XCOM: Enemy Within Previews

A few previews have gone live for XCOM: Enemy Within, based on some hands-on time with a preview build of the expansions to Firaxis’ title.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

With Enemy Within, XCOM and X-COM almost entirely part company. While that’s a statement that would have seen 2011 me immediately take my seat in the Angry Tank, here’s why 2013 me is absolutely convinced this accentuated divergence is only a good thing.

Despite what I just said about Enemy Within taking XCOM on a magical mystery tour into over-the-top superheroics starring Mexicans with metal legs, what it also does it transform XCOM into something that’s rather more clearly a Firaxis game. It’s become really rather statty. Making an efficient soldier, one who can confidently thin the ranks of what’s seemed on a few of the ‘˜new’ missions I’ve experienced so far to be a raised enemy headcount, means choosing and tracking many numbers. Even more so, if you decide to augment a given soldier’s genes rather than slice their limbs off and stick them inside a Transformer: Deus Ex-style implants confer an array of bonuses to Aim, Crit and whatnot.

Add to that the new Medals system, in which you can choose to bestow a limited pool of awards with their own Aim, Crit and whatnot bonuses to your best, brightest and bloodiest. And new types of ammo. And energy fields from Mech units which confer. oh, you know. Point is, there’s a lot to juggle and it’s really ramped up the emphasis on right and wrong builds. It’s not so much about keeping tabs on what individual stat numbers are, and more about ensuring you’ve stacked matching things on relevant units in order to then turn them into the superhumans poor, besieged old Earth so desperately needs to protect it.

Essentially, this comprises a bunch of smaller or even under the hood additions, but put together in a pot with the more overt new stuff the soldier augmentation what we’ve got is an add-on which, so far, has absolutely made what’s my fifth playthrough of XCOM feel fresh and different, gently forcing me to shed old habits and develop new strategies. If you’d asked me a couple a months ago what I most wanted from an XCOM add-on, I’m sure I would have banged on about a new campaign and loads of new enemies. Now, I realise that a remix was a much better idea.

Polygon:

It seems like XCOM: Enemy Within is setting up a vicious cycle; one that lets you take ownership of your team with these Meld-powered upgrades, then forces you to put them in harm’s way to acquire more Meld. According to Gupta, that wasn’t really Firaxis’ intention.

“I don’t think we ever thought about linking it that way, like, ‘Oh, we’re increasing player attachment, we’re also going to increase player risk,'” Gupta said. “I think the mechanics of Meld, and the idea of the covert operative in battle those were mostly intended to make players who buy the expansion rethink their playstyles.”

In order to get to the Meld before it disappears, XCOM: Enemy Within players won’t be able to “turtle up,” defending their positions while waiting for enemies to show their vulnerability. That was an extremely popular tactic in the last game, Gupta said though Meld’s inclusion wasn’t punitive of people who play that way. Meld can be obtained in different ways later in the game, he explained. Defensive players won’t be left out in the cold.

“The biggest challenge is making sure it’s not a petty change,” Gupta said. “Like, ‘Oh, you guys figured out how to play our game the best, well ha ha, we’re the game designers, we’re going to change it up.’ The biggest challenge is to not let pride get into it.”

Ultimately, Meld and the other game-changing incentives are designed to make players rethink the game, approach it from a different angle. It’s what Firaxis wanted from the expansion not just more stuff, but more ideas.

The Escapist:

The strategic game has a lot more nuance to it in Enemy Within. You can prioritize research in alien autopsies to get gene modifications, as well as researching alien ship tech for the building of MECs. Satellites, while still important in keeping XCOM council nations happy, can’t be produced to the exclusion of everything else. And there’s also the threat of EXALT, the new pesky human operatives ready to steal credits from your coffers and disrupt your operations. In practice, I found EXALT more of a nuisance to play through than a truly engaging part of the XCOM universe. Each time I received a message in the situation room that an EXALT cell had attacked, I felt it pulled me away from my plans of defeating the aliens. Of course, lead designer Ananda Gupta said there’s a big payoff for that when you finally get to assault the EXALT base and eradicate them once and for all, but I didn’t get a chance to test that with this build.

What I did get to do was defend the XCOM base from a massive alien assault. In a surprise cut scene while scanning for alien activity, the computer systems in the base start to blink and shutter, and humans with blank eyes start attacking XCOM officers. A random group of your soldiers mixed with raw recruits get cut off from the rest of the base, and have to defend themselves against waves of cyberdiscs, drones, mutons and sectoid commanders, not to mention the big mechtoids and seekers. Your soldiers have only the equipment they had on them when the base is attacked, so you may have to use conventional guns even if you’ve upgraded to lasers or plasma. The whole base attack mission was a nice change of pace, and the tension was high as I had to make do with the small number of resources available. Adding in raw recruits actually ended up being incredibly fun, and I internally cheered any time a lowly staff member took down a cyberdisc with an assault rifle.