It's not really a game you get for the story, there are various plots to follow through in story missions but they're mid IMHO, plus the voice acting can be hit and miss. The main reason to get it is for the sandbox, the joy of going from a small ship to an interstellar empire all under your control, or whatever it is you want to do. Lots of intrinsic motivation and quite loose extrinsic motivation.
To me, a lot of the voice acting sounds like non-English speakers reading everything phonetically. There's just something... strange about their speech patterns. I can't quite put my finger on it.
Don't get me wrong, I love X4, but it's not a game you play for it's stellar voice acting
I was having the same thing with X3, before AI was a thing. But, could have been a fancy text-to-speech. Could still be that and they're just saying 'AI' cause it's a marketing buzzword.
Only very few characters in Timelines are AI generated voices.
Everything else is human. It sounding somewhat off is just what X does. They tend to not do character models and voices very well.
> I just don't want to feel like I wasted my money, is the story engaging enough to play for 50+ hours? Or is it more like a create a scenario on your head and that's your story?
Just learning the basics will eat up that 50 hours and you won't know where the time went. It's a lot of fun.
Very little in common with No Man's Sky FYI. Depending on how you play it, it has more in common with Euro Truck Simulator, or naval/piracy games.
For me it's an order of magnitude more fun than Starfield, but that's just because Starfield lacked any of the fun sandbox-y things you could get up to from earlier Bethesda games, the writing was all very safe and flat, and the space action was mid (though it was the best part of the game).
On the other hand this is a pure space sandbox, i.e. everything happens in a ship or in your spacesuit. There's no direct ground combat, no personal inventory of guns & armor. You do a certain amount of walking around on foot but it's walking to traders/NPCs on stations.
I've really enjoyed the dogfighting in X4 so far. I'll often go some of the in-game hotspots just to pick a fight (and it's reasonably profitable too, you come away with lots of materials and the occasional abandoned ship).
But the cool part is the flexibility. You might spend time dogfighting at some Xenon hotspot, or you might instead work on building a defensive platform, and ferry the goods for it yourself in your own transport. Then you might buy a fast scout ship and tell the pilot to search the area of your defense platform picking up dropped goods, so you basically automate the process of killing enemies and collecting their loot. Or, you might do a few missions to make startup money and just buy 50 laser turrets that you just dot around the same area, which ends up being very efficient...
I just picked it up on sale myself and have been really enjoying it. I only have about 30 hours but they have all been within a week of purchase. The game is incredibly addicting. I love space sims and actually prefer it over Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous, which are the other two that I have spent a decent amount of time on.
The game is a sandbox however, and story missions feel like a miniscule part of the experience. A good chunk of them seem to be contained in the dlcs as well. The game is much more of an an economy/empire builder. You play in first person and can pilot your ship as you handle manual tasks but eventually you start spending a lot of time on the map screen controlling your other ships via orders. I was flying my own ship at first but it's already gotten to the point where I have a pilot at the helm of my vessel. I only take over when it comes to carrying out combat missions or any other mission that requires some manual input when we arrive at given destination.
I wouldn't let the management aspect and lack of story stop you if you are in to space sims though. I was hesitant about the economy/empire building aspect but it's honestly my favorite part of the game. Instructing and managing your ships, ensuring that they are carrying out their tasks correctly and safely is super fun. I have spent hours just instructing and checking up on my purchased fleet of scouts as they map out the game universe.
To sum things up, there seems to be little meaningful in the way of story, but it doesn't feel like it hinders the game as the sandbox aspect makes up for it. You just kind of roleplay and create your own story.
I would just grab it on sale and try it out if you are not strapped for cash and really enjoy space sims.
Definitely watch a few beginner videos before you start though, as the game has a very high learning curve due to the management side of it's design. There is a ton of stuff you need to learn how to do in order to make money and progress.
The stories exists in the game more to serve as a device to help the universe feel more real. The lore of the game is quite interesting and somewhat unique for space games, but Egosoft, for all my love of them, are not the best at telling stories.
