BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
Looks like they are using character models based on Assassin's Creed.
Why do Snakemen have tits?
Why do Snakemen have tits?
Spoiler :
XCOM 2
- Thread starter thecrazyscot
- Start date
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Because they are Snake women?
As someone who's just got back into XCOM I'm certainly interested in seeing how this pans out.
Snakes of any gender aren't supposed to have mammaries, being that they aren't mammalian
thecrazyscot
Spiffy
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His first attempt was excellent, one of the best games in the last 5 years.
I too am pretty hyped for this. I think the first iteration did a very good job at rebooting the original. Many of the design decisions were good ones - Classes for soldiers, the cover system, flanking, some elements of the workshop and financial management (not having to run spreadhseets to make your finances balance), alien captures (Arc throwers are cool), mechs, gene mods, council missions etc etc.
I think it had a lot going for it, and was easily a solid 9/10 for me. But it stopped short of greatness because many of the ideas were not fully integrated or fleshed out. That said, the combat was solid, and that was always the meat in xcom games of the past.
I think a special mention should go to long war here. If you have not played it then i suggest you have a crack before this releases (as the name suggests, it is a much much longer war). Long war added a huge amount of extra detail and made the game much harder whilst also giving you more powers to combat the alien threat. If the developers could take a leaf out of their book and combine that with mission types etc then this game should be pretty sweet.
I think the most notable things that make this title exciting are the following points, listed in no particular order:
- Full mod support
- Territory is important as you try and win back land won by the aliens
- Stealth system, with aliens having fields of vision etc
- PC only
I dont really get people saying - "But we won, why are the aliens in charge"? I am sure many people either lost, rage quitted, or reloaded in their play through. I will hold my hand up and admit to 2 failed classic iron man attempts before i beat the game. I actually think this is a more interesting concept than a simple reboot of terror from the deep.
I am quietly confident for this. I think Solomon struggled with the first XCOM. Eventually he came out with a winning formula, but it took so long to get there the final game felt a bit half baked, even if it was a very good half baked game. Now he knows what the formula is, he should be able to build upon that success.
I think it had a lot going for it, and was easily a solid 9/10 for me. But it stopped short of greatness because many of the ideas were not fully integrated or fleshed out. That said, the combat was solid, and that was always the meat in xcom games of the past.
I think a special mention should go to long war here. If you have not played it then i suggest you have a crack before this releases (as the name suggests, it is a much much longer war). Long war added a huge amount of extra detail and made the game much harder whilst also giving you more powers to combat the alien threat. If the developers could take a leaf out of their book and combine that with mission types etc then this game should be pretty sweet.
I think the most notable things that make this title exciting are the following points, listed in no particular order:
- Full mod support
- Territory is important as you try and win back land won by the aliens
- Stealth system, with aliens having fields of vision etc
- PC only
I dont really get people saying - "But we won, why are the aliens in charge"? I am sure many people either lost, rage quitted, or reloaded in their play through. I will hold my hand up and admit to 2 failed classic iron man attempts before i beat the game. I actually think this is a more interesting concept than a simple reboot of terror from the deep.
I am quietly confident for this. I think Solomon struggled with the first XCOM. Eventually he came out with a winning formula, but it took so long to get there the final game felt a bit half baked, even if it was a very good half baked game. Now he knows what the formula is, he should be able to build upon that success.
BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
Actually, the Temple Ship got taken up.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
Yeah the IGN article starts off by saying that losing Impossible Ironman mode seems to be the canon ending, which kind of makes sense.
Rubin
King
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If you focus on the tactical part, and more or less ignore the strategic part, I can understand. The strategic part is a half baked, tacked on, on-rails experience.
It felt like wasted potential when I played it. I had a constant feeling of "Why didn't they turn it up to 11?!?" This only happens when games are solid and above average, but handicapped by poor design choices.
Can you clarify or elaborate on this? Do you mean that they had to sacrifice the winning formula because the game eventually was rushed? Or that the winning formula appeared too late in development? Or?
thecrazyscot
Spiffy
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Added links to two new articles in OP.
I can kind of understand this, but honestly I didn't care about the strategic layer all that much - I spent 90% of my time in the tactical layer.
I can kind of understand this, but honestly I didn't care about the strategic layer all that much - I spent 90% of my time in the tactical layer.
If you read some of the articles about the making of Xcom (I would provide a link but am at work behind an overzealous filtering system), Xcom took a looooong time to complete. I think there were 3 versions of the game. The first one was a failure and had to pretty much be totally reworked. The second one was much better. And the third one was the one released. The trouble is that so much money and so much time had been committed to it that in terms of cost to the company I think once it became releasable they basically just went with it. They only ever really started to properly get into designing it and implementing new ideas in Enemy Within. I think thats why at release it did feel a bit half baked. But IMO that doesnt detract from what was one of the best games of the year. Thats why I think Xcom2 should good. Because you can basically remove all of the design problems they had with the original from the equation.
A lot of people complained at release that the game was dumbed down and not as good as the original. I totally disagree with them. Fun though the original was, it was tiresome to calculate how many time units you had left; it was tiresome to work out how much profit you could get from each manufactured item in the workshop and then factor in how long it took to build it; it was tiresome to find that one alien that had woken up after inhaling too much smoke; and whilst people complained about activating aliens, the aliens in the original never hunted you down. They just stayed in a single area and moved around haphazardly. In all I think Xcom was a big improvement. Now they have an opportunity with Xcom2 to implement their own ideas completely and hopefully begin a new franchise.
