KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[likaq]

• 3D Graphics – moving from 2D sprites to 3D graphics will improve visual fidelity, but will also be valuable for gameplay – it allows for things like rotating cameras, vastly improved animation, physics objects, accurate projectile tracking, etc

I wonder when butthurt will start, oh wait butthurt already started.

Xenonauts 2 entered full production at the start of this year and is currently slated for a 2017 release.

Unity3D as engine and a switch from 2D sprites to 3D graphics? Shit is going to be ugly and also a fucking resource hog.

The nice 2D sprites were perfect for Xenonauts, they gave it a distinct look and were very clean and easy to reckognize. With full 3D we will get low quality 3D models (Since good, High quality 3D models would cost more than they will ever have), and also the abomination of Unity, and rotatable camera instead of fixed.

Expect Wasteland 2 level of "Graphical fidelity".

You will receive a lot of KKK for this post.

 

[Haba]

Uh huh.

The 2D sprites were originally 3D models they painstakingly rendered into sprites, you know?

Static objects did receive a paint-over to increase quality, which we'll be now missing.

But yeah, not a huge fan of 3D.

 

[Volrath]

Unity

 

[orcinator]

Did they ever fix the map randomization and enemy spawns/behavior? (I know mods made the map variety a bit better)

One of the reasons I quit was because every map was basically the same and the aliens always hung out in the same places; ground missions against carried were pretty blatant example of this since it has three height levels but you'd never encounter aliens on the second level.

 

[orcinator]

Read some of their ideas; worried they're trying to take the game in a non-simulationist direction.

 

[LizardWizard]

Hire artists that aren't complete shit. Tia

 

[Average Manatee]

Uh huh.

The 2D sprites were originally 3D models they painstakingly rendered into sprites, you know?

Static objects did receive a paint-over to increase quality, which we'll be now missing.

But yeah, not a huge fan of 3D.

This. 3D characters should be doable just fine, its environment quality and very likely variety that's going to be at risk. Xenonauts was already weak on environment variety and It's probably a lot less likely that a comprehensive community mod pack that adds lots of environmental content will happen in a 3d engine.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Easter Update:

I hope everyone had a happy Easter, and I figured that I should probably post something up to explain what we've been working on lately with regards to Xenonauts 2 given the unveiling of the game has not yet happened.

That unveiling may be a little further away than we thought thanks to a few snags coming up with the promotional art. The most obvious of these centers around the design of the UFOs, which we haven't yet finalised. The artist who was working on them (the UFO artist from Xenonauts 1) has had to drop out because of the demands of his full-time role, and the work was already proving more difficult than we expected.

What we want to avoid is a repeat of the UFO problems we had in X1, where we designed some cool-looking UFOs and then found putting them in the ground combat missions to be a rather painful experience. This negatively affected the gameplay too, as it forced us to make the UFO hulls indestructible (reducing tactical possibilities) and it led to situations where players found tiles around the edge of UFO hulls to be unexpectedly blocked for line of sight / fire purposes when the tile grid failed to cope with the curve of the hulls.

We're therefore making sure we get things right with the UFO designs this time, but this is awkward from an art perspective because the "main promo image" (the X2 equivalent of the "command room" image from X1) features a captured UFO in an underground Xenonaut hangar, surrounded by the various Xenonaut staff etc. It's going to be a really cool image and the captured UFO is a major plot point ... but if we're not 100% certain what the UFOs will look like yet, it's a bit difficult to finish it.

The other art issue is that of in-game screenshots; we're not yet in a position where we can show off high-quality in-game art assets. To be honest, Xenonauts only started looking presentable about 50-60% of the way through development and the real polishing didn't come in until it was 80-90% done. Xenonauts 2 has some way to go before we're at that stage, particularly because now we're working in 3D it takes more effort to make even good-quality art assets look good (in a 2D game you just stick the pretty art in the game and that's that, but in 3D you need to make sure all the materials, lighting and render settings are all done right to get maximum effect.)

