The last transmission from X Rebirth was back in 2011. Originally due out that year, we decoded juicy details about your spaceship, your drones, and the boss-around-able NPCs manning your craft. Then the space simulation vanished back into the star-womb to continue its gestation. Nearly two years later, it’s ready to be reborn, with a confident trailer and a release date of November 15 for Europe, and November 19 for North America.
The trailer shows that they’ve managed to cram everything we love about hard sci-fi into a convenient game-shaped package: space highways, intergalactic trade routes, and a cockpit that lets you fire explosion-causing lasers in a variety of pretty colors
What took so long with the whole birthing process, anyway? Egosoft head Bernd Lehahn says that it was all about embiggening the universe. “Our goal with the design of X Rebirth was to achieve a huge scale,” he explains in this video, the first of X Rebirth’s series of development diaries. “I do not mean the physical size of the universe, which is easy to increase. I am talking about a living, breathing futuristic universe crawling with life.”
You should see this as an innovative new jaunt into the X universe. As with previous games in the series, you’ll get to Trade, Fight, Build, Think, but now there’s all-new design and a significant graphical update. Also, you apparently won’t need a “PhD in advanced space game menus” to get through Rebirth, which is great news for those of us who didn’t land a scholarship at space college. The Steam page is up, too. Though there are no details on pricing yet, we are given an idea of just how much computer muscle we’ll require to run all those galaxies.
Took 'em two years longer than they said it would, but I'm so happy!
The Vortex Empire: I think the real question is obviously how a supervolcano eruption wiping out vast swathes of the country would affect the 2016 election. Borgholio: The GOP would blame Obama and use the subsequent nuclear winter to debunk global warming.
So this looks interesting and I've never touched the X series before but seriously guys? Get a script writer for your trailer, you repeated yourself. What's worse rather than give the tagline then explore each section you explored each section (Out of order) then gave the tag line.
Give me a 100$ commission and I could have churned out something much better using the same footage in half the time.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
I really hope that doesn't extend to the in game mission writing this time round. The previous title had such wonderful missions as "follow this guy going at very slow speed for literally an hour* until he leads you to his base, then be killed instantly as your ship is way to weak to kill the 20 pirates we spawn to ruin you (but you had no way to know this in advance)". Immense tedium followed by absurd unwinnable fight if you attempt the mission too early, immense tedium followed by trivial fight if you do it once you buy yourself a capital ship or something.
*of course there's time compression, but as its a stealth tailing mission if you get too close you fail, and the autopilot set to match speeds and follow catches him up and you get too close due to his erratic path.
I hope they've done some rebalancing in the economy, the older ones the most profitable goods were the easiest ones to build: get a solar cell factory or another raw materials producer and you get the most profit, so theres no reason to go for anything higher tech. Also prices tended to equilibrate galaxy wide.
They've got a massive scope and really interesting potential gameplay, I hope they've managed to pull it off this time. I sunk a huge amount of time into earlier X games, but I can't see myself doing it again if the gameplay hasn't become significantly better balanced.
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Steel wrote:I really hope that doesn't extend to the in game mission writing this time round. The previous title had such wonderful missions as "follow this guy going at very slow speed for literally an hour* until he leads you to his base, then be killed instantly as your ship is way to weak to kill the 20 pirates we spawn to ruin you (but you had no way to know this in advance)". Immense tedium followed by absurd unwinnable fight if you attempt the mission too early, immense tedium followed by trivial fight if you do it once you buy yourself a capital ship or something.
If that's the mission I'm thinking off there's a third option you missed, something Escape Velocity players call the Not the Nine O'Clock News Maneuver. Fly away from the station to lead the pirate fighters away from it, then double back around them and scan the station while they catch up.
Granted, I've always ignored the plot altogether except for the rewards. Screwing around in the sandbox has always been the series' main attraction.
The Vortex Empire: I think the real question is obviously how a supervolcano eruption wiping out vast swathes of the country would affect the 2016 election. Borgholio: The GOP would blame Obama and use the subsequent nuclear winter to debunk global warming.
Steel wrote:I really hope that doesn't extend to the in game mission writing this time round. The previous title had such wonderful missions as "follow this guy going at very slow speed for literally an hour* until he leads you to his base, then be killed instantly as your ship is way to weak to kill the 20 pirates we spawn to ruin you (but you had no way to know this in advance)". Immense tedium followed by absurd unwinnable fight if you attempt the mission too early, immense tedium followed by trivial fight if you do it once you buy yourself a capital ship or something.
If that's the mission I'm thinking off there's a third option you missed, something Escape Velocity players call the Not the Nine O'Clock News Maneuver. Fly away from the station to lead the pirate fighters away from it, then double back around them and scan the station while they catch up.
Granted, I've always ignored the plot altogether except for the rewards. Screwing around in the sandbox has always been the series' main attraction.
First sign I had of danger was 'you are dead' floating over the screen. Buggered if I was sitting through that again. In fact many hours more as the game didn't autosave so I would have been way way back.
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What a strange coincidence, just days ago I was looking for a large-scale space sim and bought X3 Reunion. I'm enjoying it, but were they ever right about those game menus...
Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?
- Raw Shark
Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent.
The big question is, whether finally the game will not be boring. Good looking locations and ambient traffic are nothing new, but didn't get a proper appearance in any space game before.
Problem is, the basic idea of being a space trader is just amazingly boring - haul X cargo to Y destination for Z minutes - get 10% more money. Anything that could have been done to that basic gameplay mechanic has been done in Elite and refurbished so many times, I lost both count and interest. There are people out there who like spreadsheet simulators, hence EVE, but at least it's a little more interesting due to being an mmo. Here they try to reuse the same old tired mechanic again in a singleplayer game and gun for immersion - something X's were never good at.
Trailers and previews are pleasant to look at, but for me that's pretty much it.
Oh, now you get ship and station interiors, so there's nothing to do over even more space. So most probably the same old tired dog and pony show, only with more ambient occlusion.
What I would do in X3 is build up enough wealth to buy ships with autopilot software and have them do trading for me while I spent most of my time in a Titan shooting things.
Took Egosoft long enough to say when it'll be ready, let's hope after all this time we get a finished product and not the bug-riddled mess that X3R was when it was first released