Wolfbeckett
Jerkin' and nonsense.
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Article on IGN talking about the procedural map generation system:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/04/xcom-2s-procedurally-generated-maps-ign-first
Sounds pretty interesting, and the mod support means we should get a more or less endless supply of new maps. This is easily the upcoming game that I'm most hyped about at this point.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/04/xcom-2s-procedurally-generated-maps-ign-first
Sounds pretty interesting, and the mod support means we should get a more or less endless supply of new maps. This is easily the upcoming game that I'm most hyped about at this point.
I am actually a bit intrigued by how this will work. In the first game they always talked about how it was impossible for them to implement random maps because of the destructible terrain they wanted to achieve. And now they are saying they can do this & have destructible terrain.
And does anyone think that this is how sectoids will look from now on (or is it a new type of alien)? This one looks much more bad ass than the originals. I always kind of thought i would like one of the originals as a pet or something.
On new aliens - i hope that they have a number of different ones now. I always thought that Muton elites and heavy floaters was a bit lazy in terms of design. Which ones were missed from the original? There should be room for Celatids, reapers and silicoids. Reapers would be cool. I never really knew what silicoids, or celatids did though. I dont think i was ever killed by any of them.
Wolfbeckett
Jerkin' and nonsense.
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That is explained in the article. The reason they are able to combine random maps with environmental destruction is because the maps are randomly constructed from a pool of handmade map assets, so you get the best of both worlds. They can design the map assets to have a high degree of destructibility individually, then randomly populate them into maps. So there might be a large building. That building wasn't generated randomly, it was hand crafted, so it can have high destructibility. But the reason that particular building is on this map is because it was randomly selected out of a pool of large buildings. Think of each map as a blank slate with a number of small, medium, and large sockets. The sockets are randomly filled with pre-made map assets, generating random(ish) maps, while still allowing each individual piece that gets put into those sockets to retain that hand crafted feel that made the maps in EU/EW so good.
What is interesting though is that presumably this pool of map assets will be moddable. Im just a bit curious to see how the maps actually end up looking (more whether the map assets blend in with each other - or whetehr they end up looking a bit disjointed).
One of the problems in the original is that all of the maps looked like an urban american environment. It would be cool if you could have battles in different cultural places. And even better if you could have terror missions in things like theme parks, brazillian shanty towns, or airports. The possibilities are endless. But this becomes less feasible if you have the procedural generation talked about in the article.
Wolfbeckett
Jerkin' and nonsense.
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I think it's feasible depending on how the mod tools are. I don't think that kind of thing will be in game in a big way at launch. But if the mod tools are robust enough we could certainly see the community start to produce lots of high quality content of that kind. Just look at how popular something like Long War was, the mod community for XCOM is potentially one of the strongest out there I think.
Disgustipated
Deity
Cautiously optimistic. I enjoyed the reboot. My only relatively minor gripe is Firaxis latest trend of restricting choices in an effort to boost the "strategy" element of their games (I'm referring to Civ5 and X-com). My main example is the restricted use of the rocket launcher. Sometimes I enjoyed leveling many buildings in the original game. Destruction everywhere. I'd go out with like 4 rockets in the original game.
Lord Tirian
Erratic Poster
I think the main problem, modding-wise, is that XCOM is so closely tied to the main campaign. If they manage to open up XCOM2 to levels similar to Civ4/5 (i.e. custom text, graphics and scripting), this could really get some long-term staying power.
Just imagine what would be possible with total conversions: recreate XCOM1 or Terror from the Deep. Make a SWAT/heist tactics simulator set in present day. Make an urban fantasy-style version with supernatural creatures (it's cliched, but a Werewolf-vs-Vampire war will always work). Or go for futuristic and make a Star Trek Away Team fanquel (yes, it was real time, but still tactics).
Rubin
King
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Thank your for the clarification
Damage control or lying corporate propaganda? Of course they could have done procedurally generated maps if they designed the game that way.(My emphasis)
This is my main issue with XCOM. If the original didn't have such an open ended feel to it, this might have felt less of an issue. As a reboot considered, this design choice is disasterous. XCOM 2 has to rectify this.
BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
Interestingly, Jake Solomon, the lead designer of XCOM Enemy Unknown didn't work on Enemy Within and instead went right to work on XCOM 2.
I think it's probably a good sign that they have spoken so well about the independent Long War mod. The single biggest change Long War makes *is* rebalancing the strategic layer to add some nuance and depth, although there were limits in how far they could take that building off the XCOM: EU/EW foundation. Solomon also acknowledge in a few interviews that the strategic layer was a little shallow and could probably have been improved.
So if they're making XCOM 2, they have to have taken a good hard look at revamping and expanding the strategic layer of the game. And it's Firaxis; they *do* have some institutional knowledge about strategic turn-based games to draw on.
So if they're making XCOM 2, they have to have taken a good hard look at revamping and expanding the strategic layer of the game. And it's Firaxis; they *do* have some institutional knowledge about strategic turn-based games to draw on.
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