XCOM 2

Spoiler :

Twenty years have passed since world leaders offered an unconditional surrender to alien forces and XCOM, the planet's last line of defense, was left decimated and scattered. Now the aliens rule Earth, building shining cities that promise a brilliant future for humanity on the surface, while concealing a sinister agenda below and eliminiating all who dissent from their new order.

Only those who live at the edges of the world have a margin of freedom. Here, a force gathers once again to stand up for humanity. Always on the run, the remnant XCOM forces must find a way to rise from the ashes, expose the insidious truth behind the occupation, and eliminate the alien threat once and for all.

• Take command of the Avenger, an alien supply craft converted to XCOM's mobile headquarters. Guide your strike force around the world, build popular support and expose the aliens' sinister plans.
• Five soldier classes, each with its own skill tree including new class abilities like Momentum, let you create specific soldiers for your tactical plan.
• New gameplay systems offer more tactical flexibility in combat. The state of the world affects each combat mission's environment. Use concealment to ambush enemy patrols. Loot enemies for precious gear and artifacts. Rescue VIPs and save fallen comrades by carrying them to the extraction point.
• A diverse cast of enemies from powerful new alien species to the ADVENT, enforcers of the alien regime, offer a distinct tactical challenge.
• Configure and build rooms on the Avenger to give XCOM new capabilities on the battlefield. Use your Scientists and Engineers to research, develop and upgrade weapons and armor to fit your preferred tactics.
• Go on missions around the world, from wildlands to the heart of the alien-controlled megacities, to the depths of alien installations. There are virtually infinite combinations of maps, missions and goals.
• Community-focused tools allow you to create your own campaign, tactical gameplay, aliens, classes, strategy game features, and share within the Steam Workshop.
• Mix-and-match squads of humans and aliens to battle head-to-head on randomly-generated maps.

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“People will see the gameplay source, all the scripting,” [Solomon] promised. “This is the code that makes the game what the game is. Here's the editor and all the assets that went into this game.”

...

“We're basically a 20-hour tutorial for The Long War, and that's okay,” admitted Solomon. “I think Long War was cool, because I think that there is – especially in strategy games – there's always this desire to see more. They did this awesome job of adding a lot more. People will be sharing stories of XCOM and I'll be like ‘I don't even know what they're talking about, this game has changed so much!’ And that, to me, is cool."

“And that's like, the ultimate mutual respect,” added DeAngelis. “Again, we missed that on Enemy Unknown. It was the most rewarding thing to hear from the community how much they liked it, and for us to now say we respect that and appreciate that so much, here: go and do something we can love and play in return, and you guys can share with each other. I just think it's a really valuable relationship that we have.”

When asked what kind of XCOM 2 mods they expect to see, the team had a few ideas:

“We don’t have free-aiming. That will be one of the first mods, and that certainly will be fine,” said Solomon. “Maybe somebody will bring back time units,” he mused. “I'd be fine with that.”

Art Director Greg Foertsch had some words of encouragement for map makers: “If you want to make a completely static level, you can. If you want to make a basically completely procedural level - which is basically what our levels are in the game right now, that's 100% doable. It could be narrow; it could be square. It could be super big. And, again, it's super flexible. There's really no limit – you can do whatever you want. You could literally make an Enemy Unknown map.”

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The answer is what the team literally calls “the plot and parcel system,” and what DeAngelis refers to as “a big quilt.” Here’s how the metaphor works: imagine a map in XCOM 2 as a quilt, with holes where a pre-constructed modular building will be placed – those are the parcels. The holes are big, small, and medium-sized, with a range of unique buildings that could fit into each size. These buildings, and the holes in which they’re socketed, are the parcels of the system....

The plot portion of that system comes into play in the space between our buildings. At the risk of mixing our metaphors, think of the plots as the connective tissue that links one parcel to the next. The plots could be a street, or a park area, or train tracks, or a river bed, or an empty tract of land, et cetera. When you begin a mission, the map reaches into a bank of options and fills it up.

But the procedurally generated approach of XCOM 2 doesn’t stop with the patchwork environments and battlefield locales. For the first time, your squad will not only be tasked with exterminating the aliens in the area, but secondary mission objectives which will cater to the procedurally generated settings. “It might be blowing up one of these buildings to spark the resistance,” Foertsch said. “It might be hacking a workstation, or protecting a device. All these different things you can do that can show up and in dozens of different buildings and areas. And you don't know what you're going to get.

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[T]he XCOM 2 Sectoid will be able to raise the dead to fight for him with an ability called Psi Reanimate.

[The Viper's] real threat comes from her penchant for dragging your soldiers out into the open using the aptly named Tongue Pull ability. Even worse, once she has you, you may not even get the chance to retreat – another of the Viper’s abilities, called Bind, wraps your soldier up in her coiled body and locks them down in place, slowly strangling the life out of them.

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“They can do an ability called Command Aura,” DeAngelis explained. “Which is an [area of effect] buff for any other troopers within their radius. It gives them better aim and they can potentially do more damage to XCOM soldiers.”

But the disadvantages of fighting a squad of Advent Troopers reinforced by a Captain are more than just a passive upgrade. Captains can also use an ability that marks one of your XCOM soldiers for death, forcing any Troopers in the area to focus their fire on that one unfortunate person. Suffice it to say, with the combat of XCOM 2 shifting more toward stealth and position than ever before, getting caught out in the open and marked for death is going to be a bad time.

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Malachi256 said:

Cautiously excited. Very happy about the PC-only decision. Story sounds cool.

My biggest complaint with the 1st one (reboot) was the way the game punished you for "activating" too many enemy squads at once. I know I'm not the only one, and I hope they address it in 2.

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Malachi256 said:

Cautiously excited. Very happy about the PC-only decision. Story sounds cool.

My biggest complaint with the 1st one (reboot) was the way the game punished you for "activating" too many enemy squads at once. I know I'm not the only one, and I hope they address it in 2.

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Wolfbeckett said:

Err, you should be punished for that? What do you think should happen if you end up outnumbered 2 to 1?

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Malachi256 said:

Mostly because it's just absurd. It's a ridiculous immersion break - so these aliens can see their buddies trading fire with some unknown force, but it's not until some psycho with a shotgun runs right up to one of your friends and blows his head off that you decide you should do something about it. /boggle

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Wolfbeckett said:

Err, you should be punished for that? What do you think should happen if you end up outnumbered 2 to 1?

So hyped for this, I need to do a run through of the first one again in anticipation of this. I'm curious about the storyline though, because it says the aliens won and... that's not how I remember the first one ending at all. Plot details needed to bridge the gap from us defeating the aliens at the end of the first one to them suddenly being in charge.

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PhroX said:

My guess is that it will follow on from the "bad end" of you losing (fair enough, as that's the result of most Ironman playthroughs....) not you winning....

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Omega124 said:

Spoiler Nuka don't open this :

I hold to the theory that EU ending is still canon, but merely incomplete. Humanity destroys the temple ship, but that was only the beginning. A much larger second wave quickly overpowers humanity, destroying most of the biosphere in the process (there is cut quotes from Vahlen about the aliens introducing their own flora on Earth). Human nations surrender, and XCOM is forced underground, where they slowly become a pro-human terrorist group. Cue XCOM 2.

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