Graphics

[Wigpeeler]

Since we seem to be idling in anticipation of 1.3, it strikes me that XC2's graphics didn't get the praise they deserve in most of the reviews I read or discussions since. I've spent about a thousand hours now in XC2, more than nearly any other game in last half decade or so, and (a small) part of that I think has to do with the graphics quality. On high/ultra settings the character details, the movement animations (mostly), the movement of clothing and gear, etc are really pretty good and sometimes strike me as better than the graphics of high end games in genres more often associated with graphics. That first time I fired up XC2 and found myself taking cover behind a toppled arcade game, or zooming in on a character and being distracted by the stuff on a shelf or the steam coming from a vent, was pretty memorable. The modding community deserves lots of credit of course - those coil rifles look amazing - but the base game does too. There are some clunks - corpse physics producing graphical oddities, and a somewhat too clean look, such as the interface between buildings and the ground - but mostly it is a really nice looking game indeed. Immersive certainly.

My question, though, is whether that graphics quality is actually a restriction on full conversions using the engine. I can imagine a WW2 urban combat conversion, for instance, or maybe a conversion that provides basic building blocks of a sort so players can construct their own historical/fictional squad scenarios. Since modders seems to have done fine with uniforms/gear, the problem would be the terrain/building/environments I'd imagine (as well as the restrictions of the map system in the engine of course). Maybe I'm wrong but it seems like producing new graphics of that sort is beyond the realm of non-commercial means. At any rate, whenever I'm looking at a squaddie walking past a "wanted notice" with their face on it, I've wanted to state my appreciation for the graphics detail in XC2!

[fowlJ]

Any sort of major setting overhaul would absolutely struggle with graphics, but it has much less to do with fidelity of the graphics than with the sheer volume of assets required (and I believe in certain cases the lack of access to the proprietary tools used by Firaxis). A skilled artist who is familiar with the demands and quirks of the game can make more or less anything that the Firaxis artists could, but to make an entire game's worth of such things requires an entire team, and a lot of time besides, which isn't easy to pull together without a budget.

[Clibanarius]

Love the graphics. Wish the shadow moire problem were gone, because I hate being distracted by a flickering/heavily-aliased shadow of a pauldron on a character's arm when I'm aiming. There's only little niggling problems like that, though; the actual maps and characters and shit look fantastic and I really like the designs.

[Wigpeeler]

It's a shame really. I can imagine the engine being licensed in interesting ways, but it seems the moment has probably passed. Firaxis has been awfully quiet, at least.

One thing that always catches me is the torso detail on the muton's flexible suit, when you get the reaction animation - something about the texture is just fantastic, and the muton cocking the plasma rifle animation is kinda cool. The sectoid too is a really nicely detailed model, though I could do without the camera seeming to swing around to sectoid butt all the time. The huge sniper rifles in LW2, the waving grass, the waterfalls, the snow, ..... sigh. So good.

[cryptc]

I laughed when I was watching a streamer that most recently played Mass Effect: Andromeda, then played XCom2 and was like "wow these models look amazing!"

But yeah XCom2 is really beautiful... they really nailed it

[Wigpeeler]

In the brief time I had last night to play a mission I got the 'slums' urban map (not sure what how it is designated in the ini) with lots of steam and broken crap. Spend more time than usual just looking around and man is it a nicely detailed, evocative setting. Not graphics as distraction, but enough to be visually appealing, immersive, convincing, and with plausible hints of story elements: that the benefits of the alien presence are not equally shared, that the implementation of technology is (unsurprisingly) uneven - those crazy modified vehicles! The resistance haven maps are often really attractive too, but they sometimes suffer from building arrangements that just don't really make any practical sense. I could imagine a pretty cool cyberpunky campaign just using those maps - a sort of Tokyo 42 thing on a tactical scale. It would be cool to see a Fallout based tactical mod.

I'm not a modder in anyway at all, but I wonder though how adaptable the strategic layer of the engine is to modding - could the world map stuff be turned into something else in terms of scale: city sized, regional, neighbourhood, etc? As much as the tactical layer is absorbing I wouldn't want to give up the strategic element as well.