spectre
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2008
- Messages
- 5,603
Yeah, it helps to work out some consistent notation for them. Doesn't help that the originals went under different names in the US and Europe.
Personally, I find it sufficient to refer to Firaxis' offerings as EXCUM, or corrupt the spelling otherwise, because only the originals get the honor of the full and correct name.
I don't really get the recent trend to deeply explore and overexplain, leaving no loose end behind. Now sure when head canon became the enemy of today's writers.
To me the gameover screens told me what I needed to hear: Yeah, without you in the picture they tried to work out some kind of a deal, but in the end, the aliens had other plans.
YOU have failed to save the earth and any knowledge you gained is now lost. The fact that you had jump through hoops and run your own Motion Scanner manufacturing side gig to finance it
while the Earth's governments were perfectly willing to throw Earth under the bus if it came to it was a nice cherry on top. Your role was heroic, but not in a comic-book sense.
For some reason, it's not something that gets easily replicated these days.
In any case, my original point was: I'm not getting any such vibes out of Phoenix Point. If anything, it feels all over the place:
hi-tech buildings and cybernetic post-humans next to mutated tribals, next to ruined buildings and guys sporting mad max gear.
And whatever the fuck I'm doing for the first few story missions? Travelling all over the world, scrounging for diaries and time capsules, uncovering secrets of my ancestors, like it's some kind of a XIX century novel.
Almost makes me think the X-Piratez thing had more thematic consistency. It's like a bunch of people took turns at the helm for PP, with each pulling in a totally different direction.
The infuriating thing is, the underlying gameplay is still serviceable (obviously, I'm talking about the battlescape, not the Geoscape), but it could (probably) work so much better if placed in a framework that's better thought-out;
though you'd have to give it all a violent shake and rebuild from scratch, putting the pieces back together and probably also throwing out a whole bunch of the odd ones.
Personally, I find it sufficient to refer to Firaxis' offerings as EXCUM, or corrupt the spelling otherwise, because only the originals get the honor of the full and correct name.
I think that's a perfectly fine way to feel about it. The originals leave a whole bunch of gaps for the player to fill, which in my books is the best way to go about it.
I don't really get the recent trend to deeply explore and overexplain, leaving no loose end behind. Now sure when head canon became the enemy of today's writers.
To me the gameover screens told me what I needed to hear: Yeah, without you in the picture they tried to work out some kind of a deal, but in the end, the aliens had other plans.
YOU have failed to save the earth and any knowledge you gained is now lost. The fact that you had jump through hoops and run your own Motion Scanner manufacturing side gig to finance it
while the Earth's governments were perfectly willing to throw Earth under the bus if it came to it was a nice cherry on top. Your role was heroic, but not in a comic-book sense.
For some reason, it's not something that gets easily replicated these days.
In any case, my original point was: I'm not getting any such vibes out of Phoenix Point. If anything, it feels all over the place:
hi-tech buildings and cybernetic post-humans next to mutated tribals, next to ruined buildings and guys sporting mad max gear.
And whatever the fuck I'm doing for the first few story missions? Travelling all over the world, scrounging for diaries and time capsules, uncovering secrets of my ancestors, like it's some kind of a XIX century novel.
Almost makes me think the X-Piratez thing had more thematic consistency. It's like a bunch of people took turns at the helm for PP, with each pulling in a totally different direction.
The infuriating thing is, the underlying gameplay is still serviceable (obviously, I'm talking about the battlescape, not the Geoscape), but it could (probably) work so much better if placed in a framework that's better thought-out;
though you'd have to give it all a violent shake and rebuild from scratch, putting the pieces back together and probably also throwing out a whole bunch of the odd ones.
