Phoenix Point is a bit of a misnomer

[Tikigod]

@Lexx000

@OdinSon

But Phoenix Point should have their own stuff beyond empty bases and needing the factions for tech and recruits.

Agree, one thing that I found interesting is that in the trailer, there is that suggestion that Phoenix Point was on the moon (or it looks like it made it there, given the geodesic dome). As more Phoenix Point bases are uncovered, the strength of their technology, AI, access to secret codes, medicines or perhaps things that were part of the prior military industrial complex including NASA, stealth satellites, etc. should become available.

I always saw them as a special arm of the UN that had support from everywhere, and sure, it failed, but what IF there was support from elsewhere e.g. “we made it Mars” or the International Space Station, that had grown to a scale where humans could live for decades in space, and they were waiting for signals from the U.N. / NASA / or Phoenix Point to “engage” and support a group that was there to fight for all humanity.

I’ve purposely held off playing, because I’ve been waiting for the balance updates and changes, maybe even the DLCs. I might play some more today to get some time in and see where it’s at with the hotfix, but I would love that notion that the portfolio of the Phoenix Project with it’s own AI technology has the ability to persevere and lead all the other factions and unite the nations of the earth to destroy the real enemy, the rampant seafood!

The Moon excursion(s) is covered somewhat in the lore. (A good read is the lore short story called ‘The-Hatch’)

During one of the more recent reincarnations of the Phoenix Project (As there have been many incarnations of the Phoenix Project over hundreds of years) when they had strong support from many national organisations there were at least 2 Phoenix Project operated missions to the Moon during the 60’s/70’s.

The purpose of those missions seemed to be to search for information around various crater sites on the moon which they believed may hold information related to a ‘Alien threat’.

The first mission Phoenix-1 appears to have been a technical success, however returned little to no valuable data, the 2nd mission Phoenix-2 met with disaster and was one of the major events that saw the Phoenix Project lose a lot of its support from government entities.

There is A LOT of information directly related to game events and the initial setting the player finds themselves with within the series of short story collections published over the years leading up to the games release, and I’d definitely recommend anyone interested in the specifics of the games story read through them. As each consists of self-contained short stories, you can actually read them slowly over time with each only taking about 10-20 minutes.

Over the years, Snapshot actually compiled a series of the short stories into E-book volumes that they made available to download, though I am not seeing them directly linking to the compiled volumes on their ‘Phoenix Archives’ page which is a shame as it was a nice move to make entire collections available to download to read locally without having to go through them individually on their website.

[Lexx000]

Thanks! I’ll have to re-read them again, I was reading all the lore as it was released as an early backer, but admit, The Hatch isn’t something I am remembering right now, so I’ll give it another read.

The e-book is great, and I noticed that it’s been compiled now into a single volume for anyone that was in an early backer (well, for me it’s in that Phoenix Point Content directory)…

Cheers

[Tikigod]

Ah they’re included in the extra content? Very nice, will have to copy them across to my Tablet tonight, cheers for the heads up about that.

[Lexx000]

There is LOTS of great stuff in there, I have been listening to the backer build OST as well as the primary OST

The Art of Phoenix Point PDF is also cool, I can see how much they poured their hearts and souls into this effort (and still are) … I’m looking forward to the evolution via DLC!

There is some backstory in that Art of… book…

You will enjoy the fact that ALL the stories have been compiled into a single Anthology - as EPUB, MOBI and PDF, so lots of options for your device(s).

Cheers!

[Kodos88]

I do like the factions in PP, and I like the fact you can help them, but I can’t help but feel that they really, really don’t need you or your help as you can’t really bring anything to the table.

I would like / hope for future DLC that makes the Phoenix Project just as important as the factions in their own way. Like having powerful endgame tech unique to us, or a soldier etc. Just something to say that we play an important role in the war as well, because at the moment I don’t understand why the factions even talk to us - let alone ask for our help.

