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

[lightbane]

It seems it will be an unholy fusion of Nu-Com and classic UFO the Geoscape thing, that's what I got from these comments. It doesn't bode too well, but hope is eternal, yadda yadda.

"I heard you people were saying something about all males created in the Unreal engine were always steroid freaks, right? Dare to say that again, punk?"

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Well the interview also stated that 50-60 people worked on it for 3 1/2 to 4 years, also VO. Do the math.
Its save to assume that Firaxis had a way way way higher budget than PP, that is all I am saying.
Not going to argue or discuss about what is AAA and what not.

And Child of Light at some point during development has something like 40 people on it for a time. They didn't have 50 or 60 people (he doesn't even know how many people were on the teamMin that interview) working on XCOM that whole time. I'm pretty sure they had a fairly small team when they were doing work on that farmhouse demo, it's not like they had 50 people working on it the whole time. And in comparison to big AAA games, 50 isn't a big team. Those AAA games can have hundreds of people on them.

I didn't say anything about this game having a budget the size of XCOM. Although I imagine one could make a game that looks far better than XCOM for less than XCOM cost if it cost more than a few million. That indie fighting game Skullgirls cost under two million, and I'd assume more work went into animating one character in that than probably everyone in XCOM.

In my eyes you are comparing apples with bananas here.
I do not care about graphics, so I am the wrong person to talk about that.
What other TBS game had better graphics in 2012 than XCOM?

I'd say Operation Darkness has better looking character models, better looking heads on the models, and that's a little Japanese game from 2007. Likewise I'd say the 2008 Valkyria Chronicles was a far more impressive game visually than XCOM, despite coming out years before it. Same with Resonance of Fate, which came a couple years before XCOM. While not games with turn-based tactical gameplay, there were JRPGs with turn based combat like Lost Odyssey and those Final Fantasy 13 games that were also way more visually impressive than XCOM was. Even something like Metal Gear Acid! 2 for the PSP gets across a bulky stylized look XCOM has better than XCOM, (it also has better faces when you're up close to the models) although that's more down to designs than graphics power.

If you had followed my postings in this very thread, you would know that my opinion is that most NuXCOM players will not like PP, because of lacking/missing VO, and lacking cinematic feel. Probably calling PP a cheap rip off.

What "cinematic feel" is this missing that XCOM has? It does the shifting camera stuff XCOM does. And it ain't like being cinematic was a strong point for XCOM. It's not like XCOM was Front Mission 5 or something.

This isn't going to have little voice acted bits for the soliders during combat? You click on a solider and he says some things as been around in video games since like Dune 2.

 

[Grif]

I never played xcom Apocalypse. Didnt that game have factions or am I just making that up? If so, how was it handled?

It had a lot of factions, all with different backgrounds and agendas. If you got the weapon manufacturer pissed off they wouldn't sell you weapons and so on. It was awesome, all simulated, no mission things required. The only thing that was "scripted" I guess was that the cult would end up hating you eventually even if you tried to play nice.

I don't think even that was "scripted" per se, the aliens would just keep doing influence events against the cult and it was impossible to keep up.
Another thing about the faction system was that once a group was infiltrated by the aliens, that was it - there was no way to "cure" them, they were enemies forever. Made the whole game very urgent, gotta shoot down every UFO or they might take over something important.

The worst part was when the "transportation" megacorp turns hostile. Suddenly you can't even move your goods around the city (without some intense micromanagement), and your agents are now stuck to walking if you don't assign them vehicles. Literally.

 

[Destroid]

 

[Darth Roxor]

nice pix

too bad about the game

 

[luinthoron]

here is some of the statements that got my hopes up regarding the tactical part of PP (and than came the PC Gamer Weekend demo):

With that last quote, let's rewatch the PC Gamer Weekend demo again .
Must be me, but ... it looks pretty much the same as the fig-prototype ... besides the updated graphics.

What are you on? Let's take a look...

Cover:
Prototype - flat damage reduction
Demo - WYSIWYG

Shooting:
Prototype - all shots hit
Demo - shooter and weapon accuracy matters, as does cover

Damage:
Prototype - based on distance
Demo - properly based on projectiles hitting the target

Movement:
Prototype - shooting ends movement unless special abilities are used
Demo - leftover TU can be used after shooting as well

I'm sure there's more I've forgotten to add, but this should do for now.

