X-Rebirth

[Blaine]

Where do i defend the whole crew/NPC interaction gimmick?

Zarniwoop just focused on one pretty minor feature, and you just blew it out of proportions. The game may definitely be called immersive, if everything they said so far about a living and breathing, persistent universe is true. That, and those incredibly detailed space cities also help a lot (in b4 graphic whore!).

The ship crew, first officer, and stations populated by people seem like really major additions to me, and Zarniwoop is specifically questioning why those things should be considered "immersive" in the context of the X Universe. You go on to reply to him and describe why other aspects of the game (ones he's not even referring to) are the reasons the series should be considered immersive.

Perhaps I misspoke—you didn't defend the new additions, but rather defended features he wasn't even discussing, sidestepping them if you will. Please note, I'm really not trying to be a dick here, nor am I demonizing the new additions, or trying to imply they'll ruin the game. I'm only saying you seem to have zoomed out past what Zarniwoop was actually referring to.

 

[Spectacle]

It's out!

 

[muds_animal_friend]

You guys seriously considering playing an X game on release? Not a year after release, but on release? Seriously? You've balls o' steel my friends balls o' steel.

 

[Vival]

You guys seriously considering playing an X game on release? Not a year after release, but on release? Seriously? You've balls o' steel my friends balls o' steel.

Starvation makes people do desperate things.

 

[Surf Solar]

Is there a demo to download somewhere? And I don't mean a pirated game, I mean a real demo..

 

[Cyberarmy]

You guys seriously considering playing an X game on release? Not a year after release, but on release? Seriously? You've balls o' steel my friends balls o' steel.

We have no choice... after drooling over Star Citizen for months we need some fix. I want to smell some space

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Raapys]

Hmmmm, this doesn't bode well. Haven't got to try the game myself yet, but initial impressions are pretty horrible.

The obvious things, like utterly horrible performance, tons of bugs, crappy NPC models, low res textures 'inside', poor voice acting, that's all there. That's expected though. But then there's this:

Living World?
The ships i see on the highways don't even exit the highway at exit points, i can sit in front of a highway exit forever and nothing will happen to me...

If we compare it to waterslides, people generally need to GTFO away from the lower end of it before someone smashes into their face, why should this highway work any differently?

I can crash into ships @ full speed without even taking shield damage, and i can push them INSIDE of each other like they don't have collision detection with one another. I can also just literlaly fly through them.

But one cool thing i just saw was a ship getting shot at and blowing up for reasons unknown to me.

Does anyone here have any actual gameplay impressions?

 

[J_C]

 

[Echo Mirage]

I would buy it if the price wasn't so inflated. That and I'm sick of buying games that won't work as intended for the next 6 weeks or six months. But It does look pretty at least.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Just got home and I see it's updating. Smooth, just released a few hours ago and already a patch.

You guys seriously considering playing an X game on release? Not a year after release, but on release? Seriously? You've balls o' steel my friends balls o' steel.

I played all of them on release and they were incredibly addictive, fun games. Apart from X3:Reunion, which was an incredibly addictive bugfest.

Will report back on the de/incline as the case may be.

 

[Azazel]

I've been playing since 4am, just about to head to work.

• The new menu system is fucking terrible. Instead of dozens of obtuse nested menus we instead have everything stripped down to bare-bones and then shoved into a laggy as fuck animated system where to bring anything up you have to wait for it to display on a screen inside your cockpit.
• Textures in your ship and on stations look like they are from the year 2000, straight up.
• Game looks beautiful outside your ship.
• Cockpit view is atrocious, feels like you are piloting the RV from spaceballs.
• Combat is decent.
• Animations on everything, everything, are terrible. TERRIBLE.
• AI is fucked. In addition to the spacelane fakeout stuff mentioned above, I encountered a system where freighters were plowing into one of those big satellite dishes and just sort of piling up inside of it, skittering around. I don't think many of the ships buzzing around are "real" in the sense that they are doing anything except look pretty.
• The junk you pick up out of containers on stations is automatically sold at regular intervals for cash while you are docked. This raises the WTF question of why a minigame of you climbing around in air vents to pick up junk even exists in a game of space opera.
• You cannot stand on the bridges of any ships except the reeking shit barge, and watch the world fly past, contrary to the still-present stickies on the forums.

Overall my impression is that of a considerably less polished version of freelancer with an interface worse than the past 3 games combined. I get the distinct gut feeling that this game started out as some sort of Mass Effect clone and was intended for a console release, but they switched gears drastically and tried to re-X it at the last minute, hence the 2.5 year release delay.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to officially retract my previous statement and agree with Azazel. Pretty pissed off at the moment.

The fist few minutes is basically a first person shooter

Menus are cumbersome

Graphics are ULTRAFUCKINGSHIT, even when they work which isn't often. Especially the character models and their animations. They literally look like they were pulled from Unreal Tournament 2003. For reals. Seriously, X3 blows this out of the water. The graphics in this remind me of Borderlands meets Hellgate London. Hard to explain but it does.

The cockpit blocks 3/4 of your view

The stuff you see can outside your cockpit is way less informative, for example your speed isn't shown.

The guy looks at the fucking bitch next door WAY too often. WHY GODDAMMIT WHY? What was wrong with the person's face showing in the corner of the screen like the old games?

Overall, expect the console release pretty soon. This is another Diablo III, "Totally designed for PC's only" game.

