Heartwarming / Civilization: Beyond Earth

• The ENTIRETY of the opening cinematic.
  • Especially when the Orthodox priest is blessing the ship. The way religion is portrayed in that short moment is incredibly poignant.
• Depending on your views on what constitutes human happiness and the purpose of the human race, the entire game could potentially qualify as one. The game is essentially about you leading your people in humanity's ascension - At the very least (if you finish the tech tree, that is), you essentially end all starvation and sickness, uplifting humans into an optimized body and mind, who subsist on perfect foodstuffs and live in sustainable, high-tech and luxurious environments. You also push the boundaries of human knowledge itself, as your people gain understanding in every minute detail of their universe, build supercomputers so powerful it completely transcends our concept of thought, and create a technological utopia where there is a happy solution to every problem, and man is free to pursue their destinies unburdened by need and want.
  • For Supremacy players, you transcend what it means to be human, freeing them from the weakness of flesh. Their souls now residing in perfectly-engineered mechanical bodies, they move with powerful, pinpoint-precise limbs, perceive with the unerring accuracy of the most sophisticated machines, and think with all the cognitive capabilities quantum computing has to offer. Should you agree, then your people have essentially ascended to become a race of gods, with all the perfection that entails.
  • For Harmony players, no longer would your people question its place, meaning and destiny in this universe. You would have adapted and transformed yourselves to become the apex of life - perfectly in harmony with the world. As the mind flower blooms, you reach an ecological nirvana where perfect peace, contentment and fulfillment resides with every human being, and with the manipulation of the stuff of life itself, You take control of your organic nature and make it perfect, pushing the confines of organic capability. All have united with their very universe, never to be lost to pursue meaning in the chaos and detritus of creation.
  • For Purity players, it is as the first point above, that you uplift humanity to become the best they could, without losing a shred of what makes them human. With perfect science, medicine and engineering, you succeed where virtually all great leaders in history has failed, to reach the pinnacle of human condition and society. You are the architect of humanity's eventual utopia.
  • Though often regarded as the darkest of all possible options, the Supremacy-Harmony hybrid affinity can be seen as the most affirming of humanity as a quality and inherent virtue that genetic engineering cannot change nor technology take away. By embracing this path, you have made humanity as strong, resilient, and intelligent as possible through science, overlooking no method or idea that might benefit mankind. Where other affinities ban certain avenues of enhancing the human potential as immoral, unethical, or straying too far, you have more faith in humanity than that. In the end, while humanity under your leadership might look nothing like the colonists who left Earth, they are still very much human and always will be.
• The Purity affinity allows for the Promised Land Victory. The entire quest chain is about contacting Earth, creating a safe environment for the new settlers to live and bringing them to a new paradise, a second home for humanity. Given that the backstory of Beyond Earth implies that Terra is in sorry shape, this is an ending where not only humanity survives but the people back home have hope for a better future. Effectively humanity's best and brightest securing a new home for everyone else.
• Really, all the victories count from at least one perspective (if you believe what the Unreliable Narrator says about them), save for the Domination victory. In a Transcendence Victory you're ensuring that humanity will live in a utopia of sorts and will likely never destroy its planet again. In the Emancipation Victory, you similarly reunite families, and begin a relief effort to help them.
• Quite a few of the quests offer decisions that can lead to very heartwarming outcomes, especially as they set the tone for how your colony treats its people and wider world.
  • Selecting certain domestic structure quest options can see the wayward or destitute brought into the fold or otherwise protected. For example, constructing the Tidal Turbine results in a quest about it interrupting the sleep of nearby low-income households. While you can ignore their plight and ramp up energy production, you also have the option of installing sound-reducing baffles to protect their well-being.
  • Then there's that Rising Tide quest chain involving the spy agency that allows you to track and break up a slave labor ring made up of former Seeding engineers-turned-stowaways, either by re-integrating them into daily life proper, or harnessing their bolstered immune systems to serve as additional Explorers suited to the alien environment.
  • Using an expedition on a derelict settlement and discovering survivors (who are then integrated into your civilization) always brings a good feeling.
  • In a similar vein, Rising Tides gives us the Wrecked Colony Lander. Gameplay wise, if functions identically to the Derelict Settlement. Seeing one of those gives you the sense that not all of the seed ships made it to the new planet, or if they did something clearly went wrong. While they might not have had the chance to make their own colony, they can at least be part of another civilization. Assuming there's anyone left.
  • On the aliens side: another expedition, the Kraken Nest, when explored gives you control of a random aquatic unit. Mostly out of sheer gratitude since if you didn't the young kraken would eat the other alien that you just got.
• The trailer video for Rising Tides is also pretty heartwarming. Another colony ship is inbound, from Earth, long after they thought that the homeworld would no longer be capable of sending out more ships. And how do the colonists in residence react? With fireworks and eager anticipation and a welcoming party. (And scrambling a carrier group to observe the new ship landing, just in case.)
  • Fridge Brilliance, modern aircraft carriers (let alone futuristic ones) are effectively a mobile city at sea, complete with fresh water, power, living spaces and medical facilities. It'd really be the most efficient way of greeting refugees, either hostile or just needing help.
• Samatar Jama Barre's quotes come from a book or essay he wrote called "This Is Not Exile". Whereas the other leader quotes tend towards the sciences or making money or sarcastic quips, you get the feeling the man is genuinely trying to appeal to his people - or even all of humanity- to help guide them and cope with their new world, to give them hope and lift up their spirits after the trauma of the Great Mistake and the Seeding.
  "In your veins runs iron made from the heart of a long-dead star. Such does the universe love life."
  "Nothing is too small; nobody is insignificant. The biggest trees grow from the smallest seeds."
  "See the planet as a mother who loves her children and nourishes their growth, and much of this new world becomes less mysterious."