Egosoft’s last trailer for X Rebirth was about trading and mining. This most recent one is about fighting. Lots of capital ship action. Swarms of fighters. Gorgeous space stations in the background. Torpedoes flying everywhere. And explosions. Lots of explosions, in space. And this is just the fighting part! :) More please.
The thing is, how will the different types of gameplay (trade, mining, fighting, building) blend together to make a compelling game? Yes, I never played an X series game. I mean, I played a fair amount of space sims in my life, mostly space combat sims like X-Wing, Tie Fighter and the Wing Commander series, but I don’t think I’ve ever played one space simulation game of the magnitude I’m seeing here. Well, tried EVE, but MMO’s aren’t really my thing.
So, will X Rebirth be fun after the first couple of fights? Will it please strategy fans, or only space sim fans? Will the fighting mechanic blend in well with the trading, mining and building parts? I guess we’ll know after Nov 15th.
X Rebirth is slated to release on November 15th 2013 in Europe and November 19th in North America for the PC. There will be a digital edition (on Steam), a box edition (German only) and a collector’s edition (English & German). According to Egosoft, all editions will require online activation through Steam but no persistent online connection will be required.
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Yes, it looks nice. But will it still have the bewildering complexity of the previous X titles? If it does, I’ll pass.
I just hope there is some kind of tutorial! I have most of the series and have played very little of it because I could never figure out what the heck I was doing.
On the 2nd one I think it was I got the farthest but by the time I was getting a handle on the game I was getting very tired of the struggle as well…. Not buying this one with the hope of a tutorial…. gonna wait till I know for sure this time…… Even I learn eventually lol ;)
The game will use the first part of the campaign as a tutorial. There you will learn all basic knowledge, about trade, building and managing stations… stuff like this. Best approach for this if you ask me.
And yeah it will be complex, but way more accessible for new players to the series than ever before.
I only played a bit of the older X-games, and in my opinion the problem wasn’t that they were too complex but rather that the menus and GUI’s were terrible making it very hard to do very much of anything. I hear the GUI’s and menus are much better in this game. Just the fact alone that the whole game can be played with a controller tells me that the game will be much more playable then the older ones.
I had trouble playing the first 3 because of the learning curve as well. It wasn’t until I realized that you really only need about 30 minutes worth of reading to understand the basics of the game, that I understood that you actually “learn the game” through roleplay. For some reason I expected to have my hand held until I was established in the world, rather than given the basics and pushed into the void. I guess because a lot of games do cradle the player for a long time, I expected X to do the same. X is not like a lot of games. It’s a confusing cluster of butt-loads of data and controls and charts, but you have to realize that what you’re doing is the same as turning on CNN, laying out 15 newspapers on the table, and getting mad at the media because it’s confusing to do all of that at once.
Go through and set up the flight controls exactly like you want, the rest of the keys are things that are reachable with the mouse (mostly); then forget about the rest of the controls setup until you need certain keys one by one. Simplifies that. Next, figure out how to navigate around the universe. The game walks you through this part, but it’s easy to understand without the tutorial. Finally, search for a recommended run-down of the economy on youtube that is around 10 minutes. Anything longer contains too much information for now, and anything shorter is probably hard to understand.
And that’s it. You’ve graduated. You’re an entry-level graduate set loose in the world. You’re going to have a lot of setbacks and stupid mistakes, but you live and learn, right? “Just follow your dreams” a guidance counselor would say. Only you don’t have to worry about real-lie consequences, so lie, cheat and steal all you want.
Great to see the XGames series being featured on Space Sector – well deserved.
Rebirth looks stunning….I wont be able to play it om my dual core; but when I get my next computer it will be top of the list.
ps and lets hope it does have the complexity all true fans of the X series expect. That’s what makes the games unique and not just another shoot em up arcade space opera. The X universe is a sanbox par excellence wherein you can create your own adventure.
That was a big part of this game. They completely scrapped their old UI in favor of what is supposed to be an extremely user friendly one while maintaining all of the depth and complexity. That is a large task to say the least so we’ll see how they’ve done soon.
I for one have played X2 and 3 and found them tons of fun. This new iteration looks incredible and I have my copy already on pre-order. This re-boot gives Egosoft a great platform to expand into all types of new places, a constant in the X series of games. They will expand it and then expand it some more. By the end expect this universe to massive and rife with new features and systems.
Hmm X Rebirth and XCOM at about same time…
New trailer looks like it’s a B class space shooter game.
We cant see the real potantial of the game. Also, editing of the trailer is very bad. Short blinkings make our eyes tired. We can’t see the details of the game.
It is a big eror.
Wow, that does look amazing! Despite some reservations, I really am looking forward to this game.