So that's the bad news; we need to at least finalise the UFO design language before we can properly announce the game ... so now I'll try to give you some good news to counter-balance that. We are obviously still working on the art despite that, and we're developing a more realistic and cohesive style for the Xenonauts and their world than before. As an example, here's the rough concepts for the Xenonaut uniforms for X2.

uniforms.jpg
From the left, the characters are: you (head of the Military Division), the Chief Scientist (head of the Science Division), Operations (head of the Politics & Operations Division), and a (unnamed) Xenonaut soldier. We've tried to make the soldier look a bit more modern than before; the basic uniform was pretty lame in X1 but this retains the essence of the original design whilst also looking a bit more believably military. The other three characters have been designed and coloured so the three divisions of the Xenonauts look distinct from one another, but clearly all belong to the same organisation. I think the dark grey also looks more "secret organisation" than the designs from the first game.

We've added a new character to the game for plot reasons, but also because I want there to be another voice in the game other than the Chief Scientist - I want to keep his personality the same as it was in the first game, but I'm concerned the joke will get a bit old if he's the only person talking to you in both games. Splitting the Xenonauts into three divisions doesn't have any gameplay effect, but it should help us add a bit more character to the world and help with the storytelling; your character is very much the junior member of the trio at the start of the game.

Also, I finally bit the bullet about a month ago and learned how to code so I could properly prototype the Xenonauts 2 strategy layer. I implemented most of the strategic game in Excel / Visual Basic, using an auto-resolve system for the air combat and ground combat missions. A bit of experimentation allowed me to figure out which of my ideas for the strategy layer was the most fun, and I'm confident that the one I settled on is going to work for us - even playing the spreadsheet version of it is quite enjoyable!

I imagine most of you will be pleased to know that we think we've found a way to integrate the Xenonaut ground missions into a wider strategic struggle; the final design incorporates elements from a number of the different strategic designs I've raised on the forums in the past and even some elements from our previous concept Pathfinders. In the absence of pretty pictures, I'll give you a bit of information on what we're planning:

Strategy Design:
Defensive Perimeters: The basic idea is that humanity has five "defensive perimeters" against the aliens, with the most remote and least important regions of the planet being the first perimeter and the Soviet / NATO heartlands being the final fifth perimeter. There's no longer any concept of regional funding etc; you lose the game when the final defensive line falls to the aliens (although there may be some kind of super-hard mission that appears if you fall *too* far behind, either getting you back in the game or ending it immediately).

A defensive perimeter contains Infantry units, Armoured units and Interceptor squadrons. Infantry units are the most numerous and soak up most of the damage from alien attacks; if an alien unit attacks your defensive perimeter it will generally kill several units of Infantry before being destroyed (the effectiveness and survivability of Infantry depends greatly on how advanced their gear is). Armoured units are few in number but act as a counter to armoured aliens like Androns; you will automatically lose an Armoured unit to counter a unit of attacking Androns if one is available (if not, expect to lose a LOT of Infantry).

The Interceptors are the planes you control in each region. You use these to counter alien UFO activity in the perimeter, but they are a precious and non-replenishable resource (and attacking a UFO *is* going to cost you a number of planes). However, the key thing here is that the only reliable way to capture most technology for research is through shooting down UFOs and doing the crash site mission - and the UFOs bombing your defensive lines are not necessarily the juiciest targets for this. You've got a limited number of planes and you need to balance protecting your territory against shooting down the UFOs that offer the best potential research rewards.

Event Timeline: The Event Timeline displays all the alien events occurring in the next ten turns / Geoscape days. The Xenonauts start with only limited visibility of the Timeline (e.g. only three days of warning for each attack) but investing in improved intelligence / code-cracking will allow the player to see further into the future.

The Timeline is split into aerial and ground sections, and alien units spawn at Day +10 and work their way towards the player one turn at a time. If they have not been dealt with by the end of Day +1, they will attack the current defensive line and reduce the number of defenders. To prevent this, the player is able to attack any visible alien unit on the Timeline with their Xenonaut soldiers / interceptors. Successfully winning the mission removes the alien unit from the Timeline entirely, and if a defensive perimeter falls then the entire Timeline is cleared and recalculated.

The player can launch one ground mission and one air mission each turn, but in practice the soldier fatigue system and the limited number of interceptors means that this cannot be sustained for long. What actually happens is the player has to makes choices about what rate of attrition is acceptable for their defensive line, and pick off any alien units that look too strategically threatening by running a ground mission against them.

