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

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From Discord:

UnstableVoltageYesterday at 11:41 PM
There will be no base management yet.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

From Discord:

6 months till the game comes out and they're not ready to show off base management. Supposedly one of the most important aspects of this sub-genre. Everything is fine. Nothing to be alarmed about you silly codex autists.

 

[Grotesque]

Iconic queen face is gone as well?

The internal tests showed that the target audience when seeing the old queen design didn't knew if to fight it or to fap on it.
Gollop said the Siren is the unit for the latter purpose and that two units for fapping is too much and doesn't fit the internal lore.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

"What do you folks think of these representations of our giant cocks we'll use to fuck our PC fanbase with?"

 

[PanteraNera]

From John Carpenter's The Thing to Shark Tale in just a year. Wow.

 

[PanteraNera]

 

[ArchAngel]

I can hear the hearts of PC gamers breaking.

 

[Matalarata]

Uh? Talk about a cold shower, they managed to totally kill my interest. The UI alone speaks leagues and the art design clearly has a much younger demographic in mind; colorful almost cartoonish design and an heavy axing of disturbing images, the body horror basically has disappeared. The enemy design went from a wink to Carpenter to the kind of creatures young kids think as "creepy" or "mean" (invertebrates and arthropods, mostly).
This is frankly quite strange, there's no such an high request for this kind of games for consoles and the younger generation, while the market has shown time and again how the more mature portion of the PC customers are starved for something like what the early draft of this project proposed.

I will check some review once it's out, in case it manages to deliver on the gameplay aspect. A quick look at that user interface though is more than enough to help me keep my expectations low.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Uh? Talk about a cold shower, they managed to totally kill my interest. The UI alone speaks leagues and the art design clearly has a much younger demographic in mind; colorful almost cartoonish design and an heavy axing of disturbing images, the body horror basically has disappeared. The enemy design went from a wink to Carpenter to the kind of creatures young kids think as "creepy" or "mean" (invertebrates and arthropods, mostly).
This is frankly quite strange, there's no such an high request for this kind of games for consoles and the younger generation, while the market has shown time and again how the more mature portion of the PC customers are starved for something like what the early draft of this project proposed.

I will check some review once it's out, in case it manages to deliver on the gameplay aspect. A quick look at that user interface though is more than enough to help me keep my expectations low.

But we're just making stuff up when we said things were going to change. If anything this vindicates Unstable Voltage. The features he listed will be in the game. Just cut down and smoothed over for the no doubt millions of Fortnite players who now crave a slow paced and ponderous Grand Strategy game.

 

[The Anus Of Discontent]

Uh? Talk about a cold shower, they managed to totally kill my interest. The UI alone speaks leagues and the art design clearly has a much younger demographic in mind; colorful almost cartoonish design and an heavy axing of disturbing images, the body horror basically has disappeared. The enemy design went from a wink to Carpenter to the kind of creatures young kids think as "creepy" or "mean" (invertebrates and arthropods, mostly).

Precisely my thoughts. I do not understand it in the slightest. My only real theory is, after getting that fat cash injection from Microsoft, and the blessing for an xbox release, they said they do not want to be associated with blood, gore, grit, and body horror. When I picture Microsoft, I see ( other than corporate greed ) clean, sci-fi and cartoony. Appeal to the younger demographic. Halo, Age of Empires, Minecraft, they all fit the bill. What horror games, or even just visually disturbing games are there for the Xbox this year? Resident Evil and that's really it that I know of.
I can completely see Gollop throwing away any kind of artistic intergrity, toning down the graphics, dumbing down the gameplay, and turning that much promised 'Oh the geoscape will play the biggest role ever, it will kind of even be an 4x game!' into a pathetic afterthought, all for the sake of being partnered with a mega corporation like Microsoft, and being paid to do it.
How much did Snapshot games get from no name Joes? One million from Fig, and another million from pre-orders? 2 million is a drop in the bucket in comparison to what they might be getting from this partnership.
Abomination: The Nemesis Project showed that a gritty and gruesome setting and a striking style can prop up even mechanically a piece of shit game.

 

[Dayyālu]

Abomination: The Nemesis Project showed that a gritty and gruesome setting and a striking style can prop up even mechanically a piece of shit game.

You know, I was just thinking about Abomination.

Like Disciples 2, a mediocre game you played just for the phenomenal ambience.

 

[Latelistener]

Precisely my thoughts. I do not understand it in the slightest. My only real theory is, after getting that fat cash injection from Microsoft, and the blessing for an xbox release, they said they do not want to be associated with blood, gore, grit, and body horror. When I picture Microsoft, I see ( other than corporate greed ) clean, sci-fi and cartoony. Appeal to the younger demographic. Halo, Age of Empires, Minecraft, they all fit the bill. What horror games, or even just visually disturbing games are there for the Xbox this year? Resident Evil and that's really it that I know of.

To be honest, I don't think anyone here believes in the explanation UnstableVoltage gave us, that the art style was changed to fit the writing. If anything, it's cheaper and more sensible to do the opposite. Reworking all of the 2D and 3D assets they made during the Fig campaign is not cheap, unless MS is paying for it and even added a hefty bonus on the top of it. I don't blame UV, he seems to be a decent guy, unlike whoever is making all these decisions instead of doing what was promised.

