KickStarter Xenonauts 2 - now available on Early Access

[VonMiskov]

Just watched a video with the latest version. Despite the somewhat sparse environments, the game looks kinda cool. I'm just not sure how far the game is fleshed out but it looks a lot like X1 in terms of mechanics. Not much new here except graphics and animations?

From what I presume it suppose to be a remake on better engine with some of the mechanics fixed.

 

[udm]

I just want Line-of-Sight to be fixed. That's all.

 

[Harthwain]

Just watched a video with the latest version. Despite the somewhat sparse environments, the game looks kinda cool. I'm just not sure how far the game is fleshed out but it looks a lot like X1 in terms of mechanics. Not much new here except graphics and animations?

From what I presume it suppose to be a remake on better engine with some of the mechanics fixed.

No need to presume:

GAMEPLAY CHANGES:

• Setting: We would like to improve the storyline this time around, adding additional characters and a deeper plot and attempting to make better use of the Cold War / clandestine organisation setting than we did in the first game.

• Stability & Performance: Moving to Unity3D will give us a much more capable platform for development than our previous engine did, so expect fewer bugs and improved performance, but also the quality of life improvements enabled by a 3D engine (e.g. a rotateable battlefield camera).

• Improved Graphics: We will be increasing the art budget and using more modern technology for the sequel, so expect the overall visual fidelity to be significantly improved. We will also be updating the visual designs of the Xenonauts and the aliens so they look a bit more interesting and distinctive!

• Ground Combat: We are retaining Time Units and the other core mechanics from the first game, but we will attempt to address some of the weaknesses too: indestructible UFOs, poor use of vertical terrain, human psionics, etc.

• Geoscape: We want to add a lot more strategic choice for the player on the Geoscape, giving the player more choice with regards to the research tree and how they choose to expand their organisation. We would also like to make the aliens more reactive to your actions and tactics.

• Air Combat: This needs to use the same skills as the rest of the game (i.e. tactical thinking) so is likely to receive an overhaul.

Source: https://www.xenonauts.com/2017/01/03/xenonauts-2-changes/

 

[Papill0n]

Just watched a video with the latest version. Despite the somewhat sparse environments, the game looks kinda cool. I'm just not sure how far the game is fleshed out but it looks a lot like X1 in terms of mechanics. Not much new here except graphics and animations?

hmm.. not too bad. Good for what it is at this point i guess. I suppose my main gripe would be the "blacked out" tiles, what do they represent, the places a selected character can't see? Kinda annoying.

I like their isometric view, verticality is difficult though. In that one situaton I guess they're trying to depict an alien on the roof and some guy climbs a ladder up to get to him?

 

[Darth Canoli]

They should release it now so this same guy can whine about bugs and why they did not wait longer.

The thread was opened 7 years ago, I'm not in favor of rushed games but 7 years is hardly rushing.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

They should release it now so this same guy can whine about bugs and why they did not wait longer.

The thread was opened 7 years ago, I'm not in favor of rushed games but 7 years is hardly rushing.

If you say so Quickbeam.

 

[Mazisky]

To be honest the maps look worse than Xenonauts 1.

Maybe this is the result of procedural generation but in this case I would preferred them to go handcrafted.

 

[SerratedBiz]

How could you even have an X-Com inspired game WITHOUT a morale system??

 

[geno]

What a coincidence, they talked about the morale system in the December update, a couple of weeks ago.

The main thing we worked on was the soldier Morale system - the system that causes your soldiers to panic when things go horribly wrong on a mission. We actually planned not to include this in Xenonauts 2 for quite a while, but ultimately I felt the game would be weaker without it and not having it gives me fewer tools when it comes to designing the alien abilities (particularly psionic ones). Anyway, this system is mostly implemented but there's still quite a few bugs and edge cases we're working through.

We've made a few improvements relative to the first Xenonauts. The first is that Morale always starts at 100 for every soldier, and the Bravery of a soldier (boosted by the squad commander bonus) reduces the amount of Morale damage taken when something bad happens (a soldier with 0 Bravery takes about 3x the morale damage that soldier with 100 Bravery does). There's now a button that allows you to spend TU in order to gain Morale, and the morale system is a bit more sensible in general. Units are generally only vulnerable to panic if Xenonaut soldiers are dying around them (particularly high-ranking ones) or the unit itself has been wounded, or if there are psionic aliens messing with their heads. Balancing is still required but overall it should be a little smoother and easier to understand than it was in Xenonauts 1.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I wonder if they changed the morale system to provide some new interesting changes.