 

[ArchAngel]

here is some of the statements that got my hopes up regarding the tactical part of PP (and than came the PC Gamer Weekend demo):

With that last quote, let's rewatch the PC Gamer Weekend demo again .
Must be me, but ... it looks pretty much the same as the fig-prototype ... besides the updated graphics.

What are you on? Let's take a look...

Cover:
Prototype - flat damage reduction
Demo - WYSIWYG

Shooting:
Prototype - all shots hit
Demo - shooter and weapon accuracy matters, as does cover

Damage:
Prototype - based on distance
Demo - properly based on projectiles hitting the target

Movement:
Prototype - shooting ends movement unless special abilities are used
Demo - leftover TU can be used after shooting as well

I'm sure there's more I've forgotten to add, but this should do for now.

He (and his circle jerk buddy) is ON a shitposting spree.. don't bring facts into it, you are ruining his fun :D

 

[PanteraNera]

here is some of the statements that got my hopes up regarding the tactical part of PP (and than came the PC Gamer Weekend demo):

With that last quote, let's rewatch the PC Gamer Weekend demo again .
Must be me, but ... it looks pretty much the same as the fig-prototype ... besides the updated graphics.

What are you on? Let's take a look...

Cover:
Prototype - flat damage reduction
Demo - WYSIWYG

Shooting:
Prototype - all shots hit
Demo - shooter and weapon accuracy matters, as does cover

Damage:
Prototype - based on distance
Demo - properly based on projectiles hitting the target

Movement:
Prototype - shooting ends movement unless special abilities are used
Demo - leftover TU can be used after shooting as well

I'm sure there's more I've forgoten to add, but this should do for now.

All points you said are true.

What I am on is that statements like that raised my hope that their would be more to the 2AP-TU hybrid, than what was shown in the prototype.
The main reason I posted this quote was, to show why I was actually surprised and butthurt that the game is more XCOM2+ than anything else.
I understand now that I was fabulously optimistic.

He (and his circle jerk buddy) is ON a shitposting spree.. don't bring facts into it, you are ruining his fun :D

*shrugs* You failed to bring any facts into the last conversation we had.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Loved that one as a child.

 

[Grotesque]

What "cinematic feel" is this missing that XCOM has?

 

[PanteraNera]

What "cinematic feel" is this missing that XCOM has?

lol was gonna post that as well in my answer

*edit*
actually it was this one I was going to post, as it has all the in-mission cut-scenes as well:

 

[Galdred]

Why is there no Turn Based Dinorider game?

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

You know, XCOM sure had some shitty research cutscene. Nowhere near as good as games like Call to Power and Alpha Centauri...wonder how much those cost? If they can move a camera around during combat, I'm sure they can half-ass it as much as XCOM does with its "cinematic" autopsy cutscenes that alway have the same camera angle and the models are positioned in such a way so they don't have to do much of anything animation wise.

lol was gonna post that as well in my answer

*edit*
actually it was this one I was going to post, as it has all the in-mission cut-scenes as well:

I'm not really seeing anything crazy being done there to get those cinematic moments. Moving the camera around on the map, (which this game already does) and showing the models way closer than they probably should have given the detail while having some minor mouth flaps aren't major things. Seems weird you'd both point this out given the first thing they ever showed of this game in the Fig video was a cinematic intro to a level, with cinematic camera movement as characters walked out of an elevator and cinematic camera angles of monsters attacking and entering the map.

The video is kind of funny, as it throws shit in like the game's horrible boring death animations.

Cool looking death animations in games:





Boring looking death animations in a game:


I put the video there, but it's basically just five minutes of characters falling over the same way so probably don't watch it. It's so uninteresting that people in the comment section for the video are confused about why the video is even a thing.

Both of your videos kind of just seem like a showcase proving what I said, which is that one Skullgirls character has more going on animation wise than probably everyone in XCOM combined, and that cinematically it has nothing on Front Mission 5...a PS2 game from 12 years ago. How little seemingly went into XCOM seemed all the weirder given it actually had a big publisher behind it.

I enjoyed XCOM, but I didn't come away from it thinking it did anything impressive cinematically; I doubt much of anyone did. A lot of the storytelling in XCOM (and those research cutscene) just kind of made me wonder how the studio that made Alpha Centauri fucked up something they did perfectly 13 years earlier.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Why is there no Turn Based Dinorider game?

You can play Rites of War and larp leading Eldar Exodites.

 

[Galdred]

Why is there no Turn Based Dinorider game?

You can play Rites of War and larp leading Eldar Exodites.