There is no cohesive singular plot. There are faction specific plots which involve missions and sometimes these can overlap, but they mostly change one part of the universe. You could trigger a war, end a civil war, eliminate a pirate faction, etc.
Most of the strength of this game is you yourself making the story. Your story. It’s a simulation, so your choices can have profound impact on how the simulation plays out.
With that said, they aren’t terrible. Some are better than the others.
You should watch a few YouTube videos to get a taste of the game better. Probably a safer bet to check it out first.
Thank you all for taking time of your day to read me and reply. I'm getting the community of planets edition, looks like Im more likely to enjoy it.
Hope this game keeps getting updates in the coming years.
Welcome to the x saga. I hope that it clicks for you. You will have questions, here or in the Egosoft forum. There are a lot of good players willing to help.
There's lots of storylines, but imo it's a bit janky (Especially the voice acting), it's really a sandbox-first, story-second kinda game.
*Edit* Just to be clear, I do strongly recommend the game however. You can go from piloting an individual ship to commanding fleets of hundreds and building supporting industries.
> ut imo it's a bit janky (Especially the voice acting)
Looking back timelines voice acting is a noticeable step down from other dlcs. I think it was mostly AI generated?
I think people are being a little too lenient. Egosoft have done story heavy games before, the jankiness in timelines isn't a new experiment so much as an old trend.
There's not really a story, and what story there is happens to be the worst part of the game. This isn't a story style of game. There's about as much story in a game of X4 as there is in a game of Total War. It's a space empire builder that's also a very slow paced RTS.
This game is not really a space sim. It’s Factorio with spaceships. You could be like me and buy it expecting a space sim, play it for a few hours, realize it’s not what you wanted but it still interests you, then come back to it 2 years later with a determination to give it a chance and end up not being able to put it down. You’ll probably realize that your HOSAS isn’t much good for managing your 50 ships in the map menu, although a HOSAM setup could do quite well I think.
There are a lot of story missions which are like talk to this character, ok now go scan this station, now drop a few satellites in different areas, and oh no pirates, better kill them. The story segments are less there to guide your playthrough and more to add flavor to whatever faction you’re interacting with or to help introduce you to different mechanics.
Granted i stopped playing this game very quickly, only really playing through the Kingdom End narrative. But from what little i gathered it's pretty meh in that regard.
There is voice acting and actual NPCs doing stuff which is great. But the quality of the narrative and whatnot is ... mediocre. Better than nothing, but not really good either.
If the Kingdom End narrative is for some reason faaar worse than the rest of the game then that's great, but if it's an indicator for how the game narrative is overall then i really couldn't recommend it from a story perspective.
No.
It’s got basic quests and the npcs scare me with how poorly they are rendered.
I’ll go through them all to unlock them, but the best part of this game is the process of rubble to riches.
No. I think the story is the weakest part so much so that most players create their own narrative. This not unusual for open ended games, it's the same in Kenshi, if not more so, and yet Kenshi is very good too.
The only time them make it to Tell the Story Well in the x franchise was X2 the treat.
They have the setting to have a good Story but mostly fail to deliver.
Game is amazing once you get into it, do what you want when you want... I spent the first 40+ hours just flying around exploring then different sectors and getting a feeling for the game. Highly recommend.
The stories do have their moments but its more functional than engaging storytelling. The DLC do have cool storylines but its nothing like Everspace or Starfield although its better than No Mans Sky.
X2 and X3 did a MUCH better job with their plots. Voice Acting(especially german) is all over the place. Sometimes its really good but man the voices in Timelines are so goddamn bad. Even Google Translate could do better(I don't want to shame Ego for this, good VA can be expensive).
Since you mentioned it, this game has less story than No Man's Sky and the story is not as good either.
This game is mostly about the simulated enconomy and factions.
The stories can be fun and lead to choices and consequences that impact the sandbox universe. I’d say one of the biggest limitations is their pacing, they jump from small tasks and engagements to huge build projects or combat fairly fast.
the sandbox is engaging enough for hundreds of hours gameplay.