Obviously, this is made more complex because the aliens all have different abilities and some are far more dangerous than others at any given time. For example, in the current draft:

• Alien "thralls" have no special abilities, so generally are not worth wasting time on
• Psyons (aka Caesans) gain +1 ATK for every Infantry unit in the defensive line, so are extremely dangerous early on
• Harridans kill a single Infantry unit every turn, but take no damage in return. Never the most urgent threat but can accumulate a lot of kills if left alone too long!
• Androns are harmless if you have an Armoured unit available to deal with them, but are extremely powerful otherwise
• Wraiths will raid your Interceptors or Armoured units and destroy a unit of them if you have any left in the defensive perimeter, if not they will take on your Infantry (which they are much less strong at)

Therefore the strategic calculation is always changing. Letting a unit of Wraiths destroy a full squadron of five Interceptors would almost certainly be a mini-disaster for the Xenonauts and in that situation the player would probably want to intervene to take them out before that happened ... but if there was only one or two planes left in that squadron, it might not be worth protecting them. But in that case, you'd have to keep your air force grounded until the Wraiths had come and gone - after all, if you lose a couple of planes on the next mission, those Wraiths are suddenly targeting a full squadron of five Interceptors again, etc.

Similarly, if you can see from the timeline that a defensive line is about to fall but there's only one alien unit marching towards it in the next three or four days, it might be worth doing even a tough ground combat mission in order to win a few more days of "free" research before the aliens overrun the territory.

Proliferation & Resistance: One of the key mechanics in this system is proliferation of newly discovered alien technology from the Xenonauts to the rest of the world. Doing this brings major benefits; firstly the Xenonauts get access to an unlimited quantity of the proliferated technology (e.g. laser weapons), and secondly it improves the stats of all of the Infantry Units holding the remaining defensive perimeters ... effectively slowing down the alien invasion and buying you extra time to complete the game. We're not sure yet if you'll get controllable local forces backing you up on ground combat missions supporting the defensive perimeter, but if you do then they will also only have access to proliferated technology (so will be much more useful if you've proliferated them some good gear).

Sounds pretty useful, right? Unfortunately, the aliens gain increasing resistance to your newly-developed technology the more it is used against them. Tech that is not proliferated will stay effective for much longer against the alien forces (particularly if you use it sparingly), whereas the aliens will quickly build up a resistance to tech being used against them on a global scale. Coupled with the fact you can further improve and develop tech once it has been researched (e.g. Laser Weapons V2, Laser Weapons V3, etc), the choice of which tech to research next and whether you should proliferate it should be much more interesting than the research choices in Xenonauts 1.

Regional Infrastructure & Population: Under this strategic design, the X1 system of building bases in various regions doesn't really fit in any more. However, I'd like to preserve an element of base-building that exists beyond the abstract main Xenonaut base; I think we can do that by adding infrastructure to each defensive perimeter.

These ideas haven't been tested so they remain just ideas right now, but we'd like to have buildings in each perimeter that they player can build and buy. A lab provides a fixed amount of science, but buying a lab behind the final defensive line would be much more expensive than buying one behind the third line. If you can hold it long enough, the cheaper lab would be a much better investment. But doing so might force you into proliferating tech earlier than you might have wanted to, etc.

Similarly, things like the intelligence level (how many days you can see into the future on the Timeline) could be tied to buildings constructed in each perimeter. That gives the player choices about how much they want to invest in defending a specific defensive line.

The other mechanic I'd like to implement in some form is an evacuation mechanic for the local civilian population in each perimeter. A certain number of turns would be required to evacuate the civilian population, but launching an evacuation too early would prematurely abandon all the local infrastructure and deprive yourself of resources you would otherwise receive. However, allowing civilians to be overrun and harvested by the aliens is also bad news for humanity, as it gives the aliens major bonuses. Maybe this could be made more interesting if there's a random element to how smoothly the evacuation goes; so in some situations players may find themselves needing to hold out longer than they originally expected.

Overall:
That's not a full explanation of everything in the strategy layer, but hopefully it explains the basic principles that we are working towards. I've been working hard on a design that puts the actions of the Xenonauts in a wider strategic perspective and I think the "defensive perimeter" system and the proliferation mechanics mean that the player will have to think about more than just their own soldiers.

Playtesting suggests that the basic strategic mechanics are good fun, and they should also take Xenonauts 2 in a rather different direction to that of the other X-Com successors that have been and gone. X1 always had the trappings of a somewhat realistic military wargame, but the mechanics never really matched up ... hopefully this time around we'll be able to deliver on it.