But the ones in RoW are definitely not exodites! And have no dinosaurs...

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Eldar

Nyet

 

[PanteraNera]

Why is there no Turn Based Dinorider game?

that's the closest thing (but RTS)

 

[Israfael]

nuXcom movies are actually of high production quality if you consider that it's an Android/iOS game at heart

 

[PanteraNera]

I'd say Operation Darkness has better looking character models, better looking heads on the models, and that's a little Japanese game from 2007. Likewise I'd say the 2008 Valkyria Chronicles was a far more impressive game visually than XCOM, despite coming out years before it. Same with Resonance of Fate, which came a couple years before XCOM. While not games with turn-based tactical gameplay, there were JRPGs with turn based combat like Lost Odyssey and those Final Fantasy 13 games that were also way more visually impressive than XCOM was. Even something like Metal Gear Acid! 2 for the PSP gets across a bulky stylized look XCOM has better than XCOM, (it also has better faces when you're up close to the models) although that's more down to designs than graphics power.

[PER 2] oh you are an consoletard and japfag

Seriously, I still think you are comparing apples with bananas.

I have honestly not know any game you mentioned but Valkyria Chronicles (which I played a little). So I searched those games on youtube and just watched some videos. I wouldn't say that they are more "visually impressive" just a different art-style. You know tastes are different, so not much to discuss here.

I can not agree on Metal Gear Acid! 2 at all, I watched this video and it really looks way way more blocky than XCOM, but yes more stylized:


Also on the other games I would say that the models from XCOM look more highpoly, also the battlefields seem to have more going on, details like debris, trash, cars, stuff like that. Sure if you get rid of all of that you can use more polygons for the character models. Like I said, apples and bananas. It's like saying that Need for Speed has superior Graphics to GTA, yes the car's might look better, because there is actually resources for that as there is for example no pedestrians and not so much other cars.

What "cinematic feel" is this missing that XCOM has? It does the shifting camera stuff XCOM does. And it ain't like being cinematic was a strong point for XCOM. It's not like XCOM was Front Mission 5 or something.

Well the dev's from PP actually have stated that their will be no cut-scenes like in XCOM. Also by letting players move "freely" they lost the "epic movement cinematic" of XCOM. I do not care, nor am I a fan of that stuff. But they want to be financial successful, they want to carter the XCOM fans, and as I said my personal opinion is, that they (the XCOM-fans) will most likely call PP a cheap XCOM 2 ripoff, as they do not have the money for cut-scenes and extensive VO. I can not prove that what I said is true, only time will tell.

You know, XCOM sure had some shitty research cutscene. Nowhere near as good as games like Call to Power and Alpha Centauri...wonder how much those cost? If they can move a camera around during combat, I'm sure they can half-ass it as much as XCOM does with its "cinematic" autopsy cutscenes that alway have the same camera angle and the models are positioned in such a way so they don't have to do much of anything animation wise.

Well they (PP) already stated they can't. Not enough money for that.

I'm not really seeing anything crazy being done there to get those cinematic moments. Moving the camera around on the map, (which this game already does) and showing the models way closer than they probably should have given the detail while having some minor mouth flaps aren't major things. Seems weird you'd both point this out given the first thing they ever showed of this game in the Fig video was a cinematic intro to a level, with cinematic camera movement as characters walked out of an elevator and cinematic camera angles of monsters attacking and entering the map.

We will see, if you care you can read the quotes from discord I posted. It is said that nothing from the Fig video is to be expected anymore. Also they stated that they do not have the money for cut-scenes.

Boring looking death animations in a game:


I put the video there, but it's basically just five minutes of characters falling over the same way so probably don't watch it. It's so uninteresting that people in the comment section for the video are confused about why the video is even a thing.

Well double check the comments on that video, one person is confused. The rest is like "AWESOMEEE" (idiots).
I am totally with you that this shit is boring. (also keep in mind that it is people like these that the PP dev's are aiming for)

Both of your videos kind of just seem like a showcase proving what I said, which is that one Skullgirls character has more going on animation wise than probably everyone in XCOM combined, and that cinematically it has nothing on Front Mission 5...a PS2 game from 12 years ago. How little seemingly went into XCOM seemed all the weirder given it actually had a big publisher behind it.