There's some really interesting lore, and there are storylines, but I'll tell you egosoft isn't known for great writing and voice acting. Most of the stories are a tool to serve you missions (that are effectively tutorials) or flavor for the sandbox that can unlock different universe states.
It's like asking if kenshi had a great story. Well, it's an interesting setting, and there's some emergent storytelling. But engaging story? hmmmm,
It's a story of you as a sand grain in a sandbox. What will you do ?
:p
Each faction have it's little story you can discover by a series of side quests. But mainly it's a sandbox.
Its kinda like single player eve online. Sure, there are storyline missions, but you are just a little guy trying to make it big in a universe where npcs have their own shit to do.
You aren't a chosen one or anything special like in everspace 2. Although timelines dlc tries to be like that.
I like to play X4 by building my empire alongside doing the plot lines. It takes a while to build stations and grow your cash and resources, so I set things up and then go immerse myself in some story.
Some of the plot lines are really good and exciting.
There's lore if you really dig deep enough, I quite enjoy the history and stories from all the factions. Specifically their aggression or how they think of others, like split history, and terran history for example. But I'm the type of person who listens to 40K audiobooks while commuting, so I really need to dig for that lore.
Here's a 7 video lore series for example https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8ppx7VokajBPLU5Msyct_3Z7GkHODY77&si=s4XViCxRYZuHqJSW
But honestly as. Everyone else has said the plots are good enough, but you don't play it for deep immersive story telling. The early game stuff is bad for voice acting, all the newer stuff it much better, but still lol. X4 is the best space sim bar none.
It's not really a game you get for the story, there are various plots to follow through in story missions but they're mid IMHO, plus the voice acting can be hit and miss. The main reason to get it is for the sandbox, the joy of going from a small ship to an interstellar empire all under your control, or whatever it is you want to do. Lots of intrinsic motivation and quite loose extrinsic motivation.
To me, a lot of the voice acting sounds like non-English speakers reading everything phonetically. There's just something... strange about their speech patterns. I can't quite put my finger on it. Don't get me wrong, I love X4, but it's not a game you play for it's stellar voice acting
I think the devs have confirmed that some of it is AI voice acting so that might be why their speech patterns are odd?
I was having the same thing with X3, before AI was a thing. But, could have been a fancy text-to-speech. Could still be that and they're just saying 'AI' cause it's a marketing buzzword.
In X3 some voices would pronounce “xenon” as “ex-enin”
I was about to say…. AI in some ways is fancy text to speech, my layman’s understanding.
Only very few characters in Timelines are AI generated voices. Everything else is human. It sounding somewhat off is just what X does. They tend to not do character models and voices very well.
> I just don't want to feel like I wasted my money, is the story engaging enough to play for 50+ hours? Or is it more like a create a scenario on your head and that's your story? Just learning the basics will eat up that 50 hours and you won't know where the time went. It's a lot of fun. Very little in common with No Man's Sky FYI. Depending on how you play it, it has more in common with Euro Truck Simulator, or naval/piracy games. For me it's an order of magnitude more fun than Starfield, but that's just because Starfield lacked any of the fun sandbox-y things you could get up to from earlier Bethesda games, the writing was all very safe and flat, and the space action was mid (though it was the best part of the game). On the other hand this is a pure space sandbox, i.e. everything happens in a ship or in your spacesuit. There's no direct ground combat, no personal inventory of guns & armor. You do a certain amount of walking around on foot but it's walking to traders/NPCs on stations. I've really enjoyed the dogfighting in X4 so far. I'll often go some of the in-game hotspots just to pick a fight (and it's reasonably profitable too, you come away with lots of materials and the occasional abandoned ship). But the cool part is the flexibility. You might spend time dogfighting at some Xenon hotspot, or you might instead work on building a defensive platform, and ferry the goods for it yourself in your own transport. Then you might buy a fast scout ship and tell the pilot to search the area of your defense platform picking up dropped goods, so you basically automate the process of killing enemies and collecting their loot. Or, you might do a few missions to make startup money and just buy 50 laser turrets that you just dot around the same area, which ends up being very efficient...
