Phoenix Point E3 2019 Demo Mission, Developer Interviews

During this year’s E3 we learned that Snapshot Games’ X-Com-inspired Phoenix Point will be releasing on September 3, 2019, and got to check out the game’s new trailer. But now, we can also watch the promotional demo mission presented at the expo. Here it is:

And after that, we can check out this video interview with Snapshot’s president David Kaye and CEO Julian Gollop:

The two of them have also made an appearance at IGN’s E3 panel where they talked about the differences between Phoenix Point and XCOM:

Finally, if you’re more interested in something you can read at your own leisure, VentureBeat offers this fairly meaty interview. An excerpt:

GamesBeat: How do you try to adjust things like that, the more difficult parts of the XCOM model?

Gollop: We try and tackle this by making the aliens and the other factions kind of adaptable in a way to what you do. If you’re being extremely effective in your battles against the aliens, this will literally encourage them to mutate and respond to their defeats. They’ll present you with a new challenge. On the other hand, if you’re not so good and the aliens are wiping the floor with your squads, they have no incentive to mutate, because they’re doing quite well. That adaptation is built into the way the enemy responds at the strategic level and the tactical level.

GamesBeat: Does a veteran soldier have as much value as they do in XCOM?

Gollop: Yes, there is inevitably an element of that. The fresh recruits you take on, you can treat them like cannon fodder. It’s not generally a good idea, though, because your access to recruits can be quite limited. Again, that depends on the systems to some extent. You have to get your recruits from the other human factions. If they’re all hostile to you, that’s a problem. You’ll have no source of recruits.

But you do need to get your characters experienced and trained up. Your experienced soldiers will be very valuable. You don’t want to lose them. You do have to deploy them, because you need to win those missions. There are various routes. You can build training facilities that help train up your rookies relatively safely, but that’s slower than sending them into battle. There’s a tradeoff there.