[Pr8Dator]

I am reading through the Phoenix Point Stories now and it is now clear that PP no longer exist at the time of this game. We are but random soldiers who are trying to understand the history of PP and where it left off. In order to do that, we need weapons to survive the pandorans as we search for the truth. That’s why we align ourselves with the 3 main factions in order to obtain technology and weapons to survive the ordeals of our search for the truth.

[Girshin]

@kane

ou all mentioned before WE are not a PP members, as we are not ‘band of nerds with guns’. We are soldiers who discover abandoned Phoenix Project base and we are far far away from Phoenix Project glory.
So IMHO we are demoted from a shadow cabinet who can solve world problems, to a fourth faction, who is only smart

Exactly so. The title of the game implies this, the lore confirms it.

[Lady_Snow]

Kodos88…

PP is not needed!

Other than food PP can’t even produce it’s own supplies without assistance from the outside factions. There is no way for PP to survive in this world at all. No way for humanity to raise up from the ashes this time.

[Pr8Dator]

Yes, if you read the story manual that came with the game, the opening chapter explains very clearly what the state of the PP in this game is.

[SpiteAndMalice]

@Pr8Dator

if you read the story manual that came with the game

Is that the thing that I threw away with the box?

Seriously - The game could do with a menu link to the manual if there is one and it contains essential background information.

[SpiteAndMalice]

@Pr8Dator

I actually think that this game is probably a Phoenix Point PREQUEL. In that as mentioned in the beginning of the game, the Phoenix Project has actually already failed so there really isn’t any phoenix point in this game at all. One AI scarab picked up a random soldier and a few randos here and there and sends them to an abandoned pheonix point base and from there, they start to look into the history of how and why phoenix project fell and why the pandoravirus came about. As such, in this prequel, there is actually NO phoenix project and PP2 or an expansion will bring us back or forward to the time where the Phoenix Project actually runs like it should.

I think it’s going to go the opposite way; if there’s a PP2 it’ll involve a new group of random soldiers stumbling upon our version of a failed PP and then rebuilding things from scratch again whist looking into how things went wrong for us.

It’s a trope of most X-Com games, new and old, that the sequel starts in the aftermath of a defeat regardless of what the player did previously, and just the name Phoenix implies the same. I think in PP2 we’ll be re-re-rising from the ashes.

[Tikigod]

@SpiteAndMalice

@Pr8Dator

I actually think that this game is probably a Phoenix Point PREQUEL. In that as mentioned in the beginning of the game, the Phoenix Project has actually already failed so there really isn’t any phoenix point in this game at all. One AI scarab picked up a random soldier and a few randos here and there and sends them to an abandoned pheonix point base and from there, they start to look into the history of how and why phoenix project fell and why the pandoravirus came about. As such, in this prequel, there is actually NO phoenix project and PP2 or an expansion will bring us back or forward to the time where the Phoenix Project actually runs like it should.

I think it’s going to go the opposite way; if there’s a PP2 it’ll involve a new group of random soldiers stumbling upon our version of a failed PP and then rebuilding things from scratch again whist looking into how things went wrong for us.

It’s a trope of most X-Com games, new and old, that the sequel starts in the aftermath of a defeat regardless of what the player did previously, and just the name Phoenix implies the same. I think in PP2 we’ll be re-re-rising from the ashes.

I can’t think of a single X-Com game that followed that.

X-Com: Terror From the Deep followed on from beating back the Aliens, however feed into how some UFOs during the war had crashed into the Ocean and how the threat one or more of those posed wasn’t necessarily ‘gone’.

X-Com: Apocalypse was set in a kind of branch off future story line where the war with the Aliens never really concluded as more just dragged on with periods of activity and inactivity, with the Aliens now able to create trans-dimensional portals to send craft into the heart of the Mega-Primus megacity as they wished.

And X-Com: Interceptor was based around what I would consider a alternative timeline. Human civilisation had thrived to the point where it had started expanding to the stars, and X-Com had become essentially interstellar police force.

Pretty much none of the X-Com games were based on the aftermath of a X-Com defeat. The only ones to do that was the Firaxis reboot series and XCOM 2.

