I greatly enjoyed playing through xenonauts, and I think one of the things that set it apart from similiar titles and made it more interesting were the tactics and unique properties each of the enemy types possess. For example, the androids heavy armor requiring penetrating weapons, and the way they would use their innate protection to ignore cover and rush you.
Wait a minute what ever happened to project Pathfinder? While the potential announcement of xenonauts 2 makes me unbearably excited whatever happened to that game? Are ya still working on it? Plz forgive my ignorance as it's been a few months since I've looked at these forums so I'll understand if some drastic choices and decisions were made.
But I love XCOM pulpy bombast, and Xenonauts' more austere presentation just doesn't speak to me in the same way. One issue that particularly bugged me was the measly audio effects on weapons. Yes, an M16 rifle is practically prehistoric compared to an alien plasma gun, but ripping open a Secton with an M16 should still feel satisfying. Instead, it's like shooting bubbles at a bag of flour. Later weapons are a little better, but not much, and none of your xenonauts' actions have much sense of physicality.
Xenonauts 2
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Xenonauts had to flee CENTRAL after an assault by the Cleaners, the human proxy group of the aliens. Later, the player can pull this on the Cleaners and assault their base in Greenland.
- Alternate History: The game takes place in an alternate present where the Cold War never ended due to alien meddling.
- Attack Drone: On both sides. On the Xenonaut side, there is the MARS combat platform which can be armed with either a cannon or a missile pod. On the alien side, there is the cyberdrone, a heavily armored cybernetic drone and the servitor, which is a smaller drone that can heal enemies but is also armed with a plasma weapon.
- Badass Normal: Xenonauts are essentially this. They are average soldiers who initially goes off to fight aliens that are using futuristic tech with modern day weapons and armor. Also, armed civilians and soldiers that appear on certain maps also count.
- Benevolent Conspiracy: The Xenonauts are thrust into this position, in the face of both thermonuclear war and the prospect of an alien invasion.
- Chameleon Camouflage: The aliens have the wraiths who essentially have optical camouflage. The xenonauts can later build the stalker armor which has a cloaking field that serves as this.
- Les Collaborateurs: The enigmatic Cleaners, who seem to be working with the aliens, are human enemies that the Xenonauts have to contend with. They are later revealed to be EXDEF, formerly a group formed by the West and the Soviets in collaboration to combat the alien threat.
- Combat Medic: Any soldier can be this if they have a medkit on them. Also, later on, this comes in the form of the automed module which can heal soldiers automatically each turn.
- Early Game Hell: Early game can be quite hard even with having 9 soldiers for each mission, whether it's facing alien contingents that outclass them in every way or just fighting well-equipped Cleaners.
- Earth All Along: Played with. The aliens are all inhabitants of different dimensional reflections of Earth, but each version is quite different due to the travails of astrophysics and ecology. Most Earths aren't even inhabitable by multicellular life, hence why the Eternals want humanity's Earth to colonize.
- Expy: The Cleaners are reminiscent of EXALT in their role as Les Collaborateurs, while their covert MO and "secret military unit gone rogue" background call to mind XOF/Cipher.
- Faster Than Light: Subverted. Upon examining a Mentarch's navigational logs, your scientists realize that the way the Eternals overcame the light barrier is they didn't; rather they found a way to jump dimensions to alternate versions of their homeworld, which is much less energy intensive. Their homeworld, by the way, is Earth.
- The Masquerade: Aliens have been secretly manipulating the two superpowers into nuclear war, while a covert organization called the "Cleaners" keeps any extraterrestrial evidence (and potential loose ends) buried. By the time the game starts, however, it's mentioned that this status quo is breaking down as the aliens start losing their patience. The opening cutscene implies that Gorbachev is assassinated either directly by the aliens or by the Cleaners who serve as their human proxies.
- Mauve Shirt: Your Xenonauts definitely feel like this when you begin the game.
- The Men in Black: When not donning military gear or hazmat suits, the Cleaners are usually shown with nondescript business-wear.
- Multiversal Conqueror: The alien empire is actually a collection of alternate Earths that developed life useful to the dimension-traveling Eternals.
- Mutually Assured Destruction: What the aliens aim to bring about, with the expectation that humanity would be too busy panicking about the Alien Invasion, while the Americans and Soviets pin blame on and eventually nuke each other amidst the chaos. The Eternals also hope to bring this about as it would make settling this version of Earth much easier.
- Orbital Bombardment: A new element; an orbital alien superweapon will periodically hit the region with the least Panic, causing a large increase in Panic there.
- The Remnant: After being all but disavowed, as well as being dealt a blow from the Cleaners, the Xenonauts are reduced to operating from a hidden backup base that hadn't been used since at least the '60s.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: The Cleaners were originally EXDEF, a joint Western and Soviet initiative meant to combat extraterrestrial threats, before going rogue and seemingly becoming the aliens' proxies.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Your scientists quickly note how oddly similar the aliens are to Earth life, with some sharing as much as 75% of the same DNA as humans. Justified; the aliens' homeworlds are actually all dimensional forks of Earth, so they are actually sentient species from the same tree of life that produced humans, just grown differently - it makes sense that convergent evolution produces similar bipedal structures, as those Earths have similar enough environs to the Xenonauts'.
- Transhuman Treachery: The Eternals are a highly evolved transhuman species that's set its sight on the Xenonauts' version of Earth.
- Two Decades Behind: Downplayed. While technology on Earth is comparable to the real life 2010s-2020s, the overall aesthetic remains trapped in The '80s.
- Ultraterrestrials: The aliens are actually inhabitants of alternate versions of Earth, conquered and put to work by the Eternals, who are themselves inhabitants of a different Earth.
- Unobtainium: Played straight then subverted. Alien alloy and aelerium are needed to make higher-tier equipment but you can only get them from the aliens. However, later on you can research methods to synthesize these material yourself. However, while it is possible to make them yourself, they are still very expensive and slow to manufacture manually.
- World War III: A major concern is that the aliens, having prolonged the Cold War long enough, are manipulating the superpowers into nuclear annihilation, in preparation for their planned invasion. If Panic across the world increases enough, that's precisely what happens.
df19127ead