The X series of space sims has hit a bit of a brick wall with X: Rebirth - the reboot that basically stopped the franchise dead in its tracks for a few long years. Egosoft are to resume the old numbering scheme on 30 November 2018 with X4.
X: Rebirth put Egosoft in a bit of a rut back in 2013. The general idea was to find ways of making the logistics heavy space sim more appetising to new players by stripping away almost everything that was fun about the series, adding a paper thin campaign, and then burrowing the entire thing with UI design from hell.
The release crashed and burned of course, both critically and commercially, with only the most hard-core of the hard-core sticking with X through this troubled phase. Egosoft seem to have come to their senses if the trailer above is anything to go by.
Trading is being steered back to its former glory, along with mining and a sweet looking overhauled station complex construction system. The studio have decided to keep some of Rebirth's more immersion fostering aspects for X4: Foundations, such as the first person station navigation option many players may be used to seeing by now from the likes of Star Citizen or No Man's Sky. A bad omen? It's too soon to tell.
Story content will be centred around a Player HQ, with most missions outside of those explicitly designed by the devs being procedural. Those same HQ missions will apparently be something to complete on every playthrough as its rewards are heralded as too good to pass up on.
Either way, Egosoft seem to be going all in on the empire building aspect of X4, which makes sense from where we're standing at least.
Not that we're X-perts or anything, but Telxvi boasts with having spent an embarrassing number of hours farming Boron freighters in Hatikvah's Faith with the only things between him and an imperial domain of his own being a few hundred hours more and a friendlier UI.
Egosoft
X4: Foundations is set to dock with compatible Windows and Linux PCs 30 November 2018. There's a collector's edition available already, but wisdom dictates you keep your money tugged in until the game becomes tangible and has made the review rounds. We wouldn't want that omen to kick in, would we now?
Egosoft's X4: Foundations early station and ship showcase
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