YES!!!! They finally did it! Egosoft are creating another addon pack for their brilliant Freelancer like game X4 and this time they are bringing back the water based Borons! I’ve been asking for this for years and years! Every time people would say it’s impossible I’d pitch my ‘stations with separate water areas and Boron encounter suits for the normal dry areas’ idea and how it could work in the X4 engine. So to now see that Egosoft have actually done that and made it a reality makes me so happy, as this is pretty much what I pictured in my mind years ago. And I loved the extra touch of redoing the good old Kingdom End music in the trailer too. Well done Egosoft!
Attention X fans, Freelancer fans and space sim fans. The latest and greatest addon to X4 Foundations is here! Just like the brilliant X3 Terran Conflict addon did for X3 Reunion the new X4 Cradle of Humanity adds the mighty Terran empire into the game massively expanding the game sectors and adding so many cool new ships! As well as the usual fighter pilot stuff, commanding battleships, building a business empire of huge stations (that you can land inside and walk around), you can now terraform planets which is just mind boggling! X4 Cradle of Humanity is already now out on Steam and GoG so go check it out! Here’s some pics, trailers and music to drool over!
If it wasn’t for Freelancer I would never have probably heard about the X series as being a little German studio they seem to go under the radar a bit. One of my mates who got me on to Freelancer in 2003 said “hey I found a game series just like it” and that was it, I was an addict lol. God knows how many hours I’ve put into the X series over the last 15 years.. and I’m still way behind in them due to my OCD urge to do and see everything haha! These days every man and his dog is making Freelancer like games but back in the 2000s and early 2010s there wasn’t that much out there so the X series (particularly X2 and X3) was my way of dealing with Freelancer withdrawal symptoms lol. Sure they didn’t have the great story and awesome planet landings Freelancer had but the ships and planets were gorgeous and the game universes huge. Being able to become a business mogul and build my own empire of stations and fleets of capital ships to whoops ass with was particularly fun and addictive for me. I’ve even been reading the X novels over the years to immerse myself in their universe further (although I’m gonna get stuck soon as they’re not all translated to English haha).
Well anyway those who are familiar with X games will also know that pretty much every game they release is practically a friggin disaster at launch lol with endless bugs and broken or missing features. Then rather amazingly unlike most studios they then spend years releasing patches and addons to the games until after around 2 or so years the game is friggin awesome lmao! Sure enough X4 has followed that path and they recently released the first addon for X4 Split Vandetta which appears to be quite an improvement over the messy vanilla release. No doubt they’ll be more coming too over the next few years. Presumably Egosoft must make their money back through addons as I don’t know how those guys survive the bad first releases and somehow keep going. I think the first X game came out in 1999 so its over 20 years now haha.
Has anywhere here played X4 yet? I don’t have it yet as I’ve been holding out of a physical collectors release (yeah I’m one of those old weirdos lol) which is probably not going to happen as they’ve said they can’t afford it these days sadly but nevertheless I’ve been drooling over their videos lately to build some anticipation for the inevitable digital only purchase lol. I like how you can walk around the bridge of your capital ships while station construction looks way more advanced than previous games with you putting together all the modules yourself into whatever custom setup you want. Then of course you can walk around them and hire staff and mercs etc.
And now they’re doing a 6 part video series talking about each aspect of the game.. my god does the latest version look more complicated than ever! There’s just SO MUCH you can do, customize and tinker with.
Another game I’m super excited about is the up and coming sequel to the awesome X Series of space adventure and trading games. X4 Foundations looks like it will play similar to great classics like Freelancer with lots of space combat, trading and walking around space bars conducting ‘business’. After fans complained about the previous game X-Rebirth not allowing you to fly any ship (which you could do in previous games) they have brought it back in X4 but have still kept the awesome walking around your ship and space stations stuff of X-Rebirth (the Freelancer fan in me is very excited about that bit!). They’ve vastly improved station building too which means players will be able to craft huge empires of modular stations protected by fleets of ships including giant battleships where you can stand on the bridge surrounded by your crew! Egosoft has been releasing alpha footage over the last year but now they have announced a proper November 30th release date and have just put out official trailer and gameplay footage videos which I’ll post below!
The only game series to destroy as much of my adult life as Elder Scrolls is the awesome X Series with its games of space adventure, combat & strategy. I currently only mention it in my new Freelancer Legacy Games section & my old Babylon 5 Fan Games section however one day I plan to do a full tribute section to this great series. There have been 3 games & many addons. After years of waiting the 4th game is finally here, X Rebirth! As a result some AWESOME trailers have been released that you should check out below!
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