Again, that's comparing apples with banana's Skullgirls has a whole different scope than XCOM


As I do not know Front Mission 5 I watched the above video. How is that "more" cinematic than XCOM? I fail to see that.
I think what XCOM had going on for itself was "coherence" or "immersion" as it uses not pre-rendered videos, the cut-scenes being directly mid-mission like the sectoid-soldier scene in the beginning.
But hey, as I am not a fan of that stuff and actually think that XCOM's story sucked as and was very badly written, I am not the best person to compare XCOM to the games you think are superior.

Any real XCOM fan here? Go defend your game against the japfag

I am surprised how many players seemed to have like XCOM for it "immersive" "cinematic" feel, in-mission, but also the "story" outside the missions.
I think it pleases the crowd with the push a button and BOOOM something fucking AWESOME happens, like Soldier kicks door open and runs across some tables, BOOM IMMErSION, that was YOU with just a CLICK on your MOUSE (controller), AWESOME.
Probably hits the same nerve why people enjoy Assassins Creed, only that here you do not have to click in the right moment and it doesn't looks as awesome. But yeah, I get that neither, what people love about that stuff.

 

[Irata]

More than half the space nu-Xcom took up was from cutscenes. I ended up taking the smallest one and overwriting the rest and I didn't even need the space. Maybe it shouldn't have bothered me, but no game should be more than twice the size because of cutscenes.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

welcome to 1993.

 

[Mustawd]

But hey, as I am not a fan of that stuff and actually think that XCOM's story sucked as and was very badly written, I am not the best person to compare XCOM to the games you think are superior.

For a tactics game I enjoyed it.

And for the record I also think XCOM looks better than MGS2

 

[PanteraNera]

For a tactics game I enjoyed it.

And for the record I also think XCOM looks better than MGS2

I kinda think it is a missed opportunity.
The early XCOM seemed to have been very faithful to X-COM, I wonder if it would have really been a commercial failure,
if they went along with that build instead of dumping it down to the 2AP-system.

That is also why I am in a love-hate-relation with Phoenix Point.
As long as nobody with a decent budget decides to do a "true" spiritual successor to X-COM we will never know if it could be successful or not.

But even if PP was closer to X-COM, even had a innovative new TU system, or more of a hybrid between 2AP and TU than what they are doing now,
and commercially failed, we would not know if it failed because of the gameplay-mechanics or because it had not full VO and a shit-ton of cut-scenes.
I actually wouldn't mind PP having cut-scenes like XCOM at all, as so far it seems like that they do have good writers that can tell an interesting story.

I think they should have done a market analysis, surveys, get why XCOM actually sold well.

The 2AP system makes actually in one regard sense, you can have that action-feel (cinematic-feel) "immersion" with every action you do, as you can just do two actions, somehow I have the feeling that it is key to XCOM's success. Awesome things happen with just a click.

Another thing that XCOM has going for itself actually is doing cut-scenes mid-mission in-engine and also the cut-scenes outside of missions using the same asset/models, its less "immersion"-breaking than pre-rendered stuff.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

[PER 2] oh you are an consoletard and japfag

Seriously, I still think you are comparing apples with bananas.

I have honestly not know any game you mentioned but Valkyria Chronicles (which I played a little). So I searched those games on youtube and just watched some videos. I wouldn't say that they are more "visually impressive" just a different art-style. You know tastes are different, so not much to discuss here.

I can not agree on Metal Gear Acid! 2 at all, I watched this video and it really looks way way more blocky than XCOM, but yes more stylized:


Also on the other games I would say that the models from XCOM look more highpoly, also the battlefields seem to have more going on, details like debris, trash, cars, stuff like that. Sure if you get rid of all of that you can use more polygons for the character models. Like I said, apples and bananas. It's like saying that Need for Speed has superior Graphics to GTA, yes the car's might look better, because there is actually resources for that as there is for example no pedestrians and not so much other cars.


Well the dev's from PP actually have stated that their will be no cut-scenes like in XCOM. Also by letting players move "freely" they lost the "epic movement cinematic" of XCOM. I do not care, nor am I a fan of that stuff. But they want to be financial successful, they want to carter the XCOM fans, and as I said my personal opinion is, that they (the XCOM-fans) will most likely call PP a cheap XCOM 2 ripoff, as they do not have the money for cut-scenes and extensive VO. I can not prove that what I said is true, only time will tell.


Well they (PP) already stated they can't. Not enough money for that.


We will see, if you care you can read the quotes from discord I posted. It is said that nothing from the Fig video is to be expected anymore. Also they stated that they do not have the money for cut-scenes.


