X: Rebirth

Zloth

I smell a... wumpus!?
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The old thread for this is preeeety old. The game was announced back in 2011 and has taken much longer than expected. The "when will it release" thread in the forums went on and on but now we know it's in mid-November of this year. They've also started churning out videos on their YouTube channel. The one on scale and detail is particularly impressive.

The system reqs on the Steam Page is interesting... first game ever to REQUIRE 64-bit?
 
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I need to read up more on it, but based on comments I've seen here and there it looks like you'll only be able to pilot 1 ship in the game? That you control other ships through menus only...except for a few small ships/drones which you can move your camera to and control directly.

Still that seems pretty darn weird for a X game. I hope that info isn't right =/
 
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I was wondering about that. In the preview video I saw, it was the same cockpit every time they showed a cockpit view.

Something that concerns me more though is a quote from the newsletter I received from Egosoft.

'Complex, but not complicated' describes one of the principal features of X Rebirth as demonstrated by the much-simplified game controls. The video "In Control" is the first of a pair of linked-videos demonstrating the much-simplified in-game control and interface methods. This first one covers the use of a gamepad controller. We will show further videos such as this on a more regular basis up until release date.

"Much-simplified"? Playing an X game with a gamepad??

Now I'm not a veteran of the series (I own all the games but have never advanced far in any of them), but that sounds like something that most long-time fans probably don't want to hear.


The one on scale and detail is particularly impressive.

Yeah, I saw that one. Looks great, and I like how you can finally exit your ship and actually walk around inside the stations. I just wish it was a little less focused on economics.
 
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Something that concerns me more though is a quote from the newsletter I received from Egosoft.

'Complex, but not complicated' describes one of the principal features of X Rebirth as demonstrated by the much-simplified game controls. The video "In Control" is the first of a pair of linked-videos demonstrating the much-simplified in-game control and interface methods. This first one covers the use of a gamepad controller. We will show further videos such as this on a more regular basis up until release date.
"Much-simplified"? Playing an X game with a gamepad??

Now I'm not a veteran of the series (I own all the games but have never advanced far in any of them), but that sounds like something that most long-time fans probably don't want to hear.

For this particular game, I think that some measure of "simplification" is actually a very good thing in that context - as in controls and user interface. I've always loved the idea of the X series, but could never get very far into them because of how unintuitive and clunky it felt. It got to the point that I was keeping a notebook beside me while playing just to keep track of the basic functions of the game. After 15 hours, I realized that I just wasn't getting any enjoyment out of the experience. The concepts weren't too complicated for me to handle - I "got" what I was capable of doing within the game and how most of the systems worked - but interacting with these systems with such a poor interface was an utter nightmare.

What Paradox accomplished with EU4 and CK2 are good examples of what I hope will also happen with X: Rebirth: They took an unintuitive nightmare of an interface and transformed it into a pretty elegant, "simple" method of interacting with the game's complexity. X doesn't need to over-simplify the mechanics to achieve their goal of a "much-simplified" interface and control scheme, and it's a much-needed step in the right direction for the series imo.
 
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Yeah, "complexity" is a game feature you don't want to lose in an X game. But "complicated" is a hindrance to gameplay which every dev should strive to eliminate.

Playing on a modern gamepad doesn't necessarily worry me a huge amount, but it does depend a lot on implementation. With two analogue sticks and four trigger/bumper buttons which can be used to set context for the remaining ABCD buttons, gamepads really aren't all that limiting anymore (short of text input and really fine pointing over a very large area). But we shall see.
 
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It's the British way!
Sadly not, it's the German way ;)

(Confusing notation I know - left-hand drive means the steering wheel is on the left of the car, so you are driving on the right side of the road, which is the wrong side :p)
 
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Didn't they already put a patch in to play X3:TC and prelude with the gamepad? One of the videos they put up gets pretty deep into how the gamepad works. It looks like it would work fine for dogfighting and wandering around in space stations but, when you do something that requires a lot of menu work, it's going to have issues. I'm guessing you'll want to get off your couch and go sit in front of your keyboard when it comes to leading an armada.

I need to read up more on it, but based on comments I've seen here and there it looks like you'll only be able to pilot 1 ship in the game? That you control other ships through menus only…except for a few small ships/drones which you can move your camera to and control directly.

Still that seems pretty darn weird for a X game. I hope that info isn't right =/
I wouldn't count on all those drones being small. Smaller than your main ship, sure, but I think quite a few are going to be fighter sized.

From what I've read, most folks (including me) end up playing most of X3:TC in one or two ships anyway once they get the cash to buy a good M6. You might jump into a fighter to take part in a battle but, if that fighter gets blown up, it's game over. You can get in the big ships but they move so slow and have so many weapons on automatic that it's not really good for anything except making some of the weapons fire on overload. For the most part, you're better off directing the battle from an M6 or M7.

