Deep Silver reveals X3: Terran Conflict

By Robert Purchese Published 4 February, 2008

Series finale this year.

Deep Silver has revealed the fourth and final game in the X series of space adventures as X3: Terran Conflict.

It will be available on PC at the end of the year and put the storyline to bed, so to speak - answering all sorts of questions you dreamt up when the series began in 1999, like will my eyes really pop out if I go out here without a space suit on?

All the action takes place back in Earth's solar system this time around, and everything is promised to be bigger and better than ever.

The most recent release in the X series was X3: Reunion in 2005. Its scope and focus on trading and combat made it alluring, but a buggy implementation, slow pacing and steep learning curve kept it from getting top marks.

Which was unfortunate, as Egosoft remedied many of these problems when it relaunched the game in late 2006 - complete with patch version 2.0 and Bala Gi Expansion.

Pop over to our X3: Reunion review to find out more.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Eldritch #1 4 years ago

    X³ was okay as a benchmark (the demo actually was a benchmark), but beyond that, it was a technically competent game (still looks nice today!) that took much too long to get into. So, once again, no proper Elite successor.

  • penhalion #2 4 years ago

    @Eldritch

    totally agree! I tried to like this but, ultimately just got bored and left it after only a few hours.

  • Pablo2k5 #3 4 years ago

    X3's combat let it down real bad, terrible game.

  • Miths #4 4 years ago

    The X series seems to be one of those game series you either love or hate, but if you visit the official forums there's definately a very thriving and active community - including modding. X3 (and the older ones for that matter) is one of those games die hard fans play for hundreds of hours - and yep, without cheat mods (or serious research on the forums or various guides) a new player is probably looking at at least 10-20 hours just to get started on their "empire building" and getting a decent understanding of factory and trading loops and stuff like that.

    I'm a little sad to say that I've never been able to love X3 as much as I would really like to - guess I just don't have that kind of patience no matter how impressive and compelling I feel the game is. I did invest perhaps 30-40 hours in it though (with and without mods installed), and in many ways I really did feel like I had barely scratched the surface.
    Same thing with X2 as well as the original Xtension some seven or eight years ago.


  • bunglebonce #5 4 years ago

    I'm with Miths on most of his points, probably clocking about 30 hours.

    At the time of the release, it was rumoured to be ported to the 360. I'm not normally one for dumming down PC games for consoles (I still sigh at Rainbow Six), but I genuinely feel X3: Reunion could have benefited from a slicker command interface, which would have helped make it compatible with other formats. The interface used in the game was so clunky that any advantage the mouse & keyboard would normally have was not there.

  • Grogmonkey #6 4 years ago

    Yeah, any X-type game would be pretty sweet on the 360 (or PS3, for that matter. But I don't have one of them yet, so the 360 is better. Although, it needs to go off to be repaired...)

    Anyway, X3 was great. Like X2 before it, only more so. SPACE STATION COMPLEXES! I had a pretty sweet mining/solar/weapon production complex going on before I uninstalled it to make room for Medieval II. The only real problem with the game is it takes forever to do anything. I spent all of Bioshock, probably all of Halo 3, a fair amount of Eternal Sonata, and I suspect a fair bit of Skate just ferrying goods from one place to another. The game was basically on autopilot for the majority of my time playing it (time-accelerated all the way).

    So, in actual fact, I didn't spend that much time PLAYING the game. But I still thought it was awesome (especially when I finally got the 10 million credits for that beefy cruiser).

    It's really hard to recommend to anyone, though.

  • karstux #7 4 years ago

    I probably would have played it lots more if it had had an inertia-based flight model. The X series idea of "flying on rails in space" (turns are instantaneous, you always fly into the direction your ship is pointing at, no matter the speed) just feels so very wrong, and caused a lot of problems with the combat. The ever-present and annoying ramming, most prominently.

    So, for the next installment, newtonian physics, please!

  • Biggles #8 4 years ago

    I'm afraid I never got anywhere with these games at all. Everything from the interface to the god aweful scripts and voice acting (written by the programmers if I'm not mistaken) just stopped me from getting even remotely into it. I miss the charm of the old privateer games, felt like a much more likeable and less formulaic setting.

  • PearOfAnguish #9 4 years ago

    Wasn't there an option to enable inertia physics? Or am I thinking of another space game?

  • Lutz #10 4 years ago

    Pear: Wasn't that I-War?

    X never had inertia physics.

    A couple of years ago Egosoft said they were developing for the xbox too. Wonder what happened to that?

    Great series, let down by unbalanced and poor combat.

  • Pulsar_t #11 4 years ago

    @PearOfAnguish

    I think you're thinking of i-War 2.

  • peppergomez #12 4 years ago

    the combat in x3 is actually pretty darn good. if one wanted to skip the trading and just make cash from capping and killing ships, it's possible to do so. still, agree that x3 has a very steep learning curve, slow pace, and dense ui. here's hoping x3 terran conflict improves on the existing strengths (x3 is really the only very good-excellent space combat/trade sim released since iwar 2 back in 2001 or so, since darkstarone, spaceforce, etc. all either flat out suck or don't have the integrity to be true joystick/cockpit based space sims) and fixes some of the existing weaknesses.