I have to say something in Endless Space 2's favor that the more I think about it every day, the more this impresses me.  Endless Space 2 has to be the first entry of... uhm, well, anything in a game in the last ten years I've played where the "human" option isn't the most immediately appealing to me. Understand that I'm usually part of the statistic here, too.  80% of my alts in Guild Wars 2 for instance are all humans.  It's even true of series by this developer - when I play Endless Legend, I'm always a little bit uncomfortable if I pick anything but Vaulters/Mezari.

This isn't the fault of any game designer, either:  as a human in real life, who cares about human values and human beauty and so on, it goes against everything in me to pick a race that either doesn't share those values/aesthetic or may even be opposed to them. A lot of developers get around this by either making every option essentially human aesthetically or don't even have a human option at all. It's easy to call players like me as having no imagination, but for me the problem is almost the opposite -- whenever I think too deeply about what choice I'm making at the character or race select screen, it's hard to talk me into playing anything else because I think too much about who I'm siding with.

Endless Space 2 is different.

Let's talk about the "human" faction -- the United Empire is... well, very human. But definitely not the glorified and prettied-up version of humanity we usually see in these games. It's humanity in its truest form: with a lot of potential for beauty, but an exterior that often is exploitative, selfish and aggressive.  Emperor Zelavas is essentially both a very interesting character's story to play, but more to the point is that he's an awesome villain figure. As a person who is mostly new to playing 4X seriously, I've been exploring the mechanics in practice 1v1 sandbox matches against a United Empire AI and he... is almost perfect in that role as an antagonist. He isn't necessarily an all-bad or all-vile person, he can quite affable even. But that's the face of humanity in this game, if you play humans, you embrace both the beauty and ugliness.  On the flipside of things, the Horatio are almost a satire of the sort of player who mostly only empathize with things like themselves or their own personal aesthetic.  (again, including myself)

And... strangely, I don't find myself gravitating towards playing the UE at all. If anything, the Vodyani speak more to me in that pursuit, as they have a lot of the aesthetic of humanity I find attractive and they even turn others into themselves. If they're deemed worthy, that is. You see this in other areas of ES2 too. If you read the Lumeris comic you can see just how much they are close to humanity in sense of beauty or aesthetics. And in many ways, as a faction, they play a lot closer to the role reserved for humanity in most 4X games.  Heck, I even found myself wondering about the possibility that they're actually closer genetically to humans than the Mezari are, since we sometimes see that in nature thanks to convergent evolution. Not to mention that in the Endless universe, it's established that the fall of the United Empire wouldn't necessarily imply the genocide of the "human" race. It would depend a lot on the circumstances and worst case scenario there'd still be plenty of scattered communities of pilgrims, refugees, minorities and mercenaries and so on.  ES2 is a bit more realistic about how things would likely play out, not as heavily marrying one's race to one's nationality. Which... in certain RL political climates I'd prefer to not get into, I find that very much appreciated.  

(On that note, my serious kudos to Amplitude for having the in-game politics not use First Past the Post voting. See this playlist for why that was a grand slam. Don't worry about the content of said videos regardless of your own political positions, CGP Grey is arguing for something that ought be appealing to everyone regardless of their political stances.)

So yeah, ES2 is probably the first game in a long time where I'm not only not scrambling to take the human option, but I find almost every race appealing in some way. It would've been easy to just make the United Empire "evil" but that would've just turned me off entirely if that other groundwork wasn't laid. And the UE aren't "evil", they're just situationally awesome villains or uneasy antiheroes. The writing and nuance in this game is spectacular.

Phew, an over 4500 character post. This went on a bit longer than I thought. Thanks to anyone who read!

Horatio, who's also a human (originally), is a Hitler on gene steroids if you think about it.

I like how softly Amplitude does the evil of the factions, without clumsily shoving it. 

Except Cravers. Did Virtuals intentionally make them with psyche of Coldsteel the Hedgehog?

Even the Cravers have some interesting nuance if you play their story, particularly if you take a certain branch. They're still as unpleasant as you'd think to look at them, but they're really no more "evil" than any other voracious insect.  (believe it or not, yes, some ants in real life are known to take slaves and later eat them)

BTW, I meant no disrespect for United Empire mains. Just the opposite, they're by far the most nuanced and compelling "space fascists" I'd ever seen. Their methods by which they try to make it in space may very well be what's needed for them to survive. And their path has a lot of potential nobility too. One thing REALLY awesome about the UE's intro is how at the very end of all the jingoistic propaganda it slowly backs away to a somber building rotting in the rain, conveying that they may need to change course or could be rotting on the vine.  To not spoil anyone who plays, the UE does have choices there and they may or may not be the best ones strategically. The story in this game is just...  *kisses fingers*

Not to mention that unlike some of the "evil" factions -- going by the Endless Space 1 definition of evil anyway -- the UE is fully capable being played benevolently without it being too inefficient. As I said, they're really amazingly, accurately "human". Also to the UE's credit, all indications are that their citizens do enjoy a better quality of life than any of us do on Earth. Dystopia doesn't necessarily mean widespread misery, VA-11 Hall-A is a great visual novel with that as an undercurrent.

Horatio... yeah, he's kind of a space racist. He may even be a space sexist -- I've been tempted to ask if female Horatio were still a thing or if they were retconned out.  (ES1 had female Horatio heroes, but not this one seemingly)   But I'll give the guy credit -- he is optimally played as a well-intentioned extremist who simply wants everyone to be as beautiful as he is. I say that because mechanically he has a pretty poor early to midgame but snowballs like mad if he splices enough genes and you unlock the late technology to turn everyone into Horatio. That is in the end measurably less horrible than genocide. I could even see Horatio being insulted at the idea he'd resort to ugly methods in dealing with ugliness. He's fascinating and I'd read a whole book on him if they wrote one.