| Title | Will stealth finally work in Phoenix Point? Find out May 25th! |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | News |
| When | May 18, 2021 |
One of my complaints about Phoenix Point is that the stealth is poorly integrated into the game. From my otherwise enthusiastic review:
Combat is very gamey and deterministic, but stealth is all under-the-hood voodoo…
By chance, I was very late getting infiltrator tech so the stealth system is something I was able avoid stubbing my toe on for the most part. I used an infiltrator maybe once or twice and at least one of those instances was a sneaky wide flank that paid off but… I’ve no idea whether I had to go that wide or even flank at all with cloak. I’m glad Snapshot are addressing it and I’m very curious to see how the new Festering Skies additions play out. I really enjoyed my time with Phoenix Point. I dipped my toes when it hit Epic, got cold feet, then held off till the Steam release. I think that was a good call!
Really looking forward to this. Thanks for the heads up on the release date.
i wanted to say that I misread Phoenix Point as Phoenix Wright and this made for the most intriguing headline I had read in a long while.
That’s what bugged me about Xcom 2. It was set up like a guerilla war where you steathily had to set up perfect ambushes, but the line of sight rules were opaque and ridiculous. On top of that, the human civilians would instantly rat you out the instant they spotted you.
Wait… what?
Human civilians are on your side in Xcom 2. Are you thinking of a different game?
They’re supposed to be, but I lost 2 missions because my cover was prematurely blown when a civilian spotted me, alerting the aliens.
I happen to be playing through a XCOM2 campaign right now and in most of the scenarios during the initial concealed advance of the XCOM team, squares next to Civilians are marked with the little red indicator showing that stepping next to them will alert the enemy of your presence.
I can imagine that that could indicate either that the civilian population is so brainwashed by Advent that they actively go out of their way to tell the aliens of your presence, or it could just indicate people running away from what they accurately perceive as a fight potentially lethal to bystanders might give the enemy clear indication that something is up.
Obfuscation!
Well, the red squares are not always visible, e.g. when you walk pass a corner with no visibility.
And yes, the civilians rat you out in stealth mode in XCOM 2 because they think XCOM are the bad guys.
Free update is out, along with the Festering Skies DLC. Can’t comment on too much, so I started a new campaign and I’m only on the second tutorial mission again. But excited to see the new stuff.
I think this is still on Game Pass. I should give it a try now that the new update is out.
Wow, I had no idea this was on GamePass. Yay I Game Pass game that I want to play that I haven’t already paid full price for!
Well, what’s the verdict-- did the update fix stealth?
I can’t say yet, as I haven’t run into any stealth situations. But in terms of highlighting the interaction of the stealth and perception stats, and how they might be affected by nighttime, so far the latest update does bupkis. :(
That said, I’m throwing in with New Jericho in my current playthrough, so I don’t anticipate any cool Synedrion crossbow shenanigans in the near future. That’s where the game really needs to spell out how stealth works.
-Tom