XCOM: Enemy Unknown Previews and Interview

A couple more previews based on a hands-off presentation at PAX East and a new interview are now available for Firaxis’ “reimagining” of the original X-COM, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and we have rounded them up for your perusal.

DualShockers:

The demo I saw started in front of a gas station with a squad of four soldiers which is one of the first big changes you’ll notice. Your squad in XCOM: EU is limited to four soldiers in the beginning and can be upgraded to a total of six. This is of course a drastic reduction in the size of your force from the original but was a very deliberate move by the team.

Their reasoning was that losing one soldier out of a squad of fifty wasn’t too big of a deal no matter how much it really sucked, as it didn’t ruin your chances of success too strongly. With this smaller focused squad if you lose a single soldier the battle changes for the worse instantly and can ruin a plan in moments.

Turn based combat returns though again in a slightly different fashion than the original game. Gone is the grid based movement replaced with a simple click and move system. Each soldier can do a limited number of actions on their turn depending on their role and what the actions are. When you want to move them you just tell them where to go and what to do when they go there. This might sound a little too much of a change but in action it works amazingly well.

ZTGD:

One of the things that separates XCOM from other tactical games is that your units don’t simply move, act and then wait. They are constantly engaged in the fight. For instance, when the heavy was laying down suppressive fire, pinning an enemy Sectoid (updated, but still recognizable) such that he (she? it?) couldn’t move during its next turn, the fire kept coming. You won’t forget what your troops are up to. As he was firing at the Sectoid, the poor car in the line of fire was getting shot up with windows blown out as the brass piled up on the ground. The alien was visibly flinching at the close fire.

Next, the sniper grappled up to the roof and positioned for a better shot. At the same time, the assault troop tossed a grenade at the pinned Sectoid who, thanks to suppressive fire, had no choice but to watch as his death neared.

When the aliens were up, one Sectoid ran inside and, through a mind meld, buffed another one. Alone they aren’t challenging, but when they’ve combined their might, beware. Another went into overwatch mode. This sacrifices movement, but allows the unit to fire at anything that crosses line of sight. This happens in slow motion, with great cinematic flare. Unlike some other tactical games, the zooms and angles give a greater sense of urgency on the battlefield.

Finally, 1UP offers an interview with lead producer Garth DeAngelis:

1UP: Has there been streamlining in this game, besides the UI? For instance, in the demo session, someone was asking about bases and how there’s just the one base in this update. Is that a place where you’re narrowing things down to make things more accessible?

GD: No, no, I wouldn’t say so. Design decisions like that are things were taken deeply into consideration by Jake and the design team. He didn’t do anything for the purposes of streamlining to make it easier to understand. He did it because he felt like certain elements of the original game could be a little more fun if that level of minutiae wasn’t involved. You know, managing and manufacturing every single ammo clip for your gun. If we remove that element, is the game any more fun? Yeah, we actually thought it was a little more fun. And, in fact, he came up with an even more clever way to make ammo more interesting, which is that you have to manage reloading on the tactical layer based on whatever ability you choose, like suppression or a snap shot, will determine how much ammo you deplete. You can still run out of ammo in the course of a tactical mission, but you’re not managing every ammo clip back at the base. It makes it a little more fun.

1UP: No ammo-making minigame?

GD: [Laughs] If that’s streamlining, then you know… consider me guilty. But we wanted to do things that we thought would make the game more fun. That’s the bottom line.

1UP: I was struck by something that Pete said in the demo. “You can lose.” I think that’s a very brave statement. These days, gamers are used to having their hands held. Bring coddled.

GD: Yeah, absolutely. So, even though we want the learning curve to be a little less steep, the challenge is not going away. You will lose this game. You will lose soldiers that you’ve grown attached to. They’re going to die and be gone forever. And, you know, some gamers make hear that and be turned off, but it really is interesting. That’s a part of the fun factor of X-Com. It creates this sense of dread, this understanding that I need to be very careful of every single move I make in this turn-based game to keep every squaddie alive. You really do grow attached to them. When you lose them, it’s like, “Oh god, that sucks!” But at the same time, it’s this feeling of exhilaration that this can actually happen in the game. Knowing that these are the stakes of the game, it makes every single move that much more tension-filled and meaningful. We look at games like Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls and Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress, and we think there’s a little bit of a renaissance of difficulty in games. Gamers are buying those experiences, clearly, and they’re not easy games. They’re challenging. You can lose. You can fail. And failure is part of games. So we wanted to bring it back, and we thought, you know, it’s a pillar of X-Com.