“So, will X Rebirth be fun after the first couple of fights? Will it please strategy fans, or only space sim fans? Will the fighting mechanic blend in well with the trading, mining and building parts?”
Having spent more hours than I care to admit on X2, X3 and Terran Conflict, I can assure you that what they presented was a gorgeous, open-ended, mostly unscripted sand-box universe to play in. Fighting was only the tip of a very large iceberg. I cant speak for Rebirth of course, only Egosoft’s previous efforts.
Given many, many hours of play, you could go from a broke fighter pilot to a galactic overlord who owned and operated vast factory complexes, entire fleets of warships (including massive battleships and carriers), traders making you money and even entire space sectors. In this way the game had quite a 4x flavor where you start from extremely humble beginnings and eventually expand a huge web of traders and warships to ultimately conquer the universe. Thus the strategy is in growing, operating and managing your empire in the way *you* see fit.
The fun in the game is maintained (for me at least) by – for the most part – being able to completely ignore the scripted missions and do your own thing. You set yourself a series of small goals and work to achieve them. When you finally succeed, you are in a stronger position and can set yourself further goals. Hours disappear without a trace…… :)
Of course if you like scripted missions and a more structured environment, they are available and can be quite profitable if you choose to follow the story path. However in my opinion story is not X’s strong point, its more about doing your own thing in a living, breathing universe.
The downside is that the game is quite complex and multifaceted with a steep learning curve. But once you eventually scale that curve, the view is totally worth the climb.
That sounds so awesome…I played X3 Terran Conflict but treated it like a Wing Commander game. I just did a lot of dog fights. I had no idea you could have entire fleets of warship and command a battleship. Which previous X game would you recommend most?
Yeah, its so much more than just a dog fighting game. Unfortunately though its a *long* game and many people don’t have the patience to progress to the point that the strategy elements really start to kick in. It was designed from the ground up to be played over a time-scale of months, not hours like most games.
I spent most of my time with Reunion, but I would have to say that Terran Conflict was the best.
Thanks you. I got a lot of the X games in a bundle a while back so looks like I got my weekend planned.
ha ha, Enjoy! And remember the learning curve is very steep, but don’t give up! There’s plenty of help on the Egosoft forums, many people who are real experts at the game.
It will all be worth it when you are standing on the bridge of your flagship M1, about to direct your armada to take over an entire sector. :)
Not to argue with you, but simply to provide a different perspective on these games.
I never liked X series for the same reason I never liked Fable. Both set out to make a dynamic world and both ended up creating an endless dance of automatons.
First, I hated the layout of space sectors with a passion: a series of tiny boxes mere tens of kilometers on the side clamped between gates marked for some bizarre reason as cardinal directions (what does East in space even mean?). It has completely eliminated the feeling I was actually flying in space, paired with the global map where these boxes were arranged like in square-lined exercise book, completely detached from anything real like the natural layout of stars and planets.(http://roguey.co.uk/x3ap/sectors/) In the end it made the universe look like a grotesque tiny model in some kind of economy simulation software.
Second, I never liked the way you interacted with your subordinates. I have nothing against complex interface in games, even when awfully arranged like in x-series. What I hate is when I am expected to feel like I’m dealing with real people while navigating a giant menu and struggling to figure out, with no feedback whatsoever, why the unit I’m issuing an order isn’t performing it. Why isn’t that fighter attacking? Is the pilot afraid? Is he out of missiles? Is it a bug? Maybe he’s even dying out there, but it is represented somewhere down the menu as a number.
Third, and I admit that is just my personal preference, I didn’t like how big and small ships weren’t a lot different from each other. I don’t mean the size of ship model or its characteristics like speed or the number of guns, but rather how the game had you deal with them. The menu was the same, the options were the same, just with bigger numbers; I found when I piloted and commanded larger ships they were just huge slow fighters, both in capabilities and feel.
Sorry if I offend anyone with this assessment.
Surprisingly, I don’t disagree with any of your points. I guess I just managed to enjoy the game in spite of those – quite valid – issues.
I have to admit that my suspension of disbelief was working overtime to overcome the situation you outlined in your first point. Those boxy little sectors are unique to the X – series and it makes you wonder what they were smoking when they invented the whole concept.
Another thing I didn’t like was the total lack of planets except as pretty images pasted in the background. No planets in a space game? What were they thinking!? And its going to be the exact same thing in Rebirth too….. so they haven’t really learned anything.
With your second point, well that’s part of the steep learning curve, eventually you get used to it and figure out what’s going on and all those questions have answers. But yeah, it can take a while and probably could use a simpler interface.