Well double check the comments on that video, one person is confused. The rest is like "AWESOMEEE" (idiots).
I am totally with you that this shit is boring. (also keep in mind that it is people like these that the PP dev's are aiming for)


Again, that's comparing apples with banana's Skullgirls has a whole different scope than XCOM


As I do not know Front Mission 5 I watched the above video. How is that "more" cinematic than XCOM? I fail to see that.
I think what XCOM had going on for itself was "coherence" or "immersion" as it uses not pre-rendered videos, the cut-scenes being directly mid-mission like the sectoid-soldier scene in the beginning.
But hey, as I am not a fan of that stuff and actually think that XCOM's story sucked as and was very badly written, I am not the best person to compare XCOM to the games you think are superior.

Any real XCOM fan here? Go defend your game against the japfag

I am surprised how many players seemed to have like XCOM for it "immersive" "cinematic" feel, in-mission, but also the "story" outside the missions.
I think it pleases the crowd with the push a button and BOOOM something fucking AWESOME happens, like Soldier kicks door open and runs across some tables, BOOM IMMErSION, that was YOU with just a CLICK on your MOUSE (controller), AWESOME.
Probably hits the same nerve why people enjoy Assassins Creed, only that here you do not have to click in the right moment and it doesn't looks as awesome. But yeah, I get that neither, what people love about that stuff.

You kind of have to point to Japanese games if you want example of turn based tactics gameplay in 3D that's doing cinematic stuff. I mean western developers kind of dipped out of the genre in the early 2000s, and even then they weren't doing cinematic angles as far as I remember, and doing the cinematic stuff XCOM did had been present on the Japanese side of things for over a decade by then. I guess the character models in Silent Storm are about as good as the XCOM ones, stuff like glass breaking looks better in that game, and the places you've gotten into battles looks more interested because of the destruction...which is cinematic in a way. But it doesn't have different camera angles for actions and the camera itself isn't great.

No, Valkyria Chronicles is definitely more visually impressive than XCOM. It's also a different style, Valkyria Chronicles going for a hand drawn manga style and XCOM going from like those Rescue Heroes toddler toys from the late '90s or something. I don't know, they're going for some kind of toy look, but the bulky weapons with how big they are make me think '90s toddler toy more than anything I grew up with. But XCOM models get pretty ugly when you get up close to them, which isn't really a problem in Valkyria Chronicles. Valkyria Chronicles units also have more little details to them, there's more moving parts to the models, and there hair doesn't look like something just sitting on the models head. A lot of XCOMs problems visually seem to come down to them not being very good at hiding their weaknesses with really well designed units, it was probably also not the best idea to do stylized bulky models and then texture them somewhat realistically as opposed to something cartoony, painterly, or comic bookish.

I didn't say XCOM wasn't graphically more impressive than Metal Gear Acid 2, in fact I said the opposite in that quote. What I said is that through better designs a game that was seven years older and made for the PSP looks better than a PC/Console game made in 2012. I compared the two because both games have stylized bulky designs, and you wanted direct comparisons with other turn based tactics games. Despite the jaggies I'd still say that game has better looking faces on character models than XCOM does, some anti-aliasing would probably go a long way with making it look better; it sure did for another PSP Metal Gear game.

I brought up Skullgirls because, besides having far better animation than XCOM, they also talked about how much it cost to make one character...and we were talking money, and details about game budgets are kind of hard to come by. It cost them between $200,000 & 250,000 per character in that game. I'd imagine it cost Firaxis about that or less to do most everyone in XCOM given there isn't really all that much they do with the characters animation wise, the models are all pretty simple, and it's even easier working with 3D models. Now this isn't to say there wasn't other areas that money was spent on, but, I'm thinking a far better looking game than XCOM could be done in that $2 million range. Also used that because one fighting game character is going to probably have more animations, and little details in animation, than you'd probably ever need for a game in a isometric view.

Well, the Front Mission game is also 7 years older and made for the PS2. But, when it goes into the cinematic attack view, it handles the cinematic side of things far better than XCOM with the movement of the mechs and the assortment of camera angles. You don't have the same kind of fluent movement in animation in XCOM, you're not going to get cinematic stuff like running to your location and immediately spinning around to attack your enemy; it's all stop go in XCOM. You were also talking about cutscene, and Front Mission 5 handles that side of things far better too.

 

[Grotesque]

It cost them between $200,000 & 250,000 per character in that game

Are you on drugs?