by Christine Melton), of
The Data Angels; Prophet Cha Dawn, a human born on Planet (voiced by Stacy Spenser) of
The Cult of Planet; Guardian Lular H'minee, a Progenitor leader (voiced by Jeff Gordon), of
The Manifold Caretakers; and Conqueror Judaa Maar, a Progenitor leader (voiced by Jeff Gordon), of
The Manifold Usurpers.
Plot The story unfolds via the introduction video, explanations of new technologies, videos obtained for completing secret projects, interludes, and cut-scenes. The fungus is difficult to traverse, provides invisibility for the enemy, provides few resources, and spawns "mindworms" that attack population centres and military units by neurally parasitising them. Mindworms can eventually be captured and bred in captivity and used as terroristic bioweapons, and the player eventually discovers that the fungus and mindworms can
think collectively. The player discovers that Planet is a dormant semi-
sentient hive organism that will soon experience a metamorphosis which will destroy all human life. To counter this threat, the player or a computer faction builds "The Voice of Alpha Centauri" secret project, which artificially links Planet's distributed nervous system into the human Datalinks, delaying Planet's metamorphosis into full self-awareness but incidentally increasing its ultimate intelligence substantially by giving it access to all of humanity's accumulated knowledge. Finally, the player or a computer faction embraces the "Ascent to Transcendence" in which humans too join their brains with the hive organism in its metamorphosis to
godhood. Thus,
Alpha Centauri closes "with a swell of hope and wonder in place of the expected triumphalism", reassuring "that the events of the game weren't the entirety of mankind's future, but just another step."--> ==Gameplay==