Now you're stuck in something that looks M6'ish in size. You don't get to pick the ship, which isn't such a good thing, but you do get to wander around inside. You don't get to command the huge ships at all but there wasn't much point in commanding them before so no big loss there, IMHO. Commanding a fighter drone while your co-pilot commands your ship seems like a big plus to me. If your fighter gets blown up, you die with it. If your drone gets blown up, you get back to flying your main ship or just launch another drone. This system should make it easier to get right in the thick of battle without the danger!
 
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If they went through all that trouble of making it possible to walk around stations I can't imagine why they wouldn't do the same for ships (plural)
 
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I read somewhere else that gamepad functionality was patched into the last X game half a year or so ago. Supposedly it's the prefered control method now.
 
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Game looks mighty fine, visually - but it still seems to suffer from the "Frontier" problem of not having that much of a story to keep me engaged.

Oh, I do love a detailed economy - but if there's nothing but pretty backdrops and numbers growing - I'll be bored.

I need a strong story and lots of meaningful exploration. As in, not a thousand pretty space stations that have nothing much you can actually discover or add to your inventory.
 
Doesn't sound like you'll be happy then since they have said in the videos that the emphasis is on sandbox and making your own story.
 
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Doesn't sound like you'll be happy then since they have said in the videos that the emphasis is on sandbox and making your own story.

Most likely not - but the fans probably will be :)

I'm just dying for a modern space game these days. I'm hoping Star Citizen might live up to its potential!
 
Most likely not - but the fans probably will be :)

I'm just dying for a modern space game these days. I'm hoping Star Citizen might live up to its potential!

Yes, I hope so, too. I have never spent as much money on a PC game ever before as on Star Citizen and that game has not even been released yet :) .
What kind of kills X: Rebirth for me is not the sandbox play though. That actually sounds quite appealing to me. But I don't think I can deal with only one playable ship. Climbing up the ladder and getting better ships as you go is a key element for me. I wonder if they can make up for it by making the one ship you have super-customizable or something...

Anyway, for a real space sim with a story and a branching campaign, my money (literally) is on Star Citizen's Squadron 42 single player campaign, too.
I believe that they will fully deliver on that. The lead designer Rob Irving recently said to expect a typical Chris Roberts game in that regard so we'll get our branching campaign with wingmen and we'll make friends and allies along the way and then we'll lose some, you know... betrayal, love, hate, space soap opera, the whole nine yards... :biggrin:
 
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Yes, I hope so, too. I have never spent as much money on a PC game ever before as on Star Citizen and that game has not even been released yet :) .
What kind of kills X: Rebirth for me is not the sandbox play though. That actually sounds quite appealing to me. But I don't think I can deal with only one playable ship. Climbing up the ladder and getting better ships as you go is a key element for me. I wonder if they can make up for it by making the one ship you have super-customizable or something…

Yeah, that one ship aspect is a bit disappointing as well. I suspect it may be due to the level of detail in the cockpit - and maybe they decided having more ships would take too much time to implement.

But it's kinda hard to see why they couldn't do 4-5 additional cockpits - when you consider the level of detail elsewhere.

Truly a beautiful game, that's for certain.

Anyway, for a real space sim with a story and a branching campaign, my money (literally) is on Star Citizen's Squadron 42 single player campaign, too.
I believe that they will fully deliver on that. The lead designer Rob Irving recently said to expect a typical Chris Roberts game in that regard so we'll get our branching campaign with wingmen and we'll make friends and allies along the way and then we'll lose some, you know… betrayal, love, hate, space soap opera, the whole nine yards… :biggrin:

Yep, everything about it sounds amazing - and I do have high hopes that it may revitalize a genre that's all but dead.

I never understood why it died… My guess is that it's because they used to all but require a joystick.
 
Yeah, the X games have never been strong on story. There is some but it's more of a diversion than a central part of the game. The "Squadron 42" portion of Star Citizen should have a lot more there.

(But will Star Citizen ever come out? People see all the features in the game and fund it. That lets the developers add more to the game. That pushes the release date out further but also means more features and "oh wow, isn't this huge" press coverage. That leads to more people funding the game. And so the cycle continues, pushing the release date ever backward! I think the game may end up releasing in 2042, at which time every person on the planet will have helped fund the game. ;))
 
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I expect to see ship DLCs to be honest… I don't recall them mentioning the 1 ship thing until fairly recently…Or I could simply have missed it in the past.

So I'm thinking that they "kill two birds with one stone" this way. The game has been delayed and longer in development than expected. Therefore cost have risen. Producing the game with only 1 cockpit graphical interface at launch is probably easier and allows to save some time and money....and also has the advantage of allowing them to sell DLCs and maximize their profit.

But maybe I'm just pessimistic since it seems to be the trend in recent games =/
 
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Nope, the one ship thing was mentioned waaaay back when the game was first announced. In fact, you might want to read it as it goes into detail about how you fly what.
 
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Thanks good to know =)
 
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