X2 Personality

[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.

[FloridaBoy]

I agree with more tense/erie music, but otherwise I liked the theme a lot. I don’t think the normal missions really need a darker/more gruesome tone, after all the Xenonauts are the ones that are in control of the crash site missions. Plus, while I understand where you are coming from, it was way grittier then X-com and XCom and it is about fighting space aliens with laser guns. I actually get tired of all the super dark atmosphere in a lot of recent games. But on the other hand it might be great way to make terror missions/special mission more thematic. They are not very common, and should be dark, gruesome, and tense.

That would also reflect the game play, where it is not uncommon to finish a crash site without a causality, but I often lose squad dies in terror missions.

[Decius]

The average soldier in a war kills fewer than one other soldier.

Unless for some reason human soldiers are MUCH better than alien soldiers, there should be a very high body count, with even the most 'routine' missions being dangerous, even if done perfectly. Soldier costs (in money and in the supply of willing recruits) need to reflect the fact that soldiers' life is less important than some mission objectives.

That can be shifted quite a bit towards 'human soldiers use superior tactics to be better soldiers' and 'most alien 'combatants' are poorly trained in ground combat because they're spaceship crew' to support the squad-based tactical gameplay, but an assault on a fortified position protected by trained soldiers should not be expected to be cheap.

[Rodmar18]

Agreed, but at the condition that the alien army doesn't just scale "linearly" the same way Xenonauts' technology does, and that the player feels both the might of advanced units quite soon, and that there are distinctive classes of aliens, until the very end of the game: "pitiful" crew, armed crew, and (several flavors of) combat units. This was another flaw in Xenonauts-1: the moment you start being efficient, the enemy gets rid of all of its obsolete crews and replace them by better equipped and fitted units. Perhaps, all the non combatants, guards and soldiers were either stored, killed, eaten or recycled?

[Chris]

On 23/03/2018 at 7:29 PM, Hank Rearden said:

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.

 

Out of interest, have you played the most recent (free) combat build? I'm curious as to what you think of it because I think we've addressed some of those issues already.

Way back in development X1 did have a much darker and grittier feel (here's a screenshot of how it looked early on) but ultimately we couldn't pull it off and things ended up looking dull and boring rather than dark and atmospheric. The final game was much brighter and more colourful simply because it looked better, but I agree there was a bit of a tonal mismatch with the setting.

I think X2 has a less vibrant colour palette overall but we're not completely reverting to the black and white days. As a guide, if you still think the level in the current public build is too bright and vibrant then I imagine you'll still find the colour palette in the final game a bit too strong for your liking.

[Rodmar18]

In the same topic, will there be animated props, such as wind-motioned signs, tree branches, flags, electrical cables, or dripping (reaper/sebillian den), or even moving, inert actors, like desert bush balls, papers, cloud of dust, etc?

Also, what about localized sound emitters (doors, birds, water run, buzzing reactors, ...), on top of the general, random audio track?

Another atmospheric component is the "gore" level (death animations, corpses, stains and biological remnants). What was most lacking in this topic (in my sense) was that there wasn't any atmospheric "props", only living and dead items, all counted as part of the various (alien, allied, civ.) teams. There could be dead cadavers everywhere on terror or battlefield missions.

I don't know if limiting the number of all these small additions (when they are technically feasible) is just a way to keep the size of the assets under a limit, or the game running smoothly. But it certainly doesn't contribute the game's atmosphere.

Speaking of atmosphere, it would, be nice by the way, that atmospheric sound effects have a separate setting than special effects, in game options. Numerous games don't. It's hard to fumble with ambience effects and  this would allow to set them at a higher audio level (for immersion). On the other hand, special, shorter duration, technological effects (weapons, explosions, teleporters) would have a different setting, because they become often a nuisance, when you set them too high just to hear an atmospheric wind effect. Of course, music has already a separate setting.

(I didn't play the dev combat build, nor Firaxis games)