2K Reveals The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

[lacktheknack]

Not interested in the least, this is the second time they are trying to market this game, just with a new title. Keep X-COM a non 3rd person shooter IP, thanks. There aren't enough X-Com style gameply as it is.

Too late.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Enforcer

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I am utterly baffled by the sheer volume of people who are calling for "maintaining the status quo" and hating on experimental tangents of a series simply to maintain the "purity" of said series that it doesn't even freaking have.

Be ashamed of yourself, please.

OT: I'll need more than a live action trailer, but I see they're taking steps in an interesting direction.

How dare you call that an X-com game, YOU should be ashamed of YOURSELF do have any idea what the development of that game looked like? Let me inform you.

Microprose was in the process of developing two X-Com games in 1997, one was going to be a classic X-com base strategy, basically X-Com: Ufo Defense except using a fully 3D rendered environment and even more options, this one was going to be called X-Com Genesis. The second game in development was going to be an X-Com base strategy game that focused on first person real-time tactical strategy, basically Rainbow-Six with all the features of X-Com.

Hasbro bought Microprose in September 1998 and immediately began disassembling the company. In April 1999 Hasbro shut down Microprose UK in Chipping Sodburry and fired all the designers working on Alliance, X-Com Alliance was shifted to Microprose Chapel Hill studios in North Carolina where some of the veterans of Microprose were working on X-Com Genesis. Within a couple months the development team had reworked it to work better with the canon of the original game and overhauled many of the games resources until it was on track to be released for Q4 2000.

In December of 1999 Hasbro aborted development on X-Com: Genesis, a month later they closed Microprose Chapel Hill studios and moved X-Com: Alliance to the Microprose main studio in Maryland, by now the release date of the game was "sometime in 2001" because they had literally fired nearly all the hands it had passed through.

Now is when Hasbro orders the dwindling number of remaining Microprose designers to start X-Com: Enforcer, specifically using some of the resources from Alliance. That game gets thrown out the door in months. Development on Alliance begins again a month after but gets put on hold while Hasbro fires the remaining key developers connected to it in preparation for Infogrames buyout of the company. Alliance is cancelled a few months after Infogrames buys the company.

X-Com: Enforcer is the distilled tears of video game developers, it's the result of probably one of the worst take-overs in video game history, Hasbro Interactive bought Microprose and immediately used it as ablative armor against it's own debt and destroyed the company and fired the developers.

X-Com: Enforcer was developed by a team that was forced by their publisher to cannibalize their only chance at a commercially successful game under the growing threat of losing their jobs and then fired many of them after they completed it.

The best analogy I can think of is if EA had told Bio-Ware to take the resources from Mass Effect 2 and 3 before they were released and make a Matching-Puzzle game out of it under threat of losing their jobs and after they did it they fired all of them and dissolved the studio.

It's not an X-Com game, it's a grotesque gravestone that was carved by the people who were eventually buried underneath it.

And I would still call that matching game the "worst Mass Effect". Just as I can call Enforcer the "worst XCOM".

Sob stories don't change harsh reality, and the harsh reality is that a 3rd Person shooter has already been jammed into the XCOM series, mucking up the complaints of various XCOM purists.

The fact that everyone was pressured into it and fired only makes it more tragic, it doesn't change reality.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, at least 2k games recognized that XCOM was a strategy game first.
I'm not opposed to taking a series in a new direction, as long as that new direction isn't ground that's been tread a thousand times over...which, is unfortunately the case here, as apart from the setting, it's not all that distinct based on what has been shown.

Even XCOM has tread that ground once before, and all that proved is that the developers had no idea how to make a good shooter.

Which doesn't mean such a shift cannot be done: Look at Metroid Prime. But the important thing to remember is that Metroid Prime, for all the changes it made from 2D to 3D, still retained the core elements that make a Metroid game: Environment, Ambiance, and Exploration.

Retro did *not* turn Metroid into an Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 clone, just because those were the shooters that were popular when MP was in development (or Halo, after MP1).

 

[Rainboq]

This is probably the best way they could have done this. XCom fans are happy because the main series is still a tactical, turn-based affair, and the spin offs get to explore the world and broaden the lore with different gameplay styles. Everybody wins. Who knows? Maybe we'll see an XCom RTS spin-off where the invasion has become all out war. Suits me fine.

The developers said it basically Mass Effect and Bioshock 2 gameplay.

Its been in development hell for over 5 years now. They have been saying they have been taking game mechanics from popular games over the years and taping them together into one game.

The last game to do that was Duke Nukem forever, and we saw how that turned out. The developers are clueless in the interview videos. You can't just throw mechanics in the blender and expect something good to come out.

Plenty of developers do this. We just dont talk about it because it usually works out. Bioware made Mass Effect into more of a shooter in 2 when they saw how well received Gears of War was.

Yes, that influenced ME2. But it retained its soul in 2.

But this game is pretty much copying everything on the market now, and does nothing special. The developers put no thought into the mechanics the game has, and has said so in interviews.

If they see something "cool" they immediately take it and slap it into the game regardless of how well it will mesh with other games. Because the game has been in development hell and they still have no idea what to do with it.

They scrapped it and restarted it from scratch 3 times, and that's just the ones we KNOW of.

A game is something that is PLANNED and FOCUSED. Throwing random mechanics into a blender is NOT good game design. That is NOT how you make a return on a product when you copy whats already been done.

Plenty of games have fallen into this hole, and development hell means that this game will fail harder than Aliens Colonial Marines, and for the same reason.

There is no light of hope for this game. The development history is pure horror. Its just something they put out to fill a balance sheet. Even then the imaginable costs dumped into this game means they should cut their losses at this point.

Actually, fun fact, Team Fortress 2 was scrapped a number of times, and look at it now. Scraping a game actually reflects a competent team in this case, a team who really wants to make a good game, and are willing to go back to square one if needed. But we'll have to wait and see, what we're doing now is really just speculation.

 

[anonymity88]

From the Makers of BioShock 2.

Not something you guys really want to advertise.

Probably why they ran black marker over it to black it out in the trailer!

 

[O maestre]

This might seem like a stupid question at this point, but why is this trailer trying to sell me a hollywood movie? There is nothing in there that will contain any game elements, so what the hell is the purpose of the trailer?

I really don't know why some games are trying so hard at being like hollywood blockbusters, i guess they hired the same unimaginative PR people.

I am looking forward to seeing how the game is going to be original, FPS and originality seldom walk hand in hand.

 

[BOOM headshot65]

I already preordered it. Even if its "sub par", its still an XCOM game and there arent enough 3rd person squad shooters out there that are new. So Im good no matter what.

 

[MXRom]

I personally want to see this game succeed, if only to prove that an shooter game can make it in a saturated market of modern shooters.

Then there's that little part of me that remained from my childhood that wanted to see something like XCOM able to travel to other genres and still do good. Especially after, well the OTHER shooter.