A way to give life to the game

[johninmotion]

Let's face it, the game has a lot of "people" flying around but it is rather lifeless. You see a lot of text for this and that, you read some stories over Galnet about this character and that, but the only voice you ever hear is a the station when you dock. You never see anyones face... and that's the problem.

Characters are what make games so enjoyable and memorable. I remember playing Freelancer and you would hear and see the different characters - the Militia scanning your ship, the crazy religious Retros spouting some religious rhetoric before attacking you, the Merchant ships acknowledging your good intentions and you can also talk with them... even if it is only predetermined phrases, it gave the game a bit of life and put a face to your enemy.

With today's random character generators, it wouldn't be hard to create a multitude (unlimited) number of faces on the spot for each faction. I don't know how hard it would be to create random voices or how much space/resources it would take to put in a good selection of voices/responses.

As for Galnet, why not include some sort of "video" or pictures of these important characters you write about. If they're important enough for a Galnet article, why not give them a face?

Anyway, that's just my two cents on how to give the deep dark space and the robots that inhabit it a bit of life.

 

[V3teran]

+1 Agree. Would give more immersion to this universe, Elite 2 and First encounters had faces on the bulletin boards so yes i agree.

 

[0815Pete]

Totally agree. Little videos of NPC communication inside the HUD, for players let each create an avatar. For stations, let it be the same NPC consistently. So I know that it is always Sandy who gives me landing permission in Dumont Station. I would give each faction a distinct personality. Each would be easily identifiable by paintjobs and logos on ships and stations, and wearing the same uniform in NPC comm videos. As of now, there is no reason why I should identify with a particular faction and hate another.

But if I knew, that the Empire conquers systems to enslave the populations while apparantly working on a special chemical to be blasted into a planet's atmosphere - kills free will but binds it to the emperor - and If I knew that my actions actually have consequences (systems change faction status) then I might want to join, or fight against that.

In order to shed the sterile universe feel, there should be a few news/propaganda videos available in respective stations, where factions take (rhetoric) shots at each other and we get introduced to a few high ranking personalities in each faction. This would require either some real actors or CGI work.

To give this game long life, it eventually has to become a lot more player centered. I like the idea of an ingame spacebook where you can access the entire playerbase, create your profile, write messages, organize yourselves, tell your stories. This would be accessible from your ship's UI; or an in-cockpit kind of holographic tablet the character pulls out from a under the seat. This tablet could also hold all kinds of data and act as a logbook, it records market prices, your kills, your deaths, successful missions, visited stations etc.

 

[SquidgyB]

Having the system descriptions (those that have them) actually mean something would be nice - I've seen a few systems which have "the headquarters for SpeedyMcDoohickey's Uber Thrustermart, where pilots go for the best in manoeuvrability" and similar, only to find they're really "just another system"...

 

[Ekar]

+1
I posted a similar thread last night, but really focused on voice comms. I think the 'video' images of avatars in x3 traumatised me so much that I actually don't want to see people pop up on my hud.

But the voices are really missing. I'd love to see this tackled and done well, with a lot of variety. In fact, I'd love to see much more variety everywhere in the galaxy. The game really needs to mix things up. Just noticing that everytime you descend into a hanger, you see the same big fan on the wall in exactly the same spot, is starting to grate on me!

 

[SneakytheRogue]

I foresee the next forum battle would then be a petition to add American accent alternatives to what will certainly be English voiceovers