Every time you take off, you have to watch some retarded animation of the guy getting into the cockpit. WTF just take off already JESUS FUCK!

Lastly, to everyone who dissed me for being worried that the new menu system would be dumbed down:

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, FAGGOTS?

This shit shouldn't have even been on Beta yet. X Rebirth? More like X Stillbirth, amirite?

 

[Raapys]

Ugh...

 

[Echo Mirage]

I have to ask. What is so special about this Pride of Albion ship that they based the entire game around it ?.

 

[Crispy]

Darn. Guess I'll be passing on this one unless later patches really spruce it up or if mods fix it.

Disappointed.

 

[Azazel]

I have to ask. What is so special about this Pride of Albion ship that they based the entire game around it ?.

Based on what I've played of the campaign it will have some secret ability to re-activate the gate system and both the questionable factions will be out to get it. Yesha was clearly sent specifically to get it off you, based on how things start, but will have a change of heart after "getting to know you" and help you save the universe!

I will try Free Play mode when I get home and see if removing the horrendous campaign alleviates the rage I feel at having woken up at 4am to play this shit.

Darn. Guess I'll be passing on this one unless later patches really spruce it up or if mods fix it.

Disappointed.

The thing is, I don't think modding is really going to be a way to fix most of this shit. Modders can only do so much, and much like other high-profile clearly-gimped-for-console frameworks *cough* Skyrim *cough* that have been released lately; there is much in Rebirth that just can't be fixed since it's so close to the engine core.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Darn. Guess I'll be passing on this one unless later patches really spruce it up or if mods fix it.

Disappointed.

Patches won't fix this. They'll fix the bugs, they might add some of the controls back that have been consolified (for example H to hail doesn't work anymore, you have to double click on a ship and choose "hail", how retarded is that?) but they won't fix the shittyness.

Mods might change things like the menus, interface and map system etc, but the core of the game is what's broken. It's like expecting mods to turn Dear Esther into a decent game.

I have to ask. What is so special about this Pride of Albion ship that they based the entire game around it ?.

I'm also guessing it will turn out to be the most important ship in the universe that ends up saving mankind/the X universe/all of existence. That's why some random "freelancer" just found it lying in a junk heap despite every government and large corporation having looked for it for years and never finding it lolololol. That's not even the worst part though. Even with one ship, even with the shitty name, we could have had a nice, deep, entertaining game. X: BTF proved that.

This game is Fallout 3. Or Star Control 3. It carries a proud name, and then proceeds to shit explosive diarrhea all over it.

 

[theSavant]

The first let's plays arrived on youtube. Although I knew most things already, it clearly showed the issues:

- NPC models are ugly as butt (seriously...)
- Character animations are like wooden sticks (worse than in Half Life 1)
- Talk choices minigame is embarrassing bad and the same choices ones repeat on every character (you must be kidding...)
- Station interiors are boring and repetitive (and don't get me started with the loot in the air vents...)

Stupid... just stupid. You can clearly see that EGOSOFT was not up to the task and they just added it for a "feature list". What an amateurish rubbish. If it wouldn't look so bad... but it really does. Why did they bother to do this crap in the first place? It totally destroys the immersion. This game would have been much better without this shit, because otherwise it looks great from the visuals, and I also love the large homey cockpit. But the "features" mentioned above are all crap. No exceptions. And you are always reminded of this crap, because it's not optional, but part of the game.

 

[Blaine]

Time to bust out Albion Prelude; I haven't really played it or TC yet. Glad I waited 'til launch day to buy—sounds at least 5x worse than expected, which is saying something.

What really tore it for me was that I've heard there's no HOTAS support. Get bent, assholes. I was gonna buy it anyway just to see for myself, regardless of the trainwreck, but not now.

Good night, sweet EGOSOFT... it was a decent run, but this one will probably do you in. Now let's go see the post-purchase rationalization on the forums.

Edit: The official forums currently:

 

[Zarniwoop]

Time to bust out Albion Prelude, haven't really played it or TC yet. Glad I waited 'til launch day to buy, sounds at least 5x worse than expected.

It's worse than even I expected, and I expected some seriously bad stuff. I expected a somewhat dumbed-down X game, not a buggy Mass Effect with some light Freelancer-style corridor spaceflight tacked on.

TC and AP are pretty much exactly the same, apart from AP having more content. AP is probably the easiest X game to date to make money in, due to the huge number of high-paying missions being offered in stations. Depending on your reputation, you could be paid several hundred thousand just for transporting some NPC. AP is basically just a standalone expansion to TC. I'd go with that if I'd never played either of the two.

Edit: Although, TC has more unclaimed "Unknown Sectors" in which to build your ubercomplexes free from AI meddling and collisions.

 

[theSavant]

An incoming shitstorm brought the forums down

 

[mikaelis]

I hear you guys. But what about the endgame? You know, once you're done with the story/tutorial for fags. Can it improve? I mean, you haven't gotten to building station/ships/global trading yet? Have you? Is there a chance that it won't suck? (after modding/patches)? IS THEREEEEEE????

 

[Morgoth]

Large-scale games with no thorough QA provided by publishers are always to be treated with caution.

The impatient pre-order sheep is now the new QA staff. Practical too, as you don't have to pay them.

 

[Space Satan]

That was expected. Promised too much and released everything with horrible quality. Will wait to see if patches would fix it.