I like what OpenX-COM mods like PirateZ and The X-COM Files did with morale, it was interesting with new systems like surrendered and such. It made tactics like doing fast shock assaults (rather than the usual cautious playing) right off the bat viable, because it could trigger early desmoralization dominoes on the enemy. There is also the fact enemy types and ranks were made to matter a lot more. But depending on what you did, you could also get fucked in a similar way.

Don't make me reinstall this.

 

[Eyestabber]

Yesterday I came up with the following armchair dev take: Xenonauts didn't do much with its Cold War premise. Sure you have the aesthetics and there is a "Soviet Union" on the map but there isn't much in the way of geopolitics and funding IRC works the same as in UFO:EU. So here's what I think would've made for an interesting game: WHAT IF instead of classic OP Alien Empire taking Earth over via brute force we had more subtle aliens? An alien force small in size and completely unable to directly conquer earth. What they do instead is approach country leaders in PEACE and offer them an edge to win whatever cold war related issue they are currently facing. Aliens trying to play off the existing HUMAN conflicts of the Cold War would make for an interesting Cold War with Aliens instead of Aliens during Cold War, no?

Take for instance Enver Hoxha the guy who build bunkers capable of housing all of Albania's population. Would it be a big stretch to think shrewd aliens MIGHT try to offer a guy like this some "help" in order to secure a URSS-free socialist paradise? Or maybe one of the Caribbean banana republics taking alien aid to resist CIA backed coups? What if the aliens themselves become entangled in human conflicts, sending their pet humans against other aliens and their pet humans? Would it be so weird as to consider some random dictator offering the aliens some political prisoners for "experiments" in exchange for alien weapons?

What if the visiting aliens find something on earth they would be willing to trade for? Something they don't have in their home planet but quickly grow to love/get addicted to like say...coffee, alcohol, drugs, chocolate, spices, dye, pet dogs...? Wouldn't human economies change to please their new weapon-dealing overlords? Previously irrelevant countries making a fortune in alien trade...wouldn't that impact the Cold War dynamics as a whole?

I know all that stuff would be hard to implement as game mechanics but I think the idea of alien life boiling down to "we come in peace! * draws laser and start shooting * for unknown reasons while blissfully ignoring other LESS COSTLY and probably more beneficial options always felt a bit dumb to me.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Sounds like Alien Nation in some ways but maybe I just feel like mentioning Alien Nation.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Harry Turtledove's Worldwar-series does something like that, but it has aliens starting their invasion mid 2nd WW.

 

[Trithne]

This was an idea that Goldhawk was more or less floating as how they wanted X2 to work differently to X1. No idea if that's been scrapped since then, as this was around the time they also talked about having a single Xenonaut base you managed, and turn-based air combat.

 

[Eyestabber]

- Space Communists helping the Commies win ("Why these humans can't pull off communism? Its THIS easy - just abolish the individual and tie all minds together!")
- Space Ultra-Ancaps helping the Capitalists win ("Wow those Earth people are too statist")

I like that a lot. I was gonna write exactly a "what if the aliens actually became true believers of Cold War ideologies?" wall of text. But here's another aspect I think is underexplored:

Spoiler

Keep these conventions in mind:
Visitors: aliens currently on Earth. There are NOT state actors but rather part of a private enterprise (Sectofoods).
Empire: the faraway "alien empire" consisting of Core Worlds and Colonies. They are blissfully unaware of the fact Earth even exists
Sectofoods: Sectofoods Quality Rations™ is an underdog company on the verge of bankruptcy and acquisition by its main competitor Muttonlicius Nutrients. Their luck turns around when one of their prospectors discovers a certain blue planet with inhabitants capable of delivering "terran goods" (read bellow) the Empire's citizens never even heard of before but become immediately obsessed (and kinda addicted).
Muttonlicius Nutrients: the greatest food supplier in the Empire, Muttonlicius enjoyed complete market domination up until recently, when their main surviving competitor suddenly came out with a series of "secret recipes" that took the Colonies by storm. Although Mutonlicius lobby managed to get the "Purity of Foods Act" approved in the Imperial Senate, prohibiting the sale of "Foods with undisclosed recipes" in the Core Worlds, the fact remains that Sectofoods sudden growth is alarming and the loss of supply contracts in several colonies make the higher ups very uncomfortable. Mutonlicius corporate espionage team is tasked with finding out the "secret recipes" of Sectofoods and either replicate or find some "health concern" that can be used to ruin Sectofoods skyrocketing profits.
Smugglers: word of the goods being distributed in the colonies reached the Core Worlds and certain "entrepreneurs" are more than willing to buy from Sectofoods controlled colonies and discreetly resell in the Core Worlds. Their real dream however is to find the source of these goods and cut off the middleman.
Terran goods: the stuff from earth alien society learned to love and pay high prices for like alcohol, coffee, chocolate, meat etc. These goods are NOT presented as "from Earth" by Sectofoods. Instead they are bought from humans, repackaged and sold as Sectofoods latest groundbreaking ration formula. The reason for this secrecy is ofc maintaining their monopoly on trade with Earth

What if our visitors are not representatives of their "lords" but rather private individuals looking out for their own benefit? What if "Sectofoods" discovered Earth, established trade relations with humans, got filthy rich from it and now are doing their very best to AVOID news of the discovery of Earth reaching the Empire? What if their motivations for being here aren't just economical but also political? Our visitors are undesirables back "home" and they see Earth as their new home...after some slight adjustments are made?

I like the idea of aliens with a complex society, aliens that are from an Empire but not necessarily loyal dogs of said Empire. Most visitors merely want to keep profiting from their intergalactic booze trade while avoiding Imperial taxations and nosy competitors that might undercut them. BUT...

Some of the aliens DO NOT approve of their bosses and coworkers merry little capitalistic escapade. They consider terran goods to be poisonous filth corrupting Imperial society and the sensorial stimulation brought on by these goods to be nothing but the lowest form of degeneracy. Unsurprisingly these "loyalists" feel very homesick as they hold Earth in low regard AND they want nothing more than to bring this whole "madness" to an end. They begin plotting against their fellow aliens with goals of exposing "their filthy secret" to Imperial authorities, bringing harsh punishments upon the higher ups of Sectofoods and HOPEFULLY earning an Imperial pardon for themselves.

The "plot" would be about humans stumbling into alien politics and drawing up their own (sometimes very short sighted) conclusions about them. You could have this kind of dialogue:

- Why are we working so hard to help these...aliens hide us from their compatriots? Is maintaining some intergalactic monopoly THAT important to us? What are we, some golden goose!?
- It's best to deal with the devil we know. There's no telling what the rest of their so-called "Empire" is like.
- And what do we know about them, exactly? That they're drug dealing scoundrels? That they keep their own kind stuck on Earth due to some debt bondage owed by their ancestors? That they consider Earth to be their little "party mansion"? I say these "loyalists" have the right idea. And besides...
- Besides what?
- Who's to say our goods aren't actually worth even more? Surely once their Empire learns about Earth other alien companies will outbid our "visitors" for our goods. We're gonna be even richer!
- Are you out of your damn mind? Didn't you hear Zorbluxar's drunken rants? Theirs is a multi-planet EMPIRE. How do you think they control so many planets if not by CONQUEST? Do you seriously want to bring their attention to Earth!?
- Well, if they're as powerful as you say then why are we harboring their exiles and undesirables? If we contact their authorities first we might just avoid their wrath. Heck, they might even reward us!!!

TBH, this whole wall of text would be better suited for an RPG rather than a strategy game. Oh well...

 

[Darth Canoli]

Yesterday I came up with the following armchair dev take: Xenonauts didn't do much with its Cold War premise. Sure you have the aesthetics and there is a "Soviet Union" on the map but there isn't much in the way of geopolitics and funding IRC works the same as in UFO:EU. So here's what I think would've made for an interesting game: WHAT IF instead of classic OP Alien Empire taking Earth over via brute force we had more subtle aliens? An alien force small in size and completely unable to directly conquer earth. What they do instead is approach country leaders in PEACE and offer them an edge to win whatever cold war related issue they are currently facing. Aliens trying to play off the existing HUMAN conflicts of the Cold War would make for an interesting Cold War with Aliens instead of Aliens during Cold War, no?

