This update makes the game far harder to crash — especially on unusual hardware — and gives names to things that never had them. No simulation rules change: worlds, saves and replays behave exactly as before.
Steadier on every machine. Older graphics cards now get a clear message instead of a crash when a world is too large for them; enormous windows spanning several monitors and extreme window shapes soften gracefully; a hiccup in a background worker no longer brings the whole world down; and an odd audio device — or a faulty audio mod — can't take the game with it.
Your settings survive anything. Settings, scores and achievements are now written the safe way — even a power cut in the middle of a save can't corrupt them.
Every creature answers with its name. Horses, boars, bison, ibex, elephants, antelope, bears, seals, penguins — and the birds aloft — no longer answer your hover with a generic “Wildlife”. Thirteen creatures gained their names, in every language. And hover now only speaks of animals that are actually drawn — no more phantom tooltips at the edge of sight.
The late dwellings are named too. The four dwelling forms of the later ages — from wattle homes to the rare spire — now show their proper names instead of bare labels.
The opening chronicle speaks your language. With language set to automatic, the world behind the menu now voices its chronicle in your machine's language instead of falling back to English.
Rename from the couch. The on-screen keyboard now opens in the rename dialog when following a life, so controller and touch players can name their favourites without a physical keyboard.