XCOM: Enemy Within Interview

There’s an interesting interview with XCOM: Enemy Within’s lead Anand Gupta over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which covers the new additions to the tactical side of the gameplay showcased at Gamescom. I’m personally hoping for a deeper overhaul of the strategic part of the title, but Firaxis hasn’t talked about the changes on that side yet:

RPS: How much more of the adaptation of alien body parts is involved? XCOM soldiers are going to be dressed in gore at this rate, with Existenz guns.

Gupta: There’s a gas grenade now, which is based on the Thin Man’s poison sacs, which we are adapting and synthesising. Don’t try to use it against the Mechtoid because he’s sealed and doesn’t care if you gas him. The little sectoids will be very disappointed by the gas grenade though. We’ve added a lot of new foundry projects, the Mechtoid in particular adds some cool stuff. The tech tree in my head has changed so much that I don’t want to promise these exact unlocks, but we have added stuff like enhanced speed and health for mechs and robotic units.

RPS: How exactly do the mechs work?

Gupta: What you’ve got to do is research the correct tech, which opens up both of the paths, allowing you to build a genetics lab and a cybernetics lab. It’s pretty cheap to build in terms of money because I don’t want you to have to choose between that and your satellite (laughs). And then you can submit soldiers for augmentation. You pick a soldier, put him or her into augmentation, and they come out as a mech trooper. They can’t be rookies, they have to have a class already. This is important because all soldiers who become mech troopers have access to the full mech trooper training tree, which is a new class, but they also get a passive ability based on what class they had before.

RPS: So there are sub-classes within the mech class?

Gupta: Well, it’s just one passive ability but it does mean there’s a different choice when augmenting a support or a sniper. Then that trooper has base augments, which are the mech version of civilian skill upgrades. Limbs and an armored torso, which can be unscrewed and replaced with new types. Then they can be placed in a exoskeleton mech suit, which is built separately like a suit of armour, but unlike XCOM’s base armour, these are customisable.

There are three tiers of mech suit the Warden, the Sentinel and the Paladin. Mech I, Mech II and Mech III. Each tier you get a choice of which tactical sub-system you want. So you can have a flamethrower or kinetic strike, which is sci-fi for giant powered fist. At level II you get to choose between grenade launcher or restorative mist the first launches grenades really far, the restorative mist is an area effect medkit. At level three you get the choice between proximity mines, which are a great tactical device. You can fire them across a map, but they don’t set off when allies stand on them. Or you can have the Electropulse, which is a point blank area of effect electric attack, which does damage and stuns enemy robots, so it’s a cool countermeasure against cyberdiscs and sectopods and Mechtoids. So there are eight possible mech builds. It was really important to have that level of customisation between suits.

RPS: Once you decide to modify a soldier that’s it, there’s not turning back? Is it the same with genetic mods?

Gupta: With g-mods, say I pull you into the genetic lab.

RPS: Please don’t.

Gupta: .and squaddie Smith is.

RPS: Terrified.

Gupta: .about to get a second heart plugged in, I can then later decide I want you to have the other chest mod instead. I pay again and give you a different one. So unlike mech soldiers, which have fixed tactical subsystems, you can replace G-mods with alternatives. You waste the cash you spent on the old one though. But we wanted to let people respec.

Spotted on RPGWatch.