Take for instance Enver Hoxha the guy who build bunkers capable of housing all of Albania's population. Would it be a big stretch to think shrewd aliens MIGHT try to offer a guy like this some "help" in order to secure a URSS-free socialist paradise? Or maybe one of the Caribbean banana republics taking alien aid to resist CIA backed coups? What if the aliens themselves become entangled in human conflicts, sending their pet humans against other aliens and their pet humans? Would it be so weird as to consider some random dictator offering the aliens some political prisoners for "experiments" in exchange for alien weapons?

What if the visiting aliens find something on earth they would be willing to trade for? Something they don't have in their home planet but quickly grow to love/get addicted to like say...coffee, alcohol, drugs, chocolate, spices, dye, pet dogs...? Wouldn't human economies change to please their new weapon-dealing overlords? Previously irrelevant countries making a fortune in alien trade...wouldn't that impact the Cold War dynamics as a whole?

I know all that stuff would be hard to implement as game mechanics but I think the idea of alien life boiling down to "we come in peace! * draws laser and start shooting * for unknown reasons while blissfully ignoring other LESS COSTLY and probably more beneficial options always felt a bit dumb to me.

It makes me think about Carrion Comfort from Dan Simmons but instead of aliens, psychic vampires are the ones pulling the strings.

If feels great, a bit like Apocalypse which went that way with the Sirius cult, except aliens were strong enough to invade all by themselves, particularly early to mid game.

It even looks like a great idea if they don't have to rewrite the whole game.

The downside would be fighting too many humans, it'd just not be half as fun as roasting aliens.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/538030/view/3099041925828070709

Xenonauts 2 - January Update​

Greetings and apologies for the slight lateness of this update - the team wanted to finish a few things before putting it up.

Spoiler

Public Builds

It's worth discussing why a public build hasn't been released to backers recently. We've been working on a couple of big systems that required a significant campaign rebalance once implemented, as well as some systems that required UI updates. We've also been working on the Cleaner missions that happen right at the start of the game. Anything we put out before that work was finished would have been almost unplayable.

Hopefully the next public build will be coming in about two weeks but will likely need several iterations on the Experimental branch before it represents a better gameplay experience than the most recent V22 build.

Armour Up

The first big change we've been working on is the Armour system. For simplicity, we've now unified the way armour is handled in both the tactical and air combat so Armour is a flat reduction on incoming damage (e.g. 30 damage hitting a target with 10 Armour does 20 damage).

However, there's a wider variety of armour penetration and armour destruction on the various weapons in the tactical combat compared to the first Xenonauts, so the player is now presented with more decisions about the best order to use their attacks. We've added a new grenade that inflicts limited damage on units but is excellent at removing terrain and shredding armour, and we'll be experimenting with armour-piercing ammo for ballistic / Gauss weapons this month too.

Air Supremacy

We've done another balancing pass on air combat, as we've added a new type of weapon - the energy lance.

Previously this weapon type lacked any real individual identity and part of the rationale for the armour changes was to give all four types of weapon their own niche:

Cannons are short-range, high DPS (damage per second) weapons with 40 ammo. They do low damage per shot so armour reduces their damage significantly, but they also shred armour relatively quickly. Cannons will kill most things but require you to get in close and stay there, which can be very dangerous against UFOs with powerful weapons.

Missiles are long-range, high damage weapons, but only have 4 ammo. They do excellent burst damage so are great at destroying unarmoured UFOs (e.g. Fighter UFOs) before they can attack you, and can also quickly kill other types of UFO if another weapon is used to strip the armour off them first.

Torpedoes are long-range weapons with excellent armour destruction, but only have 2 ammo and are slow and easily avoided by agile UFOs. Hitting an armoured UFO with torpedos will quickly strip away its armour and leave it vulnerable to other types of weapon.
Energy lances are medium range weapons with medium DPS and good armour destruction, and 15 shots. They act somewhat like torpedoes, but trade a shorter range and a slower rate of fire for more ammunition, more versatility, and the ability to hit agile UFOs.