This is all I'll be revealing about Xenonauts 2 for now, but I just wanted to thank everyone for their patience and assure everyone that things are coming along nicely at this end. It may be disappointing for some that we're not announcing quite as quickly as we initially suggested we would, but hopefully this post gives you some insight as to why that is (and reveals just enough to keep you interested!)

 

[Cyberarmy]

 

[Haba]

Their design sounds really stressful to play in practice.

 

[Alienman]

Hmmm, this sounds so damn gamey compared to the originals. Seems Xeno 2 will be more like NuXcom now.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

So we're gonna start hearing concrete stuff once the first public build comes out on the 24th this month.

September's update

Apologies for being quiet for the last few weeks; this post is going to explain what we've been up to recently. I'll also explain when we'll be making the first version of Xenonauts 2 available to play and when you can first buy the game.

Strategy Layer:
I've spent quite some time talking about our new strategy design in my previous posts (the one with the defensive lines etc), but having implemented it and given it a decent playtest I've decided to drop it. Most people won't care about the reasons why, but if you do then there's an explanation in the spoiler tag below.

Spoiler

The idea involved a "defensive line" of AI-controlled local forces and a "timeline" of alien units marching to attack it. The player could use their aircraft to shoot down UFOs spawned on the timeline (creating a crash site) or use their Xenonauts to attack any of the alien units on the timeline, triggering a ground combat mission. The problem was that the player could only knock out a single alien unit per mission, which was not enough to turn the tide if the player was behind strategically and facing numerous powerful alien units. The reverse situation was also problematic, as if the strategic situation was good the player would not need to do any ground combat missions. These turned out to be fundamental issues that (for various reasons) I couldn't solve without a major rework of the design.

The replacement is a reversion to something much more like the strategy layer in the first Xenonauts. Although we've made quite a few changes to the way it plays, the Geoscape is still recognisably the Geoscape. I'll explain in detail the effects of the changes at a later date, but the overall theme is giving the player more strategic options and making each playthrough of the game less repetitive.

There's a few fundamental changes which we're unlikely to revert (Geoscape is now turn-based, you now build directly in regions rather than via bases) but we now have the freedom to change as much or as little about the Xenonauts 1 strategic design as we want. The risk with fundamentally changing the strategy layer was that we couldn't just revert to familiar stuff from X1 if it turned out our new ideas weren't as much fun to play as the first game, whereas now we know the worst that can happen is that we'll end up with a strategy layer equal to that of the original Xenonauts.

We finished implementing the basic blocks today (geoscape, research, regions and relations, regional outposts, UFO attacks, etc) but there's still quite a bit to go. The priority is to make something playable and hook it up to the ground combat as soon as possible; our initial plan is just to mirror much of the early Xenonauts 1 gameplay / alien activity / research tree and then see how our new mechanics mix things up and go from there.

Ground Combat:
We've been producing an outdoor mission for playtesting over the past couple of weeks. The idea is to test the concepts behind our new level / sub-map editor combination, and then experiment with palette swapping (more on that below), but it has also led to us sharpening up the combat.

At this point, almost all of the game logic is in place for the ground combat - it's only really the morale and suppression system (now calculated in 3D space) that need to be implemented. This doesn't mean the combat is finished, though, as there's still large amounts of assets and animations and visual effects to be added. All the code to support those also has to be added - which is probably more code than the actual game logic was! Still, we're not far from being able to play out a recreated Xenonauts 1 mission like it would play in the original game, just with shonkier graphics.

Utilities:
The game tools are the Level Editor, Game Editor and Translation Editor. The Translation Editor should only be a couple of weeks of work but we've not started it yet, as it's a lower priority compared to the other two. The Game Editor is a visual editor that lets you create and edit the stats of the game assets (weapons, aliens, etc) and is coming along well, but is currently limited to the ground combat stuff. In the next couple of weeks we expect to have all of the weapon and combatant properties editable and feeding through into the ground combat missions. It's pretty cool stuff for modders, as it automatically integrates the V1.5 / X:CE mod management system into the mod and also allows a bunch of extra properties (e.g. you can set a weapon to have multiple ammo types with different properties).

