Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: MatthewPapa on September 27, 2005, 12:48:11 pm
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http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/x3reunion/preview_6134315.html
With X3: Reunion, Egosoft is overhauling its open-ended space exploration, trading, and combat game with a brand-new 3D graphics engine, as well as a single-player plot. X3 should be the most user-friendly X game yet, because it's being designed to work on both the PC and the Xbox. That's good news for gamers, as the previous X games were huge, open-ended affairs that suffered from dauntingly steep learning curves. Of course, it doesn't hurt that X3 also features a jaw-dropping graphics engine that makes the final frontier look prettier than ever. With X3 in the final stages of development, Egosoft's Greg Kingston and Mark "Toastie" Wilson explain in this edition of our designer diaries the workings of the ongoing beta test. X3 is scheduled to ship next month.
Why consoles? why!??! Must they ruin/cripple such a potentially great game by sacrificing features for compatibility on consoles? Ive been awaiting this game for nearly a year and after I hear things like that its killing my excitement. Your thoughts?
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Because the last X game was PC only and sold miserably?
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Because the game market is in consoles these days? Even more so because the next generation consoles are being hyped so much. I expect PC gaming market to become even smaller in the coming years. That said, I dislike consoles.
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IMO it diddnt sell well because it wasnt marketed properly in the USA , kind of like freespace 2
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Yeah... all the fun of having gamepad-oriented menus that don't ****ing work with the mouse. I've yet to see a PC release that hasn't suffered when it becomes cross-platform. We'll see how this fares.
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Whoa, Deus Ex: Invisible War déja vu
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And here silly me thought "X3: Reunion" was the title of the next X-Men movie.
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KotOR wasn't bad in the controls department. Of course, it was a CRPG.
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KotOR had decent controls, but the levels were incredibly limited in scope - it felt very similar to Invisible War in that regard. It was a huge step backwards from Baldur's Gate 2, which had sprawling cities that you could explore for hours, yet it still felt just as polished.
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I'd have serious worries about the dumbification of the game for porting. On the other hand, their marketing department must be wetting themselves at the X-X name tie in.
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Originally posted by MatthewPapa
IMO it diddnt sell well because it wasnt marketed properly in the USA , kind of like freespace 2
I suppose "It really sucked" wasn't enough to make it sell poorly?
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Part of me wants to bemoan yet another PC title undergoing a console neutering.
On the other hand, I actually played X2, and well, it's hard to get upset about that. A very interesting econo sim with a third rate space flight sim attached ain't my idea of grand.
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Originally posted by Fragrag
Whoa, Deus Ex: Invisible War déja vu
No kidding....
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Was I the only one that liked Deus Ex: Invisible War?
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Probably.
i think I saw that for a fiver the other day.
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I overall liked it too (better than 90% of modern FPS games IMO), but it was nonetheless a huge letdown compared to what it could have been. If they had gotten everything perfect, it could potentially have been one of the best games of all time, but it ended up being merely a pretty good game.
One of the really annoying problems was the insanely sluggish graphics engine. I don't think I have seen anything that bad for many years. Makes you wonder what the hell they did to the Unreal Warfare engine that normally runs so nicely.
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The problem with Invisible War was that pretty much everything it did, the original Deus Ex did better. DX had bigger maps, more maps, more detailed damage modelling, more extensive weapon upgrading, better weapon implementation (aiming reticle, multiple ammo types, reloading), more detailed data vault, more detailed hacking (passwords, timeout zapping), more inventory slots, more aug types, more memorable characters, an experience system, better management of load zones, a less intrusive HUD, leaning, swimming, a control scheme designed around mouse+keyboard instead of a gamepad, and better graphics and physics.
Yeah, that's right-- better graphics and physics.
Graphics: Sure IW had higher polygon counts and neato shader effects, but the razor-edged dynamic shadows look like crap compared to soft-edged static shadows, the texture compression makes even high-res textures look distorted, the X-Box RAM limited them to a small variety of textures, they lost basic rendering features like damage decals, detail textures, cloud decks, and mirrors, and frankly the art direction and character design suck.
Physics: With the Havok physics engine, IW should have had superior physics, but they used it so badly that the end result is laughable. You can toss a body ten feet in the air, then shoot it straight up until it disappears from sight. You can accidently send a barrel flying across the room by bumping into it. DX's physics may have been primitive, but at least they weren't so obviously wrong.
Some of IW's problems can be blamed on the X-Box, but the sad truth is that a lot of its problems were fundamental design decisions-- like the meaningless faction system, cartoonish physics, or the whole "I can do whatever I want without meaningful consequence... therefore nothing I do matters" narrative structure.
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I don't know what it looked like on the XBox, but it looked much better than the original on my PC. I can't disagree with the rest of your points though.
But I still really liked the game. I'm biased though.