With your third point, I can see where you are coming from, but I was willing to accept it as a limitation of the interface and the technology. Better that than not being able to personally pilot any ship you wanted. Lol, which is another thing that will be missing in Rebirth, hope that bloody cockpit will be worth it.
>A series of tiny boxes mere tens of kilometers on the side clamped between gates marked for some bizarre reason as cardinal directions (what does East in space even mean?).
Actually, if you think about it, the east/west thing makes at least some sense.
The jumpgates define the x/y plane that the sector is built on. Everything revolves around them.
Someone arranged all the gates in a single sector to lie on the single plane (this is true 95% of the time), and the races just built stuff based around that coordinate grid concept. The East/West markings are simply more familiar labels that you use to navigate, could have named the directions after quarks with the same effect. Maybe humans just went further with the sailing ship theme – we do name the spaceships after 16th century sailing ships that have nothing to do with them out of habit, and nobody cares.
But I do agree that they should have placed more stuff on the z-axis or outside the gates. However, flying ingame with no FTL is boring even with fast forward, so placing things closer together is not so bad from that pov. Having to go between sectors is already slow enough, thank god for jumpdrive.
>It has completely eliminated the feeling I was actually flying in space, paired with the global map where these boxes were arranged like in square-lined exercise book, completely detached from anything real like the natural layout of stars and planets.(http://roguey.co.uk/x3ap/sectors/)
Think of it this way – the sectors (they are not even systems, they are tiny 100k sectors) themselves may be arranged completely arbitrarily in the actual 3D space, but for the sake of simplicity are flattened to a 2D map based on how the nearest gates connect to each other.
There’s evidence of that too. Some sectors gates link across half of the map, which should not be possible. Those systems are in fact neighbors but had to be oriented like that on a 2D map to make other stuff fit in. The map may infact be a sphere. Kinda like trying to make a periodic table to look pretty or making a flat map of the globe – some things have to be stretched out to make sphere into a square.
There’s also the fact that some race’s worlds are scattered randomly on the map, Teladi is a prime case of this – their old homeworld and their first colony are nowhere near close to each other on the new map. But they actually should be. So the map is not based on distance or proximity between systems but rather on gate connections. And those can be intentionally done in a way that can be represented on 2D network.
Ultimately the answer is simple – its 42. Its done this way because devs made it that way. But it can always be justified with backstory is need be.
>In the end it made the universe look like a grotesque tiny model in some kind of economy simulation software.
Well, actually once you go past the fighter dogfighting element it is mostly an economy simulator. Spreadsheets everywhere. So yes it many ways its an economy simulator.
That is sorely lacking in NPC interaction. For the longest time I didnt even think my ships gad captains in them I assumed they were piloted by some form of extremely dumb AI and instead of captains you bought software upgrades for autotrading. The game felt highly scripted, and storytelling was definitely a weak point, but it was a good economy simulator nonetheless.
And yes on the “a grotesque tiny model of the universe”. Thats even an understatement. There’s what, couple dozen systems, maybe a few hundred ships? That’s almost nothing really, in fact its about 15^E-15 of one percent of the number of stars in our galaxy alone, and in game those arent even starsystems but a tiny little sectors around a part of a random planet.
Probably could have fit the whole thing in our system alone and not notice it existed…
In fact the whole gate network is a project run by some advanced races that live in space all around X3 ‘universe’ who simply linked a bunch of scattered systems with young races together to keep them isolated form the old races to develop.
>Third, and I admit that is just my personal preference, I didn’t like how big and small ships weren’t a lot different from each other.
Agreed, I completely ignored the manual flying of anything larger than M3+ for that reason. Unrealistic. Piloting a carrier like an interceptor, heh.
If it only has a first person view in station, I can’t play the game. I get massive simulator sickness and I can’t play a good 90% of FPS games.
Me too.
One day after my bday :]
Good,good
Its shaping up to be another good X game I am only worried about the fight aspect of it now, the old x games had a flight model where it was very different when flying an M3 as to a M6 that was the fun of the X games, flight side of it.
Now with just one ship and it appears that its quake in space flight model, I am afraid it could get borring (the fight side) real quick
Agreed, although X-Rebirth has advanced in almost all areas, it has actually gone backwards by only allowing 1 ship you can personally pilot.
I feel sad knowing that I wont be able to stand on the bridge of my battleship as my fleet approaches an encounter, but will instead have to direct the entire battle from the (admittedly nice looking) cockpit of that pissy little corvette thingy they give you to fly.
Mark, I’m guessing they need to have _something_ left for the inevitable expansion :)
Fingers crossed Gary :) I’d be one happy camper if they released an expansion that allowed you to pilot multiple ships *and* have a cockpit. I’m not holding my breath though…….