The Level Editor is a pretty serious piece of kit these days but still has a way to go. We still need to add in the functionality to paint raised areas in the game (both the 1m tall raised areas that offer half-cover around the edges, and full 3m tall cliffs) but once that is in I think we'll have all the gameplay basics done. However there's still a lot of work to be done on the procedural generation side of things - at the moment we're creating levels as a single big map, but we want to split them down into little sub-maps that can be assembled together to create larger maps. We can (eventually) make much better use of this system in 3D than we could in 2D Xenonauts 1, so expect a higher amount of map randomisation this time round. We're also planning biome-based palette swapping - e.g. a few clicks can turn a jungle map into an arctic map / desert map / whatever.

Release & Sale:
We were initially planning to have our Kickstarter as the first opportunity to buy Xenonauts 2, but the plan is now to start releasing free builds of the game in about a month on GOG Galaxy. Anyone who wants to buy the game will be able to pre-order it immediately, but initially won't get anything extra for doing so. We will spend an unspecified amount of time putting out free builds, then we'll do a Kickstarter and ideally launch on Steam Early Access after that. Once we're on Steam, the free builds will disappear and anyone who has not pre-ordered the game will not see any further updates.

I've pushed back the Kickstarter date because we want to push digital rewards over physical rewards this time, and by far the most popular in the X1 Kickstarter was being added to the game as Xenonaut soldier. We want to build a soldier face creation tool (i.e. the sort of thing you see during RPG character creation) which will allow people to create their own soldier face, so adding soldiers does not impose any extra workload on us. We can then price it relatively cheaply ($25-$50) and hopefully enough of the community will be happy to pay that we can get our Kickstarter moving that way. Problem is, we've gotta build this tool first - and I'm not going to delay commercializing the game just for that.

The initial release is likely to be a single ground combat mission from the start of the game. You'll get your starting eight soldiers from X1 and you'll be up against half a dozen Psyons (formerly known as Caesans). There won't be any UFO; it'll just be a straightforward deathmatch against basic but serviceable AI. Later iterations will add in the UFO and improve the UI and AI, and then likely introduce the strategy layer, soldier progression and extra maps.

One More Thing:
Our coding intern has been working on various things over the past year, including prototyping up some of our other game ideas - one of which turned out to be so much fun that we decided to turn it into a full game. It's a small and lightweight game best described as a cross between FTL and Space Hulk. We'll release more details about the game once we've got the Xenonauts 2 public build out there, but I think a lot of you will be excited when you see it in action!

Anyway, that's all for now - and please bear in mind that "one month" is an internal goal for the X2 public build, not a cast-iron promise. We've never been great with deadlines, as I'm sure many of you are aware

Public build announcement

The first Xenonauts public build will be arriving on Monday 24th October and will be completely free to anyone that wants to try it. The game is still too incomplete for us to consider a paid release, but we want as many people generating ideas / feedback and reporting bugs as possible. We'll therefore be making the first few builds free.

However, we will also make optional pre-orders for Xenonauts 2 available at the same time. This is purely for people who know they want to support the project, as they won't initially confer any extra benefit - but they will automatically convert into a Steam or GOG key for the game when we transition into paid Early Access later in development. We're planning to charge $24.99 for the game during development and then $29.99 once the game is finished and released.

The first build will be a simple test build - a combat mission between eight Xenonauts with basic armour and the starting weapons from X1 (shotguns, rifles, sniper rifle, LMG) and roughly six Psyons (formerly Caesans). The battle map will be an outdoor forest map with no UFO; it'll just be a straightforward deathmatch between the two sides. There will be strong similarities with Xenonauts 1 in the first build, which is intentional - we want to reassure people that we're not planning to dumb things down for X2 despite moving to 3D, and because assets from X1 make excellent placeholders until we create the new X2 assets to replace them. That said, the sequel is not simply a remake of Xenonauts 1 in 3D ... we just want to make a fun and playable foundation for the game based on the first game before we start changing things up. After all, it's much easier to test a new or altered mechanic if it is embedded in a working game and you are able give it a proper playtest.

The build that comes out on the 24th is going to be a "soft" launch for us. We'll be releasing the first Xenonauts 2 build and unveiling a new website for the game, but we're not actively promoting it via Twitter or by contacting journalists or by messaging our mailing list / Kickstarter backers. This is because the initial release of any piece of software almost invariably reveals huge numbers of bugs and issues that the developers were completely unaware of, and we'd like to do a small release to our existing community to identify and fix the biggest issues before we then announce things more widely and try and expand the community.

We have the first week after the build releases set aside for bugfixes, so we're planning to release updates until the 31st that are just bugfix patches and then do our wider announcement on the game on that date. If you've found this information organically by reading our forums / from the Xenonauts 1 launcher RSS panel / from friends / whatever then please help us out by being part of the first wave of testers (and if you're a game journalist, please hold your coverage until the 31st). Similarly, if you encounter any issues with the new website when we unveil it then please report it to us.

If all goes well, we're planning to release a decent chunk of new content for the project every two weeks - we're intentionally holding some back from the initial builds for this reason. This means that in theory there should be a second build of the game with new content available to play on the 7th November (although we may find a fortnightly release schedule a bit of a struggle over the long term), a week after the large-scale public release. We'll continue this pattern of public iteration until we feel that we have a project developed enough for an Early Access launch, at which point we'll likely do a quick Kickstarter and then launch on Steam as a paid-only project.

I'm personally very keen to get the game out into the hands of the community, even if it is still quite rough at this stage. I'll release more on this forum as details firm up, so stay tuned for updates and make sure you come back and visit on the 24th!

P.S. - As always, if you want to stay informed about our plans, please sign up to the Goldhawk Mailing List here. We're going to start using it very soon!

 

[Mazisky]

I'm curious to see if the 3d engine ruins complitely the game or it will enhance it.

 

[Alienman]

I'm curious to see if the 3d engine ruins complitely the game or it will enhance it.

I think it will enhance it, since their old engine was kinda broken.

 

[Mazisky]

I'm curious to see if the 3d engine ruins complitely the game or it will enhance it.

I think it will enhance it, since their old engine was kinda broken.

I'm also worried about aesthetic. Cheap 3d engines are atrocious to look at

 

[Alienman]

Yes true.

But it looks like anything as their render image I will be happy:

Spoiler

 

[Mazisky]

Yes true.

But it looks like anything as their render image I will be happy:

Spoiler

Is that screen from Goldhawk Ie? Because it looks a lot better than Xeno 1 and it would be awesome if that's the result for Xeno2.

 

[Alienman]

It is, but he mention that the art style is not finished.

Read more about it here:
http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/12984-xenonauts-2-update/

 

[Latro]

I hope they pull off something nice for the art style, everyone bitched about it for X1

 

[Modron]

I hope they pull off something nice for the art style, everyone bitched about it for X1

Eh I actually liked the artstyle of xenonauts, it was sharp, clear, and had a decent, albeit a bit cartoonish, style. Although, I agree that the starting soldier uniform was basically a janitor's outfit.

Granted their unity screenshot actually looks decent as it appears to me they are not falling into that trap of buying premade assets.

 

[agris]

I hope they pull off something nice for the art style, everyone bitched about it for X1

Eh I actually liked the artstyle of xenonauts, it was sharp, clear, and had a decent, albeit a bit cartoonish, style. Although, I agree that the starting soldier uniform was basically a janitor's outfit.

Granted their unity screenshot actually looks decent as it appears to me they are not falling into that trap of buying premade assets.

Echoing the above, plus the 2D backdrops for various base components was also nice. I didn't mind the world art, but this looks like an improvement. Let's just hope they give us the smooth-turning of AoD's camera, and not the jerky bullshit that is in fashion with nu-xcom and even hardwest, unfortunately.

 

[Alienman]

How do you all feel that he dropped the line defense thingy? I feel relieved. I hope you still have to build and manage a base a la X-com.

 

[Agame]

Eh I actually liked the artstyle of xenonauts, it was sharp, clear, and had a decent, albeit a bit cartoonish, style. Although, I agree that the starting soldier uniform was basically a janitor's outfit.

Same, one of the reasons I liked Xenonauts so much was the art style. Why oh why does everything always have to be 3D.

 

[Mustawd]

Fucking 3D is such decline...

 

[Agame]

Fucking 3D is such decline...

Not sure if sarcasm? But I completly agree.

I actually think VR will become the new 3D, it will be funny to see how far the decline and retardation will get when we are playing 'nu-nu-xcom' in VR...