Hank Rearden

For Xenonuats 2, what type of personality are the developers trying to go for? It seems it might be similar to the first one. If so, then it seems like its going to have a conflicted personality, which means the more subtle things like the music, artwork, and atmosphere won’t quite match the vibe of this game. I want to make it clear that I really enjoyed this X1, but X1 personality sometimes took me out of the experience and it could happen again with X2. With xenonauts 1, its was a hard core focused tactical experience with heavier inspiration from the military, which gave me the impression it was supposed to be more realistic and grittier, and to some extent show how horrifying fighting aliens really is. This was reflected in the gameplay, which is nice because it makes it more distinct from the original xcom. However, the game’s artwork’s was very comic book like with a brighter color palette to match. This comes off as more light hearted than a military simulator should seem. It likes the difference between frank miller’s comics vs the 1950’s batman comics. The music, while good, came off as very light hearted too, there was no tension in the music. For instance, the air combat music had a very positivish vibe, which conflicted with the fact that your trying to fight off an alien squadron. Lastly, the aliens themselves felt conflicted due to the artwork and to some extent the models. None of them seem intimidating, at all. Granted, from a gameplay perspective some of them are terrifying. I’m not saying the models need to look vicious or need gruesome animations but the color palette needs to be darker. I’m not quite sure ift the problem is just with this or some the alien enemies themselves. Perhaps a new enemy type could be made to push a more gruesome, viscous vibe? I believe most of these aspects could be changed but having a darker color palette, slightly more gruesome, gritty, realistic artwork, and a more tense/erie focus on the music. This would definitely make xenonaut’s more dintinct between fireaxis xcom 2 and the original. For some inspiration, take a look at Metro 2033, Metroid ( especially super Metroid), and halo reach. For enemy inspiration, take a look at Doom & Aliens (especially 3 and the 2016 remake ). For instance, imagine if the aliens took human corpse and turned them into a enemy similar to the revenant.

I like the secret war idea, however, I suggest using a military perspective to develop this segment of the story. Historically, its often desirable for a military to learn about their adversary prior to committing any forces. Often times a military will send a recon team to investigate, infiltrate, and sabotage the potential adversary. Using this logic, it would be reasonable to assume that the aliens would want to learn more about humanity before committing to an invasion and send a recon team. So, the goal of the alien recon team would be to identify humanities strengths and exploit its weaknesses. They would accomplish this by sabotaging defense manufacturing centers, steal military intelligence, and turn the various countries against one another. So, the game would begin with the secret war stage where the xenonauts must counter the alien recon team. After a certain amount of time, the alien recon team will request reinforcements, which triggers the full alien invasion and the secret war segment of the game would end. Regardless, it looks like XN2's story is definitely to be an interesting one.

Are there any details about Air combat yet. I've heard that they will expand the feature but haven't heard or seen anything definitive yet. For instance, will it be behave like the minigame in XN1 still or will it expanded to be a turn based combat between the player's squadron versus the alien in a map similar to ground combat? Also, are there any thoughts on implementing recruitable pilots feature for air combat? If player's could recruit, level up, and give perks to pilots, it could potentially create some interesting strategic options. For example, if a player had several planes that where unavailable due to repairs or rearming, a player could add a pilot to the plane to reduce repair/rearm time via skill perk. Or a pilot could provide stat bonus the planes like reduced fuel consumption or a leadership buff. I was really impressed with the air combat feature in XN1 and I'm looking forward to what Goldhawk will do for XN2 so any info would be appreciated.