Edit: I checked up on X-Com Apocalypse as it has been a long time since I played it and I was wrong. It’s based in the same timeline as the first two games, but 50 years after Terror From the Deep, with the alien threat being from a new source, not a continuation of the old alien invasion.

[Aonir]

I can only say that I agree with most of all this… You basically feel like you are not needed, the three factions do their thing without being bothered by you, they destroy each other so fast that the Pandoran don’t even have to try to help doing so…
I guess when one faction attack another, it should… I don’t know, weaken that heaven and nearby ones from said faction if the raid is succesfull, for a time, making it more vunerable to Pandoran attacks, not simply anihilate it… In my walkthrough, Synedrion and NJ are just war criminals, killing thousands of civilians just in the name of their ideal? Even, worse, just about the “How to deal with the aliens that are not even killing us compared to what we inflict upon each other”, I mean, the way I see this game, I should literally let the Pandoran whipe out Humanity, if we are not even able to make a common front against such a terrible ennemy and keep on murdering each other when we have a common ennemy…

A lot can be done about it to make it feel much better, I’m sure of it, and I really do hope that upcomming patches and extensions will improve that.

As mentionned by others as well… I really don’t see the point of reasearch labs… besides autopsy and interogation of living aliens, you simply don’t do anything… All the reasearchs that are usefull to the fight are given by the factions. I quickly became ally with Synedrion, but by the time I got there, they already had given me all the researches they had made by themselves. I keep reading the tips saying “once you become allied with a faction, their reasearch tree will become fully available to you”… what research tree? I have all their researches and haven’t spent a signle hour actually researching it. It feels just like researches have been left aside in this game.

This complete the feeling that there is actually NO PP AT ALL. I mean, once your starting soldiers have been brutally slaughtered by alie… By one of the factions, during one mission against them or another, you have only soldiers that your recruited in heavens! Not a single Phoenix Project soldier at all. We could be called “The Alliance of the Three Factions” for all that matter!
Added to the fact that you don’t even know who’s in charge of that Phoenix Project, who the hell is leading all those guys to the fight? Are they left on their own?
I mean, in Xcom you had Central Officer Bradford and you impersonnating the “Commander”, so you knew who was in charge, who was the “head” of it… and you also had people impersonnating the leadership of reasearch and development, with Shen father/daughter, and Valhen / Tygan. They made the game much more immersive, but here… It’s just EMPTY. There is no one impersonnating the Phoenix Project. It’s a name, a color on the geoscape, and that’s all.

So yes, to summarize my opionion, the game is great, a lot of good ideas are here, but hell… we need the PP to feel ALIVE. And whatever humanity is left should focus more on fighting the alien threat and less on killing each other. One heaven destroyed completely here and there could be ok, providing some narrative justification for it, but attacks from one faction against the other should be less drastic that whiping out every last living sould from the targeted heaven.

[SpiteAndMalice]

Apologies, I’ve explained myself badly there. I meant to say X-Com style games. I actually had both Xenonauts and the UFO series in mind as well with my previous post.

The UFO games definitely follow a defeat in the sense that humanity and The Earth is on the wane, you’re aim is to make a further attempt to fight back. Terror from The Deep can be seen to be set after a victory, however a victory that isn’t complete as new alien threat is awoken. I’d argue Apocalypse is following a defeat in the sense that humanity has had to resort to living in Mega Cities with The Earth as whole being uninhabitable. (I always felt that it was very 2000AD influenced). Some of the other in-between X-Coms tend to follow an alternate timeline in order to reset things, I believe that Xenonauts is going to be doing the same.

The point is, overall, that the game sequels exist in a world which at best resets itself, they have to do this in order to allow for a new ‘overcoming the monster’ type plot where X-Com (or whichever equivalent) must fight back in order to overcome an otherwise overwhelming threat. Even in Terror for the Deep whilst humanity has won the previous fight, X-Com itself has been disbanded. Doing this allows for the game-play to recommence from a position where the player is the underdog and must research, upgrade, make new alliances etc.

