X3 the reunion torrent

In the triquel, Julian Gardna-Brennan became the main character again. In X3: Reunion of 8 factions: Argonians - people who have lost contact with the Earth and the ability to return home; Paranids - lizard-like creatures were the first with whom humanity entered into alien contact; Harrows are a peaceful race of tentacled aliens living in the water; Splits are aggressive humanoid slavers who respect only strength; Xenons are war robots spawned by humans; Teladi - trade-loving creatures similar to snakes; Pirates - several bandit groups that have warmed up representatives of other races; Haaki are the main enemies in the game, outwardly they resemble insects.

The story in this project is completely linear and tells about the attempt of a previously unknown civilization to take over the whole world. The space simulator allows you to completely abandon the storyline quests and entertain yourself on your own in this sandbox. There is an opportunity to completely disable the narration by starting the game from one of 11 starting positions. The local universe is huge and is divided into sectors, and they are not infinite.

Travel between them takes place through a special gate.. The gamer can rob, trade, fight, buy real estate, build objects, manufacture goods, complete story missions and BBS missions, buy and upgrade vehicles.

The Feature: Newcomers will enjoy the additions to the already graphically impressive, almost living X3-Universe, while veterans can expect new construction options and an improved physics model. The Story: What happened so far: While the Argon fleet is stretched almost to breaking point by the continuing attacks from Khaak, a new enemy is stalking the X-universe.

What links a mysterious ship with the power to disappear, the ruthless Yaki pirates and a machine left by an ancient species? Its time to strap yourself in, warm up your laser cannon and get some answers.

Everything that has made the X series so superb has been recreated, then added to, then given the kind of extreme makeover that the likes of UK Living can only dream about. For newcomers to our happy band of galactic wanderers, this means flying spaceships of all sizes through a massive universe, trading your way to fun and profit in a manner befitting the age-old classic Elite.

Or shooting pirates for fun and profit. Or being a pirate for fun and profit. Or starting an intergalactic conglomerate for fun and profit - although that one will take a while as space stations are expensive beasts and require a vast investment of time, money and resources. But you can do it that's the thing. You've got this universe here, you see, and just about nothing is off limits.

And then there's the story. The much hyped, much profiled story. Written by a proper writer and that The original X told of an Earth pilot being zapped across the universe due to a faulty 'jumpdrive', only to discover aliens, high adventure and no real way home again. A bit like Farscape, for TV sci-fi fans. The sequel told of the pilot's son discovering his roots, searching for his now missing father while fending off a growing alien menace to the universe and the discovery that Earth colonists provided the seed for the major alien race's history in the first place.

X3 continues the son's tale, picking up at the end of the alien war and with a new threat to contend with. Plus, with X3 having the word 'reunion' in the title, you can possibly guess where the tale will go, although I will say it works as a name on many levels. Is it any good, though? Actually, yes, it is. As before, you'll find enough freedom to dip in and out of the story at will, meaning you can spend as much time exploring, trading, fighting and upgrading your status as you want without disrupting the flow of the backstory.

Then, when you do dip in, there's enough structure and pacing to it to give all your other actions meaning. I should also declare an interest - I've provided one or two of the voiceovers for the game and while it hasn't influenced my opinion one whit, I will say that X3 has some of the best vocal acting ever heard in a game.

The other side of X2 that most people thought was lacking was combat. As much as the game wanted to give you freedom to do what you wanted, combat was cumbersome, hard to get to grips with and in the main, best avoided or left to the autopilots.

Like a precocious child genius ransacking your box of messed-up Rubik's Cubes and half-finished Sudoku, Egosoft has solved that problem before your very eyes without you ever quite being able to put your finger on how. Fighting feels quicker, more accessible, more dvnamic and more controllable than ever before. Death feels more like a result of your own carelessness rather than the game mechanics' inability to cope with the demands placed on it.

It feels significantly different when controlling nippy little fighters to piloting huge destroyers, bristling with turrets, missiles and drones, all automated, all able to be issued with individual commands, all able to be manually controlled if you wish.

It still isn't quite up to Freelancer 's levels of speedy, action space combat, but it isn't really trying to be. X3 is all about creating as realistic an experience as possible within the limitations of its internal logic and as such, combat still requires a lot of skill to master fully. But it is much improved without drifting into stupid arcade territory, and the game is all the better for it.

X3 has fixed what few problems X2 had, and by fixed I mean rewritten from scratch rather than patched up. Then it's had its fundamental mechanics recrafted without betraying the very core values that made it the success it was. Then it's been plastered in fancy make-up and dolled up in such finery as to make your eyes boggle. X3: Reunion - one of the few games that has the power to engage your imagination with pretty pictures, then actually live up to your imaginings when you get your hands on it Bring back the bloody internal docking next time and it'll probably be the first game in ZONE history to get per cent.

X3: Reunion picks up where X2 left off, with the insectoid Kha'ak determined to sod up the universe for anything without a carapace. Lehahn talks to us about the series, the difficulties of forcing a storyline into a freeform universe, the pursuit of realism and the dedication of some of their players In particular, the way we presented the plot in X2 could have been better.

The cut-scenes were a problem, the dialogue was sometimes too long and the plot in general didn't come across as good as it should have for these reasons. This is a constant dilemma that we fight with through all episodes of the X games: how can we encourage the player into a linear story in an otherwise freeform game?

It's almost a child, and we all love working on it So the moment it became successful, we knew we were going to continue working on this. There are so many ideas and things to improve that we knew, even in when the series was started, that we could work on this game for a very long time. At the same time, we started work on a new graphics engine and a modified user interface which we internally named X3. In March , we decided to concentrate all our work on a single project and scrapped the idea of an expansion for X2".

So, the top priority was a well-told storyline and good missions. We wanted to make the game more appealing to what we call the Wing Commander audience'. That is, those people who don't know Style-type games and play our game because of the freedom and economy, but also expect a story and cool fighting missions.

So we added content that we thought would help make the game more appealing to these type of players. I'm sure that an audience like this would then also begin to love the freeform gameplay and the advantages that a realistic economy adds to such a game, but we had to catch them first..

If you'd asked me during the making of X3: Reunion, I would have said it's very important to guide the player, as we wanted to make the game more accessible to the Wing Commander types. But right now, my answer would be different again. As X3 has been out for a while, we've had a chance to rethink entirely how to put a story into our otherwise completely non-linear game, and also where these priorities are.

The game is designed entirely for the freeform aspect, but a linear story exists inside of it. We've Loir seen save-games and read reports on our forums from people who pushed our game to its limits: building gigantic fleets, taking over sectors, building several thousand stations, 6, in-game hours for a single player, billion credits All of these extreme and unpredictable scenarios are probably a reason why our forums are so popular, with well over a million posted articles in less than three years: When you invest that much time and effort into a game, you want to show it to the world.

I'm not saying it's bad, as 1 certainly don't intend to make our own game look ixid, but for the type of game X3 is, it's not as good as it could be.