139: X-Com: The Truth Is Out There

[Alan Au]

X-Com: The Truth Is Out There

"'When Julian [Gollop] went to show the game at MicroProse UK he had a good reaction. However they wanted the game to be more ambitious. They said they wanted a "Big Game" like Civilization and also one which people could relate to in some way, again like Civilization.'"

"Instead they got X-Com."

Read Full Article

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

Ah, glory days. Nice read.

I think the Gollop brothers have been making a comeback on the indie scene with an X-Com *edit* inspired multi-player game called Laser Squad.

http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com/index_html

Never played it but people have done nothing but rave on the forums.

 

[woop]

And quite rightly too. I've been playing on and off for several years now. Whilst it isn't X-Com (and isn't meant to be) it is a superb turn-based pvp game featuring four playable races. I can certainly recommend it.

 

[Jetbootjack]

As the designer of Terror from the Deep, and producer of Apocalypse, I feel the article skims the franchise in the most superficial way and fails to represent the many people (aside from Nick and Julian) involved in X-COM over the years.

It's a shame Alan did not cast his net wider and attempt to interview or represent more of the team(s) involved in the series (before the franchise got lost with Interceptor)...

sTeVE

 

[Gormless]

I"ve never truly heard any one give any praise to the ufo series of games that were so heavily inspired by the x-com series. I'll admit that the first one, aftermath is sluggish and overly simple while the secound one (aftershock) was a really fun game but with a stratagy angle that wasnt very well explained. All of that said afterlight (the 3rd one) may be the greatist pretender to the x-com throne and it does this by adding a lot of its own twists as well as cuting a lot of needless complications from the series to create a game that both easy to grasp and yet incredably, deceptivly deep. An underated series

 

[joshg]

Laser Squad Nemesis isn't really a clone. It has turn-based combat featuring aliens, but it's a multiplayer-focused game with online play. They have their own play-by-mail sort of system that notifies you when your turn is up. You can play the demo for free online, which gives you one of the four races in the game.

Also, "believable, likable characters" in X-Com? Huh?

 

[Alan Au]

I hope you enjoyed the piece. It is what it is--just a fleeting glimpse into the complex mystery of why X-Com succeeded as a game and failed as a franchise. I primarily wanted to make the piece accessible to the casual observer, while still offering one or two new tidbits for the X-Com faithful who already know a tremendous amount about the history of the series.

Steve, I would love to have spoken with you had I known how to reach you. Unfortunately, as it turns out, deadlines and length limits made it difficult to include too many viewpoints without the article becoming way too unfocused. I tried it, and it became very difficult to tell who was saying what. I pared it down to just a handful of representatives, and I would have been remiss to exclude the Gollops.

Admittedly, I chose to focus on the original game and then fast-forward to the end of the series. As a result, TFTD and Apocalypse don't get as much coverage as they deserve; perhaps there will be another opportunity to revisit them in the future.

The "believable, likable characters" comment was more about the way people could name their individual soldiers and became attached to them over the course of a game. The tricky part is coming up with a concise way to say that.

- Alan

 

[The Treasoner]

I loved all 3 of the Strategy games. Apocalypse was actually my first, so that may explain why I love it about the same as Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep.

I even somewhat liked Interceptor, maybe it was because I was so good at space sim games at the time or maybe I just liked the humor too much to notice the flaws.

I've constantly heard rumors that Irrational Games, the makers of BioShock and Freedom Force may bring this series back to life as their partner has the license to the whole series. Let's have faith.

 

[JugglerX]

TFTD was the best. One of the most difficult, detailed and satisfying games I've ever played.
Gormless mentioned UFO Afterlight which I can also vouch for. It's the only decent UFO game after TFTD. It is surprisingly good.

 

[rams]

Enemy Unknown is still one of the best games I have played. Apocalypse was decent enough to play, but really left no feeling one way or another.

There are also many free / fanmade versions such as:

UFO: Alien Invasion, http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/

and the multiplayer version

UFO2000: http://ufo2000.sourceforge.net/

 

[Archon]

I'm still waiting to enjoy a video game as much as I enjoyed X-Com.

 

[CanadianWolverine]

Do you know why its hard to do a different kind of XCOM? IMHO, it was because XCOM was one of the early hybrid games, genre spanning ... interestingