Key Preview Takeaways:Switching cultures is no longer mandatory.Your society is constructed of building blocks picked up along the way from multiple different cultures.Nature plays a much larger role than it did in the first Humankind.Historical 4X games tend to focus on a group of people you might call a nation, an empire, or indeed, a civilization. Amplitude's Humankind series is no different, but its upcoming second entry is looking at these concepts from a slightly different angle. After all, the idea of a shared identity comes from the stories we tell ourselves and each other about who we are as much as anything. And that is the starting point for charting a course through the ages in Humankind 2.While the original Humankind and other staples of the genre typically begin with choosing a specific historical culture like the Greeks or the Egyptians, Humankind 2 is a bit different. The first choice you will make is between one of what I counted to be 19 different founding myths based on real-world oral traditions, each of which corresponds to at least one historical culture. This is the tale of how your people came to be, in their own minds.We caught a glimpse of the Wild Twins origin, which gives bonuses for settling near wild animals and is associated with the Etruscans, and the Flood Tamers, which is ideally suited for fertile river valleys and is associated with the Ancient Egyptians. The hands-off demo we saw was using Humankind 2's new Historical Mode, which is set on a non-randomized map of Earth and placed each of these starter cultures in the region they are from in real life. Of course, this won't be the only way to play, with randomized worlds also being an option.While the first Humankind shook up the genre by forcing you to pick a new culture in each of its six eras, a choice made even more controversial when it showed up in Civilization 7, Humankind 2 does not make this mandatory. It will have more than 70 cultures at launch spread out over the eras, but you can pick one at the very dawn of history and stick with it to the end. Each culture has an era or a set of eras in which it can be selected for the first time. Ancient Egypt, for example, can be selected in the first or second era. But if you already are that culture, you will never be forced to abandon it.It may eventually make sense to do so for you. Amplitude mentioned you might get a choice to pick "a different culture associated with Egypt" in the later eras. But even keeping the "Ancient" Egyptians alive into modern times won't mean your culture stays completely static due to how you assemble a society out of different bonuses.Brick by BrickEach of the more than 70 cultures has their own specific customs tree to pull from. In the case of Ancient Egypt, this includes staples like Embalming, Hieroglyphics, and the office of the Pharaoh. These slot into what was, at least initially, 10 tradition slots that can be active at any one time. These can be pulled from any of the cultures you've played as throughout the run. So even if you choose to become the Carthaginians in the second era, you could keep the Pharaoh tradition active as long as you want.There are even two special slots, called Legacies, which are rewards for completing a culture's tree. Each culture lets you pick one of two possible legacies to carry forward, which are more powerful than normal traditions. For Ancient Egypt, these are Scale of Eternity, which cements your people's legacy of monumental architecture, and Conquering Dynasty, which sets you on a path of military expansion in the name of the God-King.So what does that mean for rulers who want to keep the same culture all game? Well, historical cultures are not the only way to gain new traditions. Another major source is Adaptations, which are earned based on where your civilization is located. An Egyptian player who settles in the desert will get access to different adaptations than one that settles in the Arctic, even though they will share the Ancient Egypt tradition tree in common. On top of this, you can also adopt a limited number of traditions from cultures you come into contact with through acculturation, allowing your society to keep advancing with the times based on what your neighbors are doing.If you do want to pick a new culture at the start of a new era, there are a few more restrictions on that now than the original game's first-come, first-served free-for-all. You’ll initially get a choice of cultures with which yours have a real-world shared history. For Ancient Egypt, their natural progression for Era 2 is the Persians. Second, you can pick a culture with shared geography. If you're playing Ancient Egypt in their historical starting position, this includes the Berbers (also available as an Era 1 pick) or the Carthaginians. And finally, you can adopt the culture of another group you have come into contact with in the current era. We were shown Egypt able to become the Goths.Against the ElementsWhile you attempt to build a culture that can withstand the ages, Mother Earth herself won't be sitting idly by. Nature's role in history is seeing a renewed emphasis in Humankind 2, including mechanics for natural and human-caused climate change. We were shown, for example, that shifts in the global climate like the Medieval Warming Period or the Little Ice Age might cause whole biomes to shift in character. Plains regions which began as humid might suddenly become arid, changing their resource potentials and potentially leading to instability. Technology can begin to influence this in both directions in the later eras.Aside from all this fresh flash, Humankind 2 looks like a fairly recognizable historical 4X game. We didn't get to dig too deep into the fine details of the mechanics, but the familiar resources of Money, Food, Production, Knowledge, Faith, and Authority were all visible in the UI. The stylized 3D map looks great, if a bit cramped on the Historical Earth version. Cities will dominate regions rather than acquiring individual tiles, like in most of Amplitude's other games. And elevation is still clearly visible.Notably, in the demo we saw of Historical Mode, there were no empty regions by the end of Era 1. I was told the Neolithic phase is still part of the journey, but areas of the map you don't settle in right away will end up populated with their historical cultures fairly quickly, forcing you to expand by conquest or diplomacy rather than settling virgin fields.Some other cultures we saw included the Romans and the Thule people of the prehistoric Arctic. Other Era 1 starting locations visible on the Historical Mode map, though we didn't get to see their names, included the Yucatan Peninsula, Northern Mexico, the American Great Lakes, Britain, Scandinavia, Southern France, Greece, the Carpathian Basin, West Africa, Central Africa, Mesopotamia, the Altai Mountains, the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, and China's Yangtze River.March of ProgressCities seem to be following the "unpacked" model of most recent 4X games, sprawling across many tiles. A brief glimpse of modern Paris showed an urban footprint covering most of the region. I raised a concern about this since I don't particularly like it when the whole map is covered in buildings by the endgame. I prefer some areas to stay wild or rural in appearance to contrast the urban centers. And I was assured by Amplitude that there will be incentives not to blanket everything in concrete.It's hard to say much about Humankind 2 without getting my own hands on it, of course. But from what little we were shown, I'm feeling pretty positive about the direction it's taking. Assembling a unique legacy from many cultural influences over the course of a campaign while still having the option to hold onto that core identity you started with seems like a shrewd solution to the debate between monolithic cultures and culture-switching. Giving nature a bigger part to play, I hope, will lead to more dynamic and memorable scenarios. And everything from monumental wonders to humble quarries looks slick and flavorful.Humankind 2 is set to release on PC in 2027.