KickStarter Phoenix Point - the new game from X-COM creator Julian Gollop

So, do they need yummy graphics? That's certainly one of the most important goals. It has to look great, and the other half of the budget has to be spend on marketing. (This is capitalism 101.)

Then again, many people still play X-COM (UFO) and TFTD. Which look ancient and have extremely bad and limited animations. (No, that is not how someone walks!) So, why do they play it, and does Julian want them to buy his new game?

If it looks great, but has gameplay equal to or worse than nuXCOM, I won't buy it. I haven't bought or played any of the Firaxis games. They're a different genre, not worth my time.


It's all about the fallacy of "race to the bottom": we want everyone to buy it, so it should be as general (nondescript) as possible. Just average the current bestsellers that come closest.

And, interestingly and fortunately enough, most of that crap fails to sell. Simply because it's indistinguishable from all the others, but has a far smaller marketing budget than the Big Names. (This is still capitalism 101.)


If you want to score, make it Epic. Demand the best. If someone can play it for just an hour, you failed. And yes, it's probably quite flawed and unbalanced. But it will sell to all those people who want that kind of game. Or make sure you have the largest marketing budget.

Anyway.

 

No, I meant it’ll take 127 things. They’re at like...5?

 

Most of this is fine, but you start off with a wild rampaging peeve of mine.

Everyone, stop jumping to conclusions when a project cites its personnel's past accomplishments. No one got pissed off that Brazil wasn't about time-traveling midgets despite being billed as "from the director of Time Bandits". Do you guys not remember that Chaos Reborn was also sold on X-Com's name? Look at this for fuck's sake. Why weren't you crying about the lackluster geoscape and where are the silacoids when that came out?

And another thing.

Where? Who said this? It's nowhere in the Fig pitch.

I've been making fun of you guys for two years

because no they didn't.

 

I have just been replaying it because I was intrigued by this promotion bonus. The game did a lot of things well actually when it comes to permadeath: constant stream of free recruits, and the ones who didn't see action got promoted over time (1/3 promotion rate compared to the soldiers in the squad). Also, the barely noticeable bonus from experience made it good to have without crippling you for taking casualties on the long run.
I'll officially be lifting ideas from Cannon Fodder from now on.

 

Totally get you and I agree!
It is stupid to be optimistic and draw conclusion.
That is why I will only support indie's/kickstarters that show the whole big picture and not just glimpses. But even than, things might turn out differently from what one might expect.

Also I had not followed Chaos Reborn, as I was not interested in that game at all. (I am not much into fantasy)

Official FAQ on the official PP website:


also on Fig right on the header, on the right side, just under the campaign bar you will spot this:

Sure it is not "official" and it was written by eurogamer, but why put it there, if it's wrong?

What I understand now, that can mean anything, thats just glimpses that got fabulously optimistic people, old time fans of X-COM interested or even made them throw their money at it. And yes, it will probably have a real-time geoscape (as we haven't seen or heard anything about that in a while), it will probably have something similar to an UFOPedia, it has a turn-based tactical battlescape. Yes you can call that an X-COM-like game. Even more so than anything else that got released in the last 20 years.

And as we have learned from Fallout 3 & 4 a successor doesn't necessarily mean that it will be a better game than the original.

You know, personally, I do not blame Bethasda for their take on Fallout. I don't like it at all, but well Fallout was not their baby.
I would have been furious if Black Isle Studio had done Fallout 3&4.
Same with Jack Solomon, I am not mad at him, or Firaxis for doing XCOM 1&2.
Can't say the same about Julian Gollop and PP, as it is his baby. Sure as he is the "father" he has (at least in a lot of countries) the right to abuse it and molest it as much as he wants.

Damn my english is bad, cause you got me confused with your fun, I took it seriously most of the times and was confused why you would change your mind so often

 

Yeah, I know ... .

*laughs it off* well there is still plenty of time, huh, uhm, nine more months ... is plenty.

Honestly, I really hope they have a lot of stuff that they are holding back, but that would be fabulously optimistic again.
Also so many comments on discord about stuff/features that has not been decided,
means that there are features they didn't even started working at.
They started late 2015 / early 2016 with production and what have they shown so far?
They still aim a release for Q4 2018.
Puzzles me.

BTW in recent news also this:

They were aiming for Q1 2018, than for late march, than it changed to late march / first week of april, now its "early april"

 

more regarding the geoscape:


also this from last year about the 4x elements:


and they won't be on E3:

 

Event heavy sounds like the opposite of simulation

 

Isn't CK2 a simulationist's paradise, though?

 

I hope this game pans out, but when I read about events where "the Disciples of Anu have an internal schism with a rebel priest advocating an alliance with the Synedrion," a voice in my head says, "Hold your hippogriffs, MRY." An incalculably big part of the pleasure of the original game was a geoscape that looked like a middle school atlas, real countries' governments paying you in real(ish) dollars, real backwater nations defecting to the aliens, real Terror Events or whatever they were called in cities whose names you remembered, etc. As much as naming the squaddies after friends and families, that was a big part of what made the game work: you'd get mad at the feckless Angolans for hosting an alien base, or the stingy Germans for slashing your funding. (The realish-world arsenal you start with is another part of this same thing.)

All this is part why the second and especially third games never really worked for me. Maybe you can have the same feeling in a fantastical setting where the Mumbos of Jumbo override the warp transistor or whatever, but I'm not so sure.

 

It's a bit of both. That game has many events that just add flavor.

 

Hm.

Hopefully they will show something decent soon to alleviate worry - so far all of this pandering and AAA aspirations does not look good :/

 

Third game was awesome. Don't listen to this man!

(I would love if they actually went with the retrofuturism look)

 

I hope events don’t mean nuXCOM-like cinematics triggered by a particular alien encounter or reaching a specific tech point.

I did enjoy XCOM, but that was one of the many gripes I had with it.

 

They barely have the money for a barebone xcom like game and you worry they will have cinematics? )
They will not. They said so, not enough funds.



I enjoyed the little clips of soldiers descending from the transporter in xcom, the interrogation clips and the autopsy ones even though they were somewhat recycled.
These would add a much needed flavor in a simulationist game and style.
Thankfully this can be achieved by others means also like good writing, small framed animated pictures for events, music, even the UI plays an important role to the mood of the game.
Some games in the late 90's had exquisite UI design that set the tone and feel of the game.
I particularly liked the ones that played with light and shadow, the UI being like a utilitarian panel that was lit from a particular angle which gave the UI a presence and tactile feel.
That is a lost art.

 

https://phoenixpoint.info/blog/2018/3/25/backer-build-one

 

I presume that those will be distributed via Steam, but what if I want to get GOG version when game is fully released?

 

However the Backer Build is distributed (which is unlikely to be Steam at this stage), you will still have the choice of a Steam or GOG key for the final release.

 

"Nikola is currently working on the free-aiming system of Phoenix Point."

what is the free aiming system more exactly?

 

This is how I see Grotesque and PanteraNera in this thread:

 

Can't talk for Grotesque but I think it's fairly accurate

 

You do realize those are Codex founding fathers? They represent everything this forum wishes to be

 

They are my heroes, I can only imagine to be only a fraction of them.