I just picked it up on sale myself and have been really enjoying it. I only have about 30 hours but they have all been within a week of purchase. The game is incredibly addicting. I love space sims and actually prefer it over Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous, which are the other two that I have spent a decent amount of time on. The game is a sandbox however, and story missions feel like a miniscule part of the experience. A good chunk of them seem to be contained in the dlcs as well. The game is much more of an an economy/empire builder. You play in first person and can pilot your ship as you handle manual tasks but eventually you start spending a lot of time on the map screen controlling your other ships via orders. I was flying my own ship at first but it's already gotten to the point where I have a pilot at the helm of my vessel. I only take over when it comes to carrying out combat missions or any other mission that requires some manual input when we arrive at given destination. I wouldn't let the management aspect and lack of story stop you if you are in to space sims though. I was hesitant about the economy/empire building aspect but it's honestly my favorite part of the game. Instructing and managing your ships, ensuring that they are carrying out their tasks correctly and safely is super fun. I have spent hours just instructing and checking up on my purchased fleet of scouts as they map out the game universe. To sum things up, there seems to be little meaningful in the way of story, but it doesn't feel like it hinders the game as the sandbox aspect makes up for it. You just kind of roleplay and create your own story. I would just grab it on sale and try it out if you are not strapped for cash and really enjoy space sims. Definitely watch a few beginner videos before you start though, as the game has a very high learning curve due to the management side of it's design. There is a ton of stuff you need to learn how to do in order to make money and progress.
The stories exists in the game more to serve as a device to help the universe feel more real. The lore of the game is quite interesting and somewhat unique for space games, but Egosoft, for all my love of them, are not the best at telling stories. There is no cohesive singular plot. There are faction specific plots which involve missions and sometimes these can overlap, but they mostly change one part of the universe. You could trigger a war, end a civil war, eliminate a pirate faction, etc. Most of the strength of this game is you yourself making the story. Your story. It’s a simulation, so your choices can have profound impact on how the simulation plays out. With that said, they aren’t terrible. Some are better than the others. You should watch a few YouTube videos to get a taste of the game better. Probably a safer bet to check it out first.
Most npc dialogue is unskippable pain. Truly dreadful. The game is still amazing. You just got to build your own story.
Most NPC dialog IS now skippable, as of 7.00. ;)
Oh my god. What’s the skip button???? S tier patch.
Space skips dialogue
Well this changes everything. Have I just missed a tool tip pop up?
Thank you all for taking time of your day to read me and reply. I'm getting the community of planets edition, looks like Im more likely to enjoy it. Hope this game keeps getting updates in the coming years.
Welcome to the x saga. I hope that it clicks for you. You will have questions, here or in the Egosoft forum. There are a lot of good players willing to help.
There's lots of storylines, but imo it's a bit janky (Especially the voice acting), it's really a sandbox-first, story-second kinda game. *Edit* Just to be clear, I do strongly recommend the game however. You can go from piloting an individual ship to commanding fleets of hundreds and building supporting industries.
> ut imo it's a bit janky (Especially the voice acting) Looking back timelines voice acting is a noticeable step down from other dlcs. I think it was mostly AI generated? I think people are being a little too lenient. Egosoft have done story heavy games before, the jankiness in timelines isn't a new experiment so much as an old trend.
I thought all voices in the game were AI generated, which is why they sound so flat and don't have emphasis in the right place.
The storytelling part in X3 and X4 are some of the least impressive parts of the game, unfortunately.
There's not really a story, and what story there is happens to be the worst part of the game. This isn't a story style of game. There's about as much story in a game of X4 as there is in a game of Total War. It's a space empire builder that's also a very slow paced RTS.