Explosions. Lots of explosions. In space. Yeah. And liquid vacuum, where all those ships and torpedoes are swimming. Aah, forget it, I’m going to buy this game anyways.
Im a long time browser of this site, but this is my first post so Hi all!!!
I have to agree with Mark’s summation of the strengths of the X games, a 4x game where you’re actually IN the universe rather than observing from afar. As a veteran oligarch of the X-Universe I too am a little troubled by only piloting one ship, and the idea of commanding a space fleet not from the bridge of my flagship but from the cockpit of my 1st trading/mining vessel, bearing in mind it will take an age to get to that stage of fleet commander, is a little strange in my book… I only hope they add it later, or the modders get to work on it. All told though, I am really looking forward to this game, Pre-Order already in! :)
CLS on Standby anyone? I still get frustrated by this simple message when I order my freighters to do some load/unload missions, even though I’ve been playing this non-stop for 3 months or so now, so I’m no rookie so to speak.
To the subject in hand, no way I’m paying what they are asking of us europeans for the game, I never buy full priced games now, havent´t been doing for some time now, but when it gets a price drop (a big one) I’ll get it without a question.
Looks like an Impulse Ray Emitter on 0:54, nice effects.
Thats what autocannons should have been in X3. I would fit them just for the visuals alone.
Having said that, I do hope that you can turn the station walking the fuck off. And do everything a lot faster from the menus, preferably not leaving the ship at all. That part in the trading video was painful to watch. Where did they get that idea from, Eve? Its a failure just waiting to happen. Can you image making your character awkwardly run – because normal walking is too slow- through the same old corridor of the same old station to meet up with the same guy who is STILL sitting on the same damn bed and go through the same old scripted limited option dialog (which traditionally are terrible in X3) to do the same old sale for the xxxth time? Oh God, the horror…
The cockpit also. What is that for exactly? Its blocking part of the screen and you could click the same buttons from the normal ui with the same effect. They may be going for immersion but it feels like they are failing, I’m not sure that will work honestly. Maybe it would, I have yet to see all how it actually feels like ingame from something other than a series of 1-2sec flashing clips…but most likely it wouldnt. Again, gets old fast, doesnt add functionality and is just a distraction. Imo at least.
Why do people think that there would even be such things as cockpits! on the outside of the ship! with windows! which you manually! look out from in order to pilot your ship and actually see where you are going and shooting! What is this, StarWars movie? Where local AIs – droids – operate and load their ship guns by hand and target not through a computer but with a naked eye through a gunport in a ship, like they are a bunch of 17th century pirates?
Its called a helmet with HUD and 360 degrees video feed, and they could be made even now…And it will probably be direct-to-brain interface or something different entirely in the future. Why would you even make a static cockpit with narrow and limited field of view in space, that looks so incredibly dumb…
Even if I’m agree with you, calling for realism for a space opera (and so, not hard sci-fi) game is a bit misplaced.
Yeah, the X games always been a sort of Star Wars, like the Elite series (even if this serie used Newtonian flight) and most all of the other games of the same kind.
But hey they are only games, if personnally I need something better I play with Orbiter.
For sure, a Hard sci-fi context for such game would be cool, the problem is that doesn’t seems much flashy than a space op setting (even if I’m not agree with that). Marketing, marketing…
I just hope that the user’s interface is better but the game system not dumbed down.
“Where did they get that idea from, Eve?”
I had too this impression when I seen the previous video inside the stations.
Looks good, sounds good, but what kind of PC will be needed for this? I’m a bit afraid on this part…
According to the X Rebirth site, http://www.deepsilver.com/en/game-view/view/game/access12/x-rebirth/ :
Minimum System Requirements
* OS: Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit), Vista SP2 (64-bit), XP SP2
* Processor: Intel i-Series at 2GHz or AMD equivalent
* Memory: 4 GB RAM
* Graphics: Nvidia GT400 series with 512MB RAM or better, ATI 4870HD with 512MB RAM or better
* DirectX: Version 9.0c
* Hard Drive: 6 GB available space
* Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card
Additional Notes: These specs are still being determined
If it had multiplayer (as in between friends and not MMO), I would be more interested than I am. When it comes to building things (whether it be empires or houses made of cubes), I prefer to do it with friends than alone.
It actually is listed on Steam as “Multiplayer” Not sure if it is more than a hotseat option if any even. So far this is the only remark of Multiplayer I have found. Traditionally the X series is single player only, so I think Steam might have been a bit more optimistic.
My wild guess without any facts to back it up is that if there is a multiplayer aspect, it’ll have something to do with the market and trading…not like flying in formation with your friends.