If you go the other way and have, in our case PP being a fully operational and functioning organisation which starts with everything it needs then I think you’re missing on out one of the major attractions of the genre. Not to mention, that it would hardly be a Phoenix in that case.

@Tikigod

I can’t think of a single X-Com game that followed that.

Yes you can

@Tikigod

The only ones to do that was the Firaxis reboot series and XCOM 2.

[kane]

@SpiteAndMalice

Even in Terror for the Deep whilst humanity has won the previous fight, X-Com itself has been disbanded. Doing this allows for the game-play to recommence from a position where the player is the underdog and must research, upgrade, make new alliances etc.

IF I am correct, that was not the original plan, but rather, company was forced by publisher to release TftD so soon after UFO:tEU that only option was reskin and reuse lot of components and logic, so there we were

During the early presentations of PP I was dreaming of ‘areas of influence’ so e.g. Europe was Synedrion, Asia - Anu, and NA - New Jericho. These factions would control starting continents and try to spread their influences on different regions. But this would like a zones or war fronts, not a single heavens.
So if you would be allied with NJ, which is at war with Anu, your bases in Asia could become a target of faction attack, etc…

[SpiteAndMalice]

@kane

During the early presentations of PP I was dreaming of ‘areas of influence’ so e.g. Europe was Synedrion, Asia - Anu, and NA - New Jericho. These factions would control starting continents and try to spread their influences on different regions. But this would like a zones or war fronts, not a single heavens.

Yeah, I was thinking similar. I always thought it a bit strange that the factions were so intermingled.

[Stinchkopf]

Yeah, this really hits on my biggest gripe with the strategic layer of the game:
There’s not much to do, and what you have to do is basically boring busywork. We’re supposed to be an organization dedicated to saving humanity from itself, and I’m spending most of my time feeling like an airborne pizza delivery driver hauling food around.
You don’t do research of any consequence- as has been stated, the factions all do that better anyway, to the point I’m legit not sure why PP even has labs, just farm that out to the factions who do it better anyway.
You aren’t really protecting the human factions from the Pandorans so much as trying to stop them wiping each other out- or rather, stop one of them being wiped out, I’ve never been able to stay on two factions’ good side at once for any amount of time. As a practical matter, this means ally with New Jericho unless you manage to steal better gun tech from them, I can’t even imagine trying to fight later battles without mostly AP weapons.
You don’t train up a force to defend humanity so much as borrow one from the factions.
Basically, at present it actually feels like the game would be more interesting if you actually had the player controlling one of the factions- hey, three full and unique tech trees! - and just deleted Project Phoenix entirely, because they’re literally worse at everything than everyone else is.

[Pr8Dator]

well, except that you really AREN’T that organization dedicated to saving humanity at all. Phoenix project does not exist in this game and you are just a random soldier being picked up and wondering whats going on. There is no PP in this game. Read the lore.

[Stinchkopf]

I mean, I suppose, but at that point, again- why is the Phoenix project in the game? Just let us play the actually interesting factions instead of randos stealing their stuff.

Edit- To be a bit clearer, what I’m trying to get at is the fact that all PP is is some random yahoos off the street who found an old base is actually a problem, because it leads to this bizarre situation where the actual PP has no real identity. I think that’s where a lot of the complaints the game feels ‘lifeless’ or that there’s no real sense of attachment to what you’re doing are coming from.
Compare this with, say Firaxcom 2 with War of the Chosen- sure, you had factions you could get abilities and unique soldiers from, but they were something that got added to your already interesting roster of soldiers and technology that was ‘yours’ that you improved over the course of the game.
For me at least, that felt a lot more satisfying than basically becoming New Jericho 2 as far as my equipment is concerned becuase I literally can’t get any better stuff myself.

[Pr8Dator]

I think the actual phoenix project is coming in either the DLC or PP2. With the amount of lore work done so far, I don’t think this is a one off. Julian is starting a new franchise with this. This first episode is for us to discover the history of the PP and to rebuild the infrastructure of the PP.