This game is not really a space sim. It’s Factorio with spaceships. You could be like me and buy it expecting a space sim, play it for a few hours, realize it’s not what you wanted but it still interests you, then come back to it 2 years later with a determination to give it a chance and end up not being able to put it down. You’ll probably realize that your HOSAS isn’t much good for managing your 50 ships in the map menu, although a HOSAM setup could do quite well I think. There are a lot of story missions which are like talk to this character, ok now go scan this station, now drop a few satellites in different areas, and oh no pirates, better kill them. The story segments are less there to guide your playthrough and more to add flavor to whatever faction you’re interacting with or to help introduce you to different mechanics.
Granted i stopped playing this game very quickly, only really playing through the Kingdom End narrative. But from what little i gathered it's pretty meh in that regard. There is voice acting and actual NPCs doing stuff which is great. But the quality of the narrative and whatnot is ... mediocre. Better than nothing, but not really good either. If the Kingdom End narrative is for some reason faaar worse than the rest of the game then that's great, but if it's an indicator for how the game narrative is overall then i really couldn't recommend it from a story perspective.
I mean the lore is not bad but it is really not a narrative game and the plot writing is basic.
No. It’s got basic quests and the npcs scare me with how poorly they are rendered. I’ll go through them all to unlock them, but the best part of this game is the process of rubble to riches.
No. I think the story is the weakest part so much so that most players create their own narrative. This not unusual for open ended games, it's the same in Kenshi, if not more so, and yet Kenshi is very good too.
The only time them make it to Tell the Story Well in the x franchise was X2 the treat. They have the setting to have a good Story but mostly fail to deliver.
Game is amazing once you get into it, do what you want when you want... I spent the first 40+ hours just flying around exploring then different sectors and getting a feeling for the game. Highly recommend.
The stories do have their moments but its more functional than engaging storytelling. The DLC do have cool storylines but its nothing like Everspace or Starfield although its better than No Mans Sky. X2 and X3 did a MUCH better job with their plots. Voice Acting(especially german) is all over the place. Sometimes its really good but man the voices in Timelines are so goddamn bad. Even Google Translate could do better(I don't want to shame Ego for this, good VA can be expensive).
Not really a good story, an interesting concept and setting is probably more like it.
Since you mentioned it, this game has less story than No Man's Sky and the story is not as good either. This game is mostly about the simulated enconomy and factions.
The stories can be fun and lead to choices and consequences that impact the sandbox universe. I’d say one of the biggest limitations is their pacing, they jump from small tasks and engagements to huge build projects or combat fairly fast.
there no story in X4 it's mainly sandbox there is however some advance quest
the sandbox is engaging enough for hundreds of hours gameplay. There's some really interesting lore, and there are storylines, but I'll tell you egosoft isn't known for great writing and voice acting. Most of the stories are a tool to serve you missions (that are effectively tutorials) or flavor for the sandbox that can unlock different universe states. It's like asking if kenshi had a great story. Well, it's an interesting setting, and there's some emergent storytelling. But engaging story? hmmmm,
It's a story of you as a sand grain in a sandbox. What will you do ? :p Each faction have it's little story you can discover by a series of side quests. But mainly it's a sandbox.
This is a sandbox game for the most part
Its kinda like single player eve online. Sure, there are storyline missions, but you are just a little guy trying to make it big in a universe where npcs have their own shit to do. You aren't a chosen one or anything special like in everspace 2. Although timelines dlc tries to be like that.
I like to play X4 by building my empire alongside doing the plot lines. It takes a while to build stations and grow your cash and resources, so I set things up and then go immerse myself in some story. Some of the plot lines are really good and exciting.
There's lore if you really dig deep enough, I quite enjoy the history and stories from all the factions. Specifically their aggression or how they think of others, like split history, and terran history for example. But I'm the type of person who listens to 40K audiobooks while commuting, so I really need to dig for that lore. Here's a 7 video lore series for example https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8ppx7VokajBPLU5Msyct_3Z7GkHODY77&si=s4XViCxRYZuHqJSW But honestly as. Everyone else has said the plots are good enough, but you don't play it for deep immersive story telling. The early game stuff is bad for voice acting, all the newer stuff it much better, but still lol. X4 is the best space sim bar none.