 

[Edija]

The scenario will probably be very similar as with the Firaxis XCOM games. XCOM was pretty popular even with people who haven't played the original games, while Xenonauts, a game that is really more in the spirit of the old XCOM games, had very little commercial success (at least when you compare it to the Firaxis games). A similar thing might happen here, Xenonauts 2 might be more XCOM than Phoenix Point, but I still think that it will sell poorly. Phoenix point will probably sell well, especially if they continue with the normification of the game.

 

[ArchAngel]

The scenario will probably be very similar as with the Firaxis XCOM games. XCOM was pretty popular even with people who haven't played the original games, while Xenonauts, a game that is really more in the spirit of the old XCOM games, had very little commercial success (at least when you compare it to the Firaxis games). A similar thing might happen here, Xenonauts 2 might be more XCOM than Phoenix Point, but I still think that it will sell poorly. Phoenix point will probably sell well, especially if they continue with the normification of the game.

Modern audience look at graphics and presentation first and mechanics second. Xenonauts done in nuXcom engine, looking like nuXcom would have sold a lot.

 

[Latelistener]

The scenario will probably be very similar as with the Firaxis XCOM games. XCOM was pretty popular even with people who haven't played the original games, while Xenonauts, a game that is really more in the spirit of the old XCOM games, had very little commercial success (at least when you compare it to the Firaxis games).

I wouldn't call XCOM a big commercial success. 2K definitely expected more, considering the budget. They spent a lot of resources making it console-friendly (not just UI, but cutscenes and dialogues) and it was a flop on consoles. PC pulled them out of the hole, not least thanks to Long War.

With XCOM 2 they became a bit smarter and released it on PC first while promoting modding. Console sales were non-existent this time. They sold 500k copies on PC in first week, but only 57k on consoles.

https://www.thetechgame.com/News/sid=9440/xcom-2-has-sold-more-than-500k-copies-in-first-week.html
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/266...d-57k-units-first-week-at-retail-on-consoles/

 

[udm]

I don't blame UV, he seems to be a decent guy, unlike whoever is making all these decisions instead of doing what was promised.

Agreed. The fact that he's still hanging around despite all the shit we're flinging at him shows that he is at the very least committed to doing his job in the best damn way that he can.

Of course, that being said, I'll never pay $100 for another Gollop game again. I will eat these words if PP turns out to be a worthy successor to UFOEU, but at this point I highly doubt it will.

 

[Frusciante]

Sometimes I find the Codex a bit puzzling, some games seem to get huge amounts of hate for no reason at all, with this game as a prima example. Art always changes over the course of development and for me the artsyle is miles and miles above NuXcom. This sentinel above is a good example, for me it's looks pretty cool but for some reason it gets a lot of hate because there is one variant with colors (oh the horror).

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Sometimes I find the Codex a bit puzzling, some games seem to get huge amounts of hate for no reason at all, with this game as a prima example. Art always changes over the course of development and for me the artsyle is miles and miles above NuXcom. This sentinel above is a good example, for me it's looks pretty cool but for some reason it gets a lot of hate because there is one variant with colors (oh the horror).

Best part of Sentinel "hate" is that it was UnstableVoltage who posted that Shark Tale comparison picture to Discord.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The scenario will probably be very similar as with the Firaxis XCOM games. XCOM was pretty popular even with people who haven't played the original games, while Xenonauts, a game that is really more in the spirit of the old XCOM games, had very little commercial success (at least when you compare it to the Firaxis games). A similar thing might happen here, Xenonauts 2 might be more XCOM than Phoenix Point, but I still think that it will sell poorly. Phoenix point will probably sell well, especially if they continue with the normification of the game.

This game will not sell well on consoles. It is just another example of a developer playing both sides and, in the process, alienating a smaller pc audience that exists while trying to please a big console audience that exists only in their minds as no one will give a fuck about a casual game like Phoenix Point while playing the real deal, hardcore balls to the wall visceral experience of Red Dad 2 or whatever.

Of course, taking a pc genre/franchise and going full retard with it gunning for console "gamers" can be a (very) viable strategy, but not the way they're doing it and not with the game they have.

 

[The Fish]

Sometimes I find the Codex a bit puzzling, some games seem to get huge amounts of hate for no reason at all, with this game as a prima example. Art always changes over the course of development and for me the artsyle is miles and miles above NuXcom. This sentinel above is a good example, for me it's looks pretty cool but for some reason it gets a lot of hate because there is one variant with colors (oh the horror).

Irreparable trauma from the boardgamifying and consolisation of XCOM.

 

[Latelistener]

Sometimes I find the Codex a bit puzzling, some games seem to get huge amounts of hate for no reason at all, with this game as a prima example. Art always changes over the course of development and for me the artsyle is miles and miles above NuXcom. This sentinel above is a good example, for me it's looks pretty cool but for some reason it gets a lot of hate because there is one variant with colors (oh the horror).

I'd say it's the Xbox version people are mostly upset about. We didn't know about their dealings with MS when the visual changes became apparent, but it may be the real cause.

Now they're developing 2 versions of the game at the same time, which is not a good thing, since both of them will receive less attention and Snapshot is not a big studio.

UnstableVoltage make it sound like it's an easy thing to put a game on consoles, but there is an epic struggle for every fps. What I'm saying is, PC UI may not be the only thing that will suffer. I'm not really sure how that weak Jaguar CPU is suppose to handle destruction physics they showed.

 

[Shog-goth]

Now they're developing 2 versions of the game at the same time

I'd say it's even worse: they're developing the same version for 2 platforms fundamentally opposed.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[PanteraNera]