In addition to this, there's been two other major changes to the air combat. Firstly, there is now a "deployment phase" at the start of the air combat where you can set your interceptors up anywhere around the edge of the map, allowing you to group them together or split them and approach the UFO from multiple sides. The type of tactics you want to use are likely to vary based on the type of UFO and the fire arcs of its weapons (and whether it has weapons capable of attacking multiple interceptors at once). You don't get to deploy freely if UFOs on an air superiority mission attack you, however!

Secondly, we've reverted the change where interceptors are always built in squadrons of three. We're back to the original system where aircraft are built individually, and our new approach to balancing the air combat is that UFOs gain some additional HP and Armour for each additional interceptor taking part in the battle. It's still advantageous to send more interceptors into battle against a UFO, but this just gives the player more flexibility in their approach - a single well-equipped advanced interceptor can often now be just as effective as a full squadron of three more primitive interceptors (the latter was almost always better in X1). The convenient lore explanation for this is larger squadrons are more easily detected as they approach the UFO, giving it more time to power up its emergency shielding and prepare for combat. While this may not be entirely "realistic", we feel the gameplay benefits are worth it.

Morale Boost

The other significant new mechanic has been the introduction of the tactical combat morale system. This is a similar system to the first Xenonauts but has a few improvements to make it easier to understand and interact with, and hopefully to make the alien psionic abilities feel less random. There's also now a "Focus Mind" button that allows a soldier to spend TU in order to boost their morale, which gives the player a way to defend themselves against potential morale events or psionic attacks if they want.

The problem here is that our current tactical UI design has been straining under the weight of all the new mechanics and UI elements we've added since we implemented it 2-3 years ago, and having to add Armour / Morale bars and this new Focus Mind button has been the final straw. We've therefore been working on the final tactical combat UI design that brings the visuals up to final quality and properly integrates all the new stuff. This is a massive job because it's one of the most important and complex UI elements in the game, but we think we've found a layout that works well - it displays more information than the current UI does and uses less space to do it!

Odds and Ends

In other news, the Cleaner missions at the start of the game are now a pre-set sequence of four missions with some unique mission objectives to mix things up a bit (as opposed to randomly generated missions that filled a meter that eventually revealed the Cleaner base) a few more screens have had a UI facelift, a few more 3D civilian models and alien armour models have been created and are waiting to be rigged, and we've created some stone ruins to add a bit of variety to our jungle maps.

So, a very busy time for the team and thanks once again for sticking with us.

Many thanks for reading and for staying up-to-date with our work - as ever please do join us on Discord[discord.gg], the forums[www.goldhawkinteractive.com] or the Steam community if you have any questions.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Air torpedoes?

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Those are stronger air-to-air missiles - the term was used in the first Xenonauts game as well. It sounds more normal once you get to plasma torpedoes and such, air torpedos are the conventional heavy missiles that humanity has access to from the start of the conflict (or actually after one of the first research projects IIRC).

 

[Haba]

Assumedly the point being that a "torpedo" is an underwater ranged weapon... They could just as well call them "heavy missiles".

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Yes they could - I guess the thing is that in sci-fi context nobody has a problem with aircraft/spacecraft launching proton/photon/plasma/whatever topedoes at other aircraft/spacecraft and in Xenonauts, this is exactly what ends up happening. The devs probably wanted to have the evolution to plasma and other advanced torpedoes start with some human equivalent, so they used "air torpedoes" as the first step of the technology ladder. I am not denying it looks kinda silly at the first glance, but I guess there is certain logic to it.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Maybe it's inspired by Crimson Skies, which too has aerial torpedos?

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/538030/view/3105799413148009482

Xenonauts 2 - February Update​

Hello everyone - it's time for the February update! With this update being a bit early and the last one being a little late, we've only had three weeks since the last dev post but a lot has been done in that time.

Releasing a new public build is our main priority right now and so we're actively working on Build V23.

We've mostly been working on polishing the experience and improving the game balance, and we've spent a lot of time playing the game this month to help facilitate that. We've done a lot of work on the Air Combat, as we've been adding various new features to it recently (such as the pre-battle deployment phase and the different formations that UFOs can spawn in) and we've also had to make some quite fundamental changes to the code in order to fix a persistent bug where missile hits would not always be detected correctly.

Although it's frustrating that this issue sapped away quite a bit of time, having missiles occasionally pass straight through their target without exploding is clearly not acceptable in a game where it can mean the difference between victory and defeat!

There's already been a lot of tweaks to the game balance and we'll continue with these as we work on V23. The early-game Cleaner missions are now a research chain that give you a series of standalone missions which occur alongside the alien invasion rather than before it. We've also done a pass on all the UFO / tactical mission crews to ensure the right aliens are spawning in roughly the right numbers at the right time. There's been a load of updates to the tech tree, sometimes to fix things not unlocking correctly but mostly to ensure a relatively steady flow of research and upgrade projects throughout the game. The tech tree is more extensive than in X1 and this can cause problems in some instances, for example if the player is doing too many research projects between ground missions then it can get a bit overwhelming.

We've also fixed a lot of bugs / issues we've encountered while playing the game, and updated various game systems that weren't working quite right (e.g. the Sentry Guns). We've updated some more of the strategic UI to use the new visual style, various new terrain tiles have been added to the game and we've produced the final destruction states on more terrain objects. Windows have continued to be a pain to get working correctly, but when you play a tactical mission on a finished biome like the Polar biome things are looking and feeling good. It'll be nice when we have all the biomes up to that standard, but it's taking a while to churn through all the assets. We're recruiting a rigger to get our new civilian 3D models into the game, and if all goes well we'll have those in V23 too.

All in all, it's been one of those months where we've fixed far too many things to mention individually but relatively few of them are big headline features you can write about in updates like this.
Once V23 is out, we're planning to focus on a few more mechanics that set the game apart from the first Xenonauts, as we're in quite a nice place with development now where the campaign is largely functional and all the remaining work is adding in new assets, polishing what we have, and adding things to make the game more distinct from its predecessor.

The biggest thing we want to test is various more significant alien abilities that will hopefully make each alien race feel more distinctive. For instance, we're going to test whether it makes combat more interesting if the regenerating Sebillian aliens enter a "downed" state when killed, and have to be finished off within a couple of turns else they'll get back up again. Or whether Wraiths are more interesting if they can enter a "ghost" state after taking damage and take reduced damage until end of turn (although perhaps only from kinetic damage). Basically what we're looking for is abilities that cause the player to think about how they sequence their actions or encourage them to use a wider selection of equipment than they otherwise would.

That's it for this time - we're hoping to put out the first incarnation of V23 at some point during the week after next (w/c 7th March).

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

The updates seem ... light on content and insignificant. The game seems truly stuck in development hell :/

 

[geno]

The updates seem ... light on content and insignificant. The game seems truly stuck in development hell :/

Actually there is a thread about development hell and the lead dev posted in it
https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/21850-development-hell/

Spoiler

Heh, I guess this is karma for the sort of posts I used to make back when I was a modder

What you say is true to some extent. Development on X2 has been harder and taken way longer than I expected. There’s quite a few things I’d do different if I went back in time - maybe I’d even do something else entirely with my time and money.

Nonetheless, your post seems written from the perspective of a modder - someone who comes in when the game is complete. You’re working with mature tools, a mature set of game mechanics and a complete set of game assets provided by the game developer. That’s the sort of work that gets done in the final 5-10% of development, and without wanting to diminish the good work modders do, it’s a lot easier than the stuff that gets done earlier in development. You’re not dealing with any moving parts.

It’s not possible to write a list of features that will be in the final game early in development, nor do the same for the final assets. Game dev is an iterative process, and the more complex and interconnected the project the harder it is to identify exactly how well any part works until you can test it. And you can’t *properly* test anything until you’ve implemented the whole game and connected all the different pieces to one another.

That’s why so much gameplay iteration is happening now. Minimal code changes are required to change the armour model, and I can play and test the mechanics in a proper campaign in a way I couldn’t a year or two ago, let alone near the start of development when the game was just a few boxes on a grid. We’re doing the final civilian assets now because we know the final technical requirements for them, because we know the final lighting setup we’re using in map, which itself is tied to many things including the final method of how we handle terrain destruction, etc. Doing them earlier risks throwing away 30+ models.

I don’t agree there’s been no visual improvement over X1 either. Maybe you disagree, but playing a mission on one of our finished biomes I’m personally struck by how much better it looks than the first game.

Anyway, I wish the game was finished as much as anyone. I know it sucks it has taken this long. But there’s no point us coming this far and releasing something bad, and I’m sure most people will forgive us the delays if we release something good.

He seems quite honest to me.