Castle Magus

It's about time. X4 fans have been wanting the Boron expansion since before Cradle of Humanity and Tides of Avarice, hell, maybe even before Split Vendetta. (I didn't get X4 until after SV was out, so I don't know for sure if that was the case, but it wouldn't surprise me.)

The trailer music is, of course, based on one of the best tracks from the previous games.

Looks like they opted on just having the Boron wearing floaty suits and keeping everything else the same, which I guess makes way more sense than doing what would have been accurate lore-wise, i.e. having all the Boron ships/stations completely filled with water and making all the other races have to deal with that.

"If you were forced, what video game world would you like to be trapped in?"

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Well, if it depended on how I play the game, I would pick The Sims (probably The Sims 3). I would be able to garden and fish to make food that confers immortality. Or I could learn witchcraft and alchemy to make potions for the same (among many other things). Also, I could write a full novel in a day or two, and then have every one of them be published for guaranteed income (for the six weeks [The Sims 3] or 20 days [The Sims 4] or so that they bring in money before it goes away forever), making anywhere from like §15 at starting out to up to §13,000 per book per pay period ( depending on the game, daily [TS4] or weekly [TS3]). And that's just if I wanted to be a writer. I could also fairly easily try my hand at any of the other career paths, as well. Unlike in real life, getting a job in the world of The Sims is as simple as dialing a telephone or reading a newspaper, after all. And after half a year or so, if even that long, I'd have more money than I'd ever need.

However, if it was based on how other people play the games... eh... maybe The Sims wouldn't be such a great choice, after all... >_>;

Otherwise, I might say X3: Albion Prelude, given that it is the game in which I've spent by far the most time in real life. It's not necessarily safe, but it's probably the most profitable, especially for once I'd made enough to buy a big enough (and slow enough) personal ship that I didn't have to worry so much about dying due to the poor AI piloting (which, if I were there IRL I'd probably never use) crashing me into an asteroid or something. Also, if you avoid the big storylines, you can play this game entirely passively, without having to fire a single shot (or, later, if you have to because one of your factories is being attacked or something, you can just send in remotely controlled ships to blow up any aggressors while you, personally, sit completely safe a dozen sectors away).

Beyond that... I don't know. Stardew Valley maybe (and even though I haven't really played it myself, I'd figure that Harvest Moon would be similar)? Or perhaps Animal Crossing? In any case, I'd be looking for something casual, in which it's fairly easy to become rich (even without cheating), and without having to fight all the time (or at all), but still with plenty of interesting things to see and do.

For anyone who might have wanted to try the X series that I've talked about so much, but didn't want to pay for it, well, if you have Steam, then you can try it for free until tomorrow 1pm PST (4pm EST). Also, it's on sale at 66% off until Monday. If you end up wanting to buy them, I'd say get the SuperBox rather than getting them individually. While I can easily recommend the earlier games in the series (which are all in the SuperBox), I can't really say the same for X Rebirth (which is not), though. Rebirth you could safely skip and not be missing much of any value.

This week's Humble Weekly Bundle is the entire X series.

I have talked about this series on several occasions in the past. Updated time counts, according to Steam, are 76 hours on X:BtF, 1.9 on X-Tension, 113 on X2: The Threat, 72 on X3: Reunion, 485 on X3: Terran Conflict, and (currently) 406 hours on X3: Albion Prelude, for a current total of 1153.9 hours spent on this game series so far. Suffice it to say that this is, by far, one of my favorite game series of all time. You can get the entire thing via Humble for $6. That is all I feel I need to say about that.

The reason behind this being the bundle is, I'm sure, the fact that X Rebirth will be released in just a couple months or so.

Yeah, I've been playing a whole lot of the X series lately. As of this post, I've completed the (one and only, so far) storyline plot missions in X3 Albion Prelude and have returned to Terran Conflict in order to wrap up some of the plots I'd left incomplete when I moved on to AP.

The music is not an insignificant part of why I like these games so much.

So, let's get to it.

( Multiple Youtube video embeds behind cut )

There is a ton more awesome music in the games besides those, but it's beyond the scope of this post to just list everything. >_>;

For anyone out there besides me who cares about Egosoft's games in the X series, the above video is the trailer for the upcoming second expansion pack for X3, and it comes out on December 15 (the Steam version, anyway). If you already have the X Superbox on Steam, then you get this for free. It is intended to be a lead-in to the upcoming X Rebirth which will be released sometime next year. Well, guess I should try to finish up on the storyline missions in Terran Conflict. (And by "finish up" I, of course, mean start. Seriously, my current playtime count for X3:TC stands at 71 hours, according to Steam, and I haven't even touched a single one of the several story campaigns as of yet.)

The only problem I have with that trailer is that the actress playing "Saya Kho" is a red-headed white woman, instead of the black-haired Asian woman Saya actually was in the previous games. It's even more confusing since there already was a Russian girl with red hair in X3 Reunion. The actress in the trailer looks more like Miria than she does Saya.