xixas: If they could really make the walking around meaningful, though—something along the lines of Mass Effect 1+2—that would be fantastic (I know, shooting for the moon with that request). They just really need to flesh out the NPC AI and make them feel like real people before I'll see a lot of value in that part of the gameplay.
Apologies for quoting your comment from several months back, but it perfectly encapsulates what I didn't like about Rebirth after starting to play it recently, to the extent that I wrote a review for the store page and albeit in a different way, suggested practically the same thing with reference to Mass Effect, before popping into the forums and reading your comment.
I really wanted to like Rebirth, because I felt I could see what Egosoft were striving towards in their change of direction for the game, compared to previous games in the X series. Being able to enter space stations and walk around them is great, in principal, but just so poorly executed and not even anywhere near as good as games that are now over ten years old, like the aforementioned original Mass Effect game.
As I mentioned in my review, I think the new direction ideas in Rebirth are praiseworthy, but are still a long way off from the ambitious visions the developers clearly have. Likewise, I share the view that unless they can deliver something along the lines of NPC interaction that makes that side of the game engaging and interesting, engagingly enough as per other games where that is the primary focus, they should perhaps stick to the strengths of what made the earlier X games so great.
Of course, we can all dream... It'd be fantastic to have the space sim depth and sandbox freedom of the previous X games, made as visually stunning as possible in future iterations, accompanied by stories, narratives and animations akin to those of ME. I just don't think Egosoft would be capable of delivering all that in one package, more's the pity.
Still, I'm looking forward to what X4 delivers :)
