Thanks to this thread I was reminded that I have not played Xidia at all - I always thought I did, maybe because of Hourences section that's so prominent and was reused in ONP - shame on me! So I decided to go for the Gold campaign and see the beginnings of what would lead me to the joy of 7Bullets I had experienced before...
When skimming through the commentary, I was shocked that both parts took only 4-5 months each - something I could never achieve. But then I found out that quite a lot of the stuff has been reused from older MP maps or, in the case of The Escape, of Xidia itself, so that put things more in perspective. Though, having managed to release such high-quality, (almost) polished map packs in such a short amount of time is really respectable.
The Landing and the first few bits of the third map really got me hooked by its extraordinary use of special events and I hope something as absorbing would later come along as well, though I was let down a little bit during the gameplay. Well, the ending of The Incident sure is madness on its own.
I thought the voice acting of The Escape was fine. I say that because I read that Prophet always cringes when he hears himself, though I find his act a little better than Cray's, maybe because of the understandability.
Overall, I found The Incident as a whole more convincing, but in terms of concepts and individual ideas I liked The Escape more. What I mean is this: The Outpost and everything surrounding it almost felt like it was a well rounded complex and the progression felt real. On the other hand, The Escape, while expanding the Outpost and other set pieces, fell flat in comparison, because the additions to older sections didnt look as if they would belong there or the progression itself was questionable. Two examples: The round hallway that connects the new outside area of The Escapes third map with Outpost Pheonix (the styles are so radically different) and the transition to the temple cave in Dead Mines (there was just a random, not even a carried out explosion opening this whole new section - not really believable). In addition, the constant teleportations in the second half rivaled RtNP's infamous location change. :p However, the titan fight was probably the coolest boss fight in the packs, also the whole Queen section was awesome, Hourence's icy tech lab was the most stunning set piece in terms of visuals and introduction of a new subplot, and the overall concept of re-visiting the places the other way round was pretty interesting.
If you ever intend to actually re-release Xidia, the most annoying thing I would advise you to change, are your spelling errors regarding your, you're, there, they're, their, it's and its, and so on. That is one of my pet peeves
In the end I just want to say, I had quite a blast playing both Xidia packs, and I was really eager to finish them as fast as possible (meant in a positive way), which is something I don't always feel like when playing custom maps.