A barrage of previews, assorted info and gameplay footage for XCOM 2, the sequel to Firaxis’ reboot of the original Microprose series, has been released. It’s hard to say whether the tone of the previews will be shared by the final critiques of the title (many games received accolades before their release and criticism after it), but so far XCOM 2 seems to be convincing those who had access to its early build.
[M]issions now kick off with something called the ‘concealment phase’, which gives your team the opportunity to scout their surrounding area and set up an ambush upon finding an unsuspecting patrol. This addresses two complaints I had with both Enemy Unknown and Within. First, it means that enemy patrols have to follow an actual patrol route, rather than teleporting around the map haphazardly (an issue that became more apparent in the previous games when a group of aliens could suddenly materialise behind you, despite you having very carefully cleared the area in question).
More importantly, concealment encourages you to be more interesting as a player. Instead of carefully tiptoeing forwards, waiting to trigger that first group of enemies, you can move around the map with some degree of confidence. By clearly highlighting the tiles that are within the enemy’s line of sight, XCOM 2 gives you the chance to position your troops in just the right locations to take full advantage of your opening gambit. It’s immensely satisfying when it works, but there’s still a clever risk involved, as you don’t know exactly how your targets intend to move each turn. Your carefully laid plan could be scuppered by a patrol unexpectedly changing direction and discovering your squad cowering behind half cover, just a few feet away.
This is what I like to see in a sequel: ideas that try to resolve issues found in the previous game, whilst also offering something new and worthwhile in their own right. The same can perhaps be said for the inclusion of enemy reinforcements, which can seemingly be triggered at any point during a mission. You’ll receive fair warning, with a flare appearing on the map in the preceding turn, and then you’ll need to rush to prepare yourself for their arrival. If your squad is in good shape and not otherwise engaged, this shouldn’t be a problem, but that won’t always be the case. It feels very XCOM and provides another important incentive to play a little more adventurously, as the longer you dawdle in a mission, the more likely you are to run into extra enemies. This does present one potential problem though, that I’m hoping will be addressed in the final game. At this stage I’m not sure what stops me from, in certain situations, wanting to farm multiple sets of these reinforcements to rack up kills and acquire additional loot in the form of weapons add-ons.
And 60 minutes of footage with gameplay commentary from Firaxis’ Garth DeAngelis:
I completed one Grey Ops mission set in New India. My objective was to hack into a hidden resistance computer which, as it turned out, was ‘˜hidden’ in a tumble down shack in a bleak, grown-over urban environment. Said shack was surrounded by goons and giant reptilians known as Vipers. In XCOM 2, squads are concealed by default at the beginning of every match, and setting up for an attack is relatively stress free. So long as the enemy’s line of sight isn’t breached (their line of sight is marked by red shaded boxes on the grid) and no weapons are fired, the squad will remain hidden for as long as it takes to set up an effective offence.
It’s stress free, so long as there’s no time limit: I only had eight turns before the network would shut me out of the resistance computer. My squad consisted of the two new classes the Specialist and Ranger alongside a Grenadier, Rookie and the Sharpshooter, which is a replacement for Enemy Unknown’s Sniper class. Positioning the latter behind cover, I landed a shot on a Viper and prepared for all hell to break loose. Although my Sharpshooter had announced her arrival, the rest of my squad remained concealed until they fired all the better for taking out the remaining Advent soldiers.
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Overwatch works differently in XCOM 2, by the way: whereas previously all applicable squad members fired on the same emerging enemy simultaneously, now it happens sequentially. That means you won’t find three well-equipped squad members firing foolishly at the same low-level grunt. The old way was silly, and many players considered it a bug. In terms of quality-of-life improvements, this is the most substantial.
In XCOM 2, the aliens are waiting for you to strike. While the Geoscape hasn’t quite become an RTS battlefield, there is a sense of conquering the planet back piece by piece as you engage with local resistance groups and build up a network of supporters. Activating communications and contacts in an area allows you to engage on missions in that area, applying a scalpel to the alien’s infrastructure rather than simply punching UFOs out of the sky.
Allowing the player to chart their own course, rather than simply chucking a few satellites into the sky and hoping to sight the enemy, is just the tip of the iceberg though. The most radical change might well be in the way that the aliens play the game.
That’s an entirely new concept for XCOM. Previously you were fighting against a sort of doomsday clock rather than an intelligent opponent. Your efforts were directed toward the betterment of your own side at the expense of the aliens, but there was no real sense of strategic countermeasures. Sure, a satellite might get blown out of the sky and too much early success would lead to a hard rap on the knuckles, but you were never thinking or being out-thought. You were trying to get to the end of your research trees and hitting every narrative beat before running out of time and resources.
Whether the new systems will be effective or engaging over the length of a campaign, I can’t say. There were strong hints that XCOM’s mobile base can now be attacked bringing back the base defense missions, the lack of which was seen as one of Enemy Unknown’s missed opportunities and every choice you make will do more than lower the panic level in a single area. Instead, you’ll pick targets. and attempt to fulfill optional objectives in the field if you’re up to the task, with specific short- and long-term goals in mind.
Rather than spinning plates and attempting to stop the various regions of the world from succumbing to the alien threat, XCOM can strike at various facets of the opposing power structure. The enemy have a long term goal, which is tracked as a sort of doomsday countdown, but their attempts to shut down your resistance are dynamic and mission types will crop up dynamically, based on their actions and your own.
IGN lists 13 things learned during a hands-on session with the title:
5: Armor’s Different There’s a whole new armor system that reduces the amount of damage a target takes by the value of their armor rating, and that armor rating can be diminished with explosives or other armor-shattering attacks. The damage pop-up will tell you when your attacks are being blocked by armor, or when you’ve successfully broken enemy armor and left them more vulnerable.
6: There Are Exo-Suits! Unlike with Enemy Within’s MEC soldiers, in XCOM 2 you don’t have to chop off your troops’ arms and legs to give them access to heavy armor suits that carry big guns – you can just strap them in. XCOM 2’s exo suit (presumably the one I played with is the first type available) is a skeletal frame resembles the suit Tom Cruise wore in Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat. Equipping my Grenadier with an exo suit gave her a wrist-mounted rocket launcher like something out of Iron Man, and unlike a MEC, she was still able to take advantage of cover. Anyone can wear an exo suit, but Grenadiers will be able to use more powerful heavy weapons with them.
A lot of people hate to lose, but its that moment-to-moment tension the fact that it can all go to shit any second that makes this style of tactical game so much fun. What sets XCOM 2 apart is its unforgiving learning curve; although the basic rules are easy to learn, there’s no tutorial that can teach you how to play.
Some games get around this by leading you slowly through a series of set battles, but XCOM 2 throws that out the door after the scripted tutorial. Randomly generated battlegrounds could throw anything at you, and it’s only by losing over and over again that you gradually learn good habits and reactive tactics.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown doesn’t get enough credit for how well its level generation works, and XCOM 2 only builds on that. There are more kind of environment to explore, with a greater variety of assets.
I have no idea what rules Firaxis leverages to ensure these assets go together to make logical structures and compelling tactical terrain, but it’s very clever. The two other players sharing my preview session saw completely different environments than I did, despite firing up the same missions.
Finally, YouTubers Beaglerush and Christopher Odd have had the chance to try the title and record some gameplay footage for it. I’m going to embed the two playlists below:
