& Conquer. The elements of smart villagers and terrain-reforming, he said, "adds a whole level of gameplay not found in those titles." Bullfrog representative Brian Allen asserted that these departures distinguished Populous: The Beginning from other real-time strategy games on the market at the time. In some aspects, the developers were forced to remove features due to technical constraints; for example, the "Plague" spell from previous Populous titles was dropped because in practice the spell was too frustrating. Art lead Phil McLaughlin recalled that they wanted the characters to look primitive yet familiar, as opposed to something too fantastic; the final characters had to be constructed from very few polygons, so character concepts (done by Mark Pitcher) did not always satisfactorily translate to the finished product. Textures were assigned to different altitudes of the map and blended using masks, allowing for vibrant and varied landscapes without too much developer effort. The music was composed by Mark Knight, who had joined Bullfrog's team in 1997. A number of strategy and god games being produced in 1998 and 1999, especially at Electronic Arts, where Populous: The Beginning was expected to be one of its standout titles. Originally, the game was known as Populous: The Third Coming, but the name was changed by the time the game was shown in a fully playable beta form in late 1998. Bullfrog released an expansion to Populous: The Beginning, Undiscovered Worlds in 1999. This add-on was only made available in the UK and US, and offered twelve new single-player and twelve multiplayer levels, with a continuation of the storyline begun in the previous game, where the player takes on the role of a new shaman who must restore peace to the solar system. Reception Populous: The Beginning received generally favorable reviews on release with some strong criticisms to follow. IGN's Ward Trent was especially smitten with the immersive 3D graphics. Edge stated, "previous Bullfrog games have always placed gameplay above graphical finesse, but that's no longer the case." GameSpot's reviewer Ron Dulin appreciated how The Beginning was a daring revamp of the series, instead of a safe, slightly modified sequel (like the earlier Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods). Computer and Video Games rated The Beginning as a "better play" than the original. Complaints about the game centered on the difficulty of controlling followers, the simplicity of gameplay, and the tension between game styles. The