X-Rebirth

[Raapys]

Yeah, and it's unfortunate. I've always been a fan of open-world and whatnot, rather than being restricted to specific missions and areas, but I think the fact of the matter is that we don't have the...well, technology, AI, resources, vision, whatever, required to make those kinds of games truly come alive and be fun to play. Usually they're fun until you scrape together enough cash that it stops being an incentive to play on, and at that point you either do the main missions, quit the game, or start larping.

That's definitely a large part of the reason that games such as the Freespace series or Independence War 2 manage to stand above the rest. They do most things fairly well, but unlike the open-world games(IW2's opengworld was more of an afterthought) most of their focus went into making the actual missions play well. Open-world games usually do the missions as kind of an afterthought, expecting the theme park part of the game to keep the player's attention.

 

[hiver]

Freespace games are atypical space sim shooters really. A sim thats not too hard to control and handle but demands attention, which fits perfectly with the narration thats practically no bullshit hard military sf, which fits perfectly with shooter mechanics and with the story itself which is very effectively delivered through introduction, a few important cut scenes and - the best - through your actions since youre at the tip od discovering the whole deal and sometimes pushing the events forwards.
By its very focus on a specific, relatively smaller, precise scope it achieves epic greatness the "universe is huuuuge" sims cannot dream about - by bucketloads.
You do need to be made a bit smaller under the stars to actually feel the greatness. ( a hail mark of all truly great works of science fiction)

Of course its not even fair directly comparing the two games since they almost dont belong to the same genre. Besides, Freespace altogether is one of those rare perfect achievements where every single feature and mechanic works in positive loops with the others, reinforcing and upgrading the whole and each other.

But in this example it really serves to point the very important difference.

 

[Raapys]

Oh, definitely. Though there's the question of cost; it's probably a lot cheaper to make a copy-paste open-world style sim than a quality mission-based one. Freespace 2 was by no means a cheap game to make. And its poor sales, 25k in 6 months despite great reviews, didn't do much to keep the genre alive. That's why it remains one of the last modern space sims(along with Independece War) structured around missions. The few remaining space sims, Freelancer, indie-titles like Evochron, etc., they're all open-world style games and probably significantly cheaper to make.

The X-games are probably not low-budget titles, but I doubt they're very high-budget either. Most of their releases are incremental improvements on the previous ones, and though the graphics are good, the missions, voice acting, pathfinding and other stuff speak of a relatively low budget. So in that regard, I wouldn't be surprised if Freespace 2 actually came out on top.

 

[Turjan]

Oh, it was available in any trading station I think, for a token sum.

Yup. You had to buy Fight Software Mk1 and Mk2 for all options. The auto-targeting software had the settings off, semi and on. It was a bit buggy, though. It particularly didn't like switching shooting modes.

 

[Turisas]

The mods are the reason I fire up the latest game of the series once a year or so, but ultimately I always end up disappointed no matter how many mods I'm running. It's kinda fun'ish at first, starting from scrap and doing random missions to afford your first big ship, but then the fun just vanishes. With no reason to acquire more cash, and your actions having no real or permanent effect on anything, there's not much point in playing except for larping reasons.

Fleshing out those competing corps would go a long way to remedy that problem. If they were actively seeking to make your life miserable, it'd make running your business empire much more interesting. Diplomacy, covert alliances etc. could be utilized, too.

 

[Raapys]

Yah, that'd be a huge improvement. Could even be a full-fledged MoO-style 4X thing going on in the background, where nations/corps have income based on their owned stations/sectors and utilize their resources to build stations and ships to destroy their enemies. It'd be a lot of work, I'm sure, but it's the only thing that would actually allow for a fully dynamic universe where the player's actions really do matter.

 

[Turisas]

 

[Raapys]

Not exactly the kind of exploration I was hoping for...

 

[Zewp]

Ugh, look at that wonderful console-friendly interface.

 

[Raapys]

Yah, that thing looks awful and incredibly unpractical.

 

[Blaine]

I'm skeptical of many of their design decisions, but Rebirth will still be a day -7 pre-purchase for me. Egosoft helped keep me flying pixel ships during the space sim drought that started in 1999 and won't end until Elite: Dangerous, Limit Theory, and Star Citizen join the X series and KSP.

 

[Raapys]

I'm in the same boat, or ship as it were. I can't help thinking this game will be a huge disappointment, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt this time. Just hope their core changes haven't ruined modding, since that's what can save a lot of these design decisions.

 

[Spectacle]

One week left!

 

[Turisas]

I'm skeptical of many of their design decisions, but Rebirth will still be a day -7 pre-purchase for me. Egosoft helped keep me flying pixel ships during the space sim drought that started in 1999 and won't end until Elite: Dangerous, Limit Theory, and Star Citizen join the X series and KSP.

Word. I'm still excepting it to be a bit of a decline, but hoping it won't be so much so that it'll become unplayable (in the sense that it won't be fun to play anymore). And continued modding/scripting support is crucial, they better not have messed with it too much.

 

[mikaelis]

Not exactly the kind of exploration I was hoping for...

Yes, I have exactly the same feeling. It just seems... I don't know, to simplistic? bland? with all those circles popping around like crazy. Maybe if you can block off the useless ones with better scanners?

Hard to say what I expected.

Maybe something like this?:

 

[Raapys]

Well, yeah. Exploration is about moving through asteroid fields or old battlefields looking for things to scavenge. Flying out to the fringes of explored space and discovering lethal threats. Not this shitty 'shoot random white circles appearing around you' minigame.

 

[bonescraper]

Exploration in X games is all about going to yet unexplored sectors, looking for missions, trade opportunities, new upgrades and shit like that. I bet they haven't changed that, they just added this "minigame" because they could. So chill the fuck out.

 

[Turisas]

Naw, it was because they had to. Because everything is designed around a gamepad. Cue PS4/Xbone release announcement.

 

[Volrath]

Not exactly the kind of exploration I was hoping for...

Yes, I have exactly the same feeling. It just seems... I don't know, to simplistic? bland? with all those circles popping around like crazy. Maybe if you can block off the useless ones with better scanners?

Hard to say what I expected.

Maybe something like this?:

Is Evochron any good?

 

[Raapys]

It's more of a multiplayer game.

 

[mikaelis]

But can be perfectly played in single (it evolved from SP). Basically a sandbox. Even more difficult to get into than previous X games in my opinion.
Much superior flight mode though a bit hard to master, especially for fights (basically a Newtonian flight mode with thruster systems that allow you to take control as in plane if you need it, but eat fuel). You can seamlessly land on planets, though obviously it is rather simplified.
Lots of customisation options for the ships (lots of frames, engines, weapons, shields etc. to upgrade from).
UI is a bit of a clusterfuck, but you cannot really avoid it with so many options. Especially map is horribad - and this could actually be improved thousands-fold.
Graphics is obviously worse than in X3, but still, it improved tremendously from earlier releases and is already something which you could consider "fairly pleasant to look at".

All in all, I haven't really gotten too much into the game yet for various reasons (lack of time, other games to play), but it is sitting on my disk, waiting for better times.

 

[Raapys]

Hmm, I seem to remember finding it rather lackluster. Been a few years since I bought and played it in MP, since I thought it looked really promising, but overall it was just a cool premise that lacked content. Played it for a few hours to experience what there was, then put it aside. Granted, I was given a fair bit of cash from random players, so that shortened the experience somewhat.

The flight model is nice though, and the seamless planet stuff as well.

 

[mikaelis]

Hmm, I seem to remember finding it rather lackluster. Been a few years since I bought and played it in MP, since I thought it looked really promising, but overall it was just a cool premise that lacked content. Played it for a few hours to experience what there was, then put it aside. Granted, I was given a fair bit of cash from random players, so that shortened the experience somewhat.

The flight model is nice though, and the seamless planet stuff as well.

Oh it may well be lackluster! As I said, I barely scratched the surface (did first two tutorial missions and flied around a bit to get the feeling about controlling the ship), so I have not much idea about the content. Especially what you can do in SP only. I know you can customize ship, trade with stations and on the planets, own some stations (but I am not sure if you can own factories to produce something), mine for minerals, explore, bounty hunt, deliver, race. That's pretty much it.

Oh, also lately, they added some sort of planetary missions with mechs - not sure what you can do within those missions (walk around and shoot other mechs? do some trading and exploration?).

 

[Blaine]

By the way, on the subject of "just one ship":

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=4123159

This fear is partially correct. The Skunk will become better but not different. But dont forget drones you can fly for many different purposes and of course you can also own and indirectly control many capital ships.

The Skunk will be extended with various features (Engine, shields, primary weapons...) but not changed in form. The external look of your ship therefore does not change a lot.

Yes this is one among many other features we would love to do better, but sorry not in 1.0.

It's pretty much just one ship, very extensible but one ship nonetheless. I'll be okay with this just so long as it can range between an extremely fast scout and a slow, armored, heavily armed gunship.

 

[Kem0sabe]

The fact that they refuse to even consider a demo is more worrying. Knowing how complex and clusterfuck prone their games tend to be, i will probably just torrent it to see if it 1. Runs on my computer 2. Is stable enough to play without countless patches.