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Thoughts from a not-fan on Xenonauts 1 vs Xenonauts 2


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I only recently heard about Xenonauts 2, when I saw demo gameplay in action on YouTube. After that I did some research and decided to give my honest thoughts on why I didn't like Xenonauts 1 all that much and why I am looking forward to Xenonauts 2. I bought Xenonauts 1 and it didn't quite "click" for me. The game itself wasn't bad, especially mechanically-wise and I really liked the strategical and finiancial aspects of it, so why I didn't like it?

1) No "passive" animations during tactical missions - It may look like a shallow reason for some to be thrown off by, but as YouTuber "Yeti" said: this made the game feel dead, and was a big reason for me, personally, why I had issues playing tactical missions. In Xenonauts 2 shadows do move and alive units seem to actually breathe, which is very important for making it look alive.

2) 2D made it problematic to navigate at times - Sometimes it was hard to move or see because isometric map didn't allow to rotate the map. Also, it was a pain to look through various "height levels". 3D solves this the problem of not being able to turn the map around, and there seem to be some other improvements already (such as your soldiers "glowing" green, which allows you to clearly see their position, even when they are obstructed).

3) Clunky field of view UI-wise - Xenonauts did a good job at showing you what you actually see (and making greyed out areas a possible danger zones). However, it didn't tell clearly enough who could see what in the UI itself. I am bringing this up, because it's very important when it comes to making choices when distributing "Areas of Responsibility". It'd be nice to highlight individual soldiers' field of view (like, in blue) by selecting a soldier.

I am going to watch how Xenonauts 2 continues to develop, because it seems to be displaying a commendable approach when addressing its mechanics and bringing in refreshing changes, so I do wish it luck.

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 Thanks for the thoughts. Yeah, the first two points are already somewhat addressed by our new 3d engine ... and the third point is something we really should add in, even if it's a toggled visual mode so it's not always displayed.

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I just discovered this game having finally gotten around to playing it after receiving it for free from the GOG Summer sale and I agree completely that from the get go point #2 was a big grievance but not in that it was 2D in that it was Isometric 2D. As I was desperately trying in vain to switch the map view over into the classic 2D strategy tabletop/birds-eye view. I realize that out of all the X1 complaints about map viewability/navigation (esp. for airborne units) going from 2D Iso to 3D models seems like the next step and maybe it's just me from playing too much Order of Battle, but a simplistic tabletop map view for this game would be amazing (like in X1 with the walls turned completely off but looking straight down, could call it satellite view ;) ).

That aside these are my 3 observations on how I hope X2 is improved upon from X1 in regards to Quality of Life (btw for reference I've around a dozen hours played so far in X1).

  1. Having access to the Xenopedia database while in combat. X1 after you've captured an alien you got a identification blurb with uniform colours/ranks/traits of that species. Information that was made to help the player out in combat but oddly wasn't accessible whilst in combat.
  2. Borderless Windowed Mode. Having to alt-tab constantly because of the above mentioned reason the game sometimes wouldn't take to kindly to that and would sometimes fail to properly load back in some overlays.
  3. 21:9 Ultrawide resolutions. Setting the GPU/Display to distort the game by using stretch to fill sucks so here looking to adaptive scaling for X2.
Edited by Aldodrem
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I just read how the X2 game is changing up the air combat so in that regard to my #1 in the above post, will you still have to as in X1, intercept a craft to find the stats, disengage to open the Xenopedia to see the information for that craft, than chase down and reenage to start up combat? Or will there be a Xenopedia link you can click on to open the relevant info on the intercepted screen hopefully.

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Why should you access to UFO's stats you encounter for the first time? You know the enemy so much only after a proper study. However, there could be a two-levels Xenopedia entry: tactical report analysis (after one to four aerial encounters or ground missions), and post-research reports, when a proper reseach is funded about a wrecked or intact item/UFO/alien.

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@Aldodrem So points #2 and #3 are technical things that should definitely be supported by the final game. Point #1 is an interesting one I’d not considered before, but I don’t really see any reason why we couldn’t make the Xenopedia accessible from the ground combat (Esc) menu too.

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  • 1 month later...
On 8/21/2018 at 7:10 AM, Chris said:

@Aldodrem So points #2 and #3 are technical things that should definitely be supported by the final game. Point #1 is an interesting one I’d not considered before, but I don’t really see any reason why we couldn’t make the Xenopedia accessible from the ground combat (Esc) menu too.

You could fit this in nicely with a GUI that makes it feel like you are quickly viewing some info sent from base to a tablet like device so you keep the feeling of being immersed in battle.

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