While superficially sounding true, that answer is actually wrong. The truth is a little more complex.
It is true that D2X-XL's main focus is on improving the original game experience. It does so by offering prettier models of the player ships and powerups, replacing the coarse original textures with high resolution textures and offering some of the effects that are good standard in today's shooter games, like lightmap based lighting, shadows, particle effects (smoke, fire, rain, etc.), glow and lightning effects and additional sound effects.
It also allows level designers to incorporate all these features in their levels, and to build more complex levels, containing more complex user interaction with a level.
D2X-XL does however not a priori change any of the physics, or any of the robot AI of the game. It gives freedom to the player to do so to some extent (e.g. by increasing the Fusion gun's power, or by utilizing extra powerups a level designer may have placed in the level), but it is up to the player to make use of that freedom. These additional features are also only available in levels built specifically for D2X-XL and which are therefore marked with a special tag.
In a standard level, D2X-XL behaves just like good old Descent 2 from 1994 does; And if you want to, you can make it present such levels like the original game did: You simply need to add a command line switch ("-pureD2") to it.
So while D2X-XL can make Descent look different than the original game, it will not make it feel different (provided "look" is not the same as "feel" for you).
So if the original Descent is all you want, D2X-XL can give it to you just as much as Rebirth. Unlike Rebirth, it can however give you a lot more if you wish, and there is more than the list above comprises. D2X-XL will e.g. give you the original Descent 1 gameplay without you having to use an extra executable. It's all in D2X-XL. It will also give you stereoscopic rendering for a variety of output devices, like anaglyph glasses, stereo TVs and the Oculus Rift. Btw, stereoscopic rendering is actually something the original Descent 2 could do, too. So in a sense, D2X-XL is just offering the original game's "look" here as well. What is more, D2X-XL is able to give you the same or a better multiplayer gaming experience than the original game: Multiplayer levels built specifically for D2X-XL can support up to 16 players in a match. D2X-XL also offers fun multiplayer modes from Descent 3, like Monsterball and Entropy. D2X-XL stands by your side, even if you are more into a classic team based multiplayer experience like CTF. The original game's CTF implementation was lackluster and half-baked. D2X-XL fixes that and provides a full blown CTF mode the way you are used to have it from other popular 3D shooters like Quake or Unreal.
The only price you have to pay are some extra downloads (actually only of which is mandatory: The resampled and improved game sounds). Even when installing the game (on Windows), D2X-XL will do most of the work for you. You just need to drop it in your main Descent folder and launch it, and D2X-XL will create all the extra folders it needs, giving you the file structure for adding additional high resolution content for D2X-XL, like models or textures.
So please stop differentiating D2X-XL and Rebirth by their ability to maintain the original look and feel. Actually that's not what makes them different. The difference are all the extras you can have with D2X-XL, if you - and nobody else - want to.
You decide.
He'd probably like to see Pumo Mines too.
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