Forget everything optimistic about Civilization: Beyond Earth when compared to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Throw it all out the window, and just look at the future of humanity as represented in the game. It can get really depressing or outright terrifying if you really think about it.
- All three of the affinities are fundamentally about forcing what you as the leader sees as the right future for humanity upon everyone else.
- Purity: With Purity, not only is it all about glorifying the past on Old Earth into an idealized version of what really happened, it also contains a strong sense of bigotry against those that modified themselves in the other two affinities. With one of the in-game quotes that appears when you get to the late game level affinity ranking for purity, it outright states that those who reject their birth form are no longer human, and no longer part of the family, heavily implying that because of that, anything you do to them is fair game. Effectively making a militant Purity faction A Nazi by Any Other Name. The worst horror of the Purity affinity, however, might very well be its final goal: To recreate Earth as it once was. The Earth which *ahem*, eventually destroyed itself in part or entirely due to the greed and negligence of it's indigenous civilized species. Even the most well-meaning Purist may be dooming humanity to forget it's hard-learned lesson and repeat the Great Mistake at some point in the future.
- Supremacy: It's not like Supremacy is much better - sure, they do try to expand beyond the "mistakes" of Purity, but it instead involves turning you into more machine than man. The Supremacy victory involves invading Earth to "Emancipate" the surviving population from their human forms - and for the record, a LOT of them don't want to go through with the process. That's right, Supremacy's end goal is Cybermen by way of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
- Harmony: A lot of people stereotype the Harmony affinity as a very peace-loving, eco-hippie, Avatar-esque ideology. Thinking about it, Harmony is really all about taking lessons from the toothy, chittering horrors that infest the planet and splicing their DNA into their citizens to create a new race of freakish mutant Half Human Hybrids, even if it is to help them adapt to the hostile alien ecosystem. Not to mention cloning and genetically modifying the alien wildlife and unleashing them as weapons of war, and also possibly being played for suckers by the alien ecosystem and becoming a horrible biological version of the Borg. Finally, they're the only affinity whose unique victory condition doesn't involve re-establishing contact with Earth, suggesting that they've become so detached from humanity that they no longer care about their dying homeworld.
- The Hybrid affinities are just as bad if not worse.
- Purity-Supremacy believes in the complete separation of man and machine, while advancing their technology. So while Humanity stays the same their society revolves around turning their machine creations into a slave race to do their bidding.
- Harmony-Purity seeks to evolve humanity to "biological perfection" which gives the implication that they believe in and are trying to achieve some sort of Master Race, which opens a whole new can of worms on what sorts of things historical civilisations have done trying to achieve this.
- Harmony-Supremacy is probably the most unambiguously sinister alignment — While the other affinities are chasing some philosophical ideal, Harmony-Supremacy cares only for power and survival at any cost. Their bodies and vehicles are a bizarre mishmash of alien and cybernetic parts, to the point where only their generally humanoid shape is the only clue that they were ever human to begin with. Notably, Word of God says that this negative perception exists in-universe as well, as all the other affinities think these guys are going too far.
- With the possible exception of Contact, every victory is bad in its own way.
- Emancipation has a Supremacy focused colony return to earth, but as technology worshiping cyborgs who begin rounding people up and forcibly converting them. By the time they're done, the Purity/Purity-Supremacy colonies will be the last real humans left. Assuming they haven't been wiped out already.
- Transcendence revolves around a Harmony colony successfully awakening the planet's consciousness and merging with it. They've achieved total synthesis with the planet, but long since forgotten about the rest of humanity back on Earth. So while the colonists enjoy communing with their new world, the rest of the human race is left to slowly die out on their old one.
- Promised Land is seemingly the best option. Bringing everyone on earth to their new world and building homes for them. Unfortunately the colony has completely forgotten the lessons of the past, which could lead to the same mistakes that doomed Earth.
- Finally there is Domination, where the colony, regardless of affinity simply conquers the world. All those other colonist's hopes of building a new future for humanity being crushed as one ruthlessly destroys anyone who tries to resist them.
- Actually, the Contact is probably the worst offender. Just think of it - there is an alien intelligence somewhere among the stars that you know nothing about. You don't know its morals. You don't know its motivations. You don't know its standards. You don't know if it will shake you hand in a greeting, or wipe out your entire species. And you basically give them your home address and invite them in.
- The idea of a Harmony-Supremacy colony completing the Emancipation victory. All the humans on Earth are rounded up and forcibly converted into the horrifying alien-cyborg hybrids that Harmony-Supremacy considers "human evolution".
- Even if one is to just look at the day-to-day life of the average citizens by examining some of the entries from the Civilopedia, you will discover that all the colonies are fundamentally totalitarian socialist states in which the biggest rules are followed by more rules, where state industries produce all the goods under the beneficial direction of the leadership (The text for the 'Central Planning' virtue outright states that the economic model of the settlements are based on that of the Old Soviet Union, with their Five Year Plans and all, while a lot of quests are about you as the colonial leader deciding where to allocate resources). With the virtues on the might tree all about either conscripting civilians into civil engineer corps for government engineering projects (Brutal Efficiency), or lowering maintenance cost of military units by forcing civilian families to house them in their own homes (Democratized Quartering). Not only that, regardless of your chosen affinity, you are looking at the slow disintegration of any individuality of the citizens, from the CEL Cradle enabling the government to subconsciously brainwash their people, to the Civil Creche in which all citizens required by law to eat the same food at the same place in order to lower overall food consumption in the cities. Not to mention the All-Seer orbital unit which enables the government to monitor all of it's citizens living in it's coverage area at all times, or the the Human Hive wonder, in which rigid behavioral control and social indoctrination effectively reduces everyone into a single hive mind without even being aware of it. Under this kind of social engineering, the entire idea of the individual is slowly being erased, to the point where the your colonies will become a true collectivist society.
- Even then, that all depends on how one chooses to develop one's colony as well as the nation (or corporation) in question.
- Meditative training for Chungsu agents on Earth was said to involve a pressurized deep-diving suit, an abyssal trench, complete isolation, and little else. It is small wonder that Hae Jae Moon carries himself with such an otherworldly, detached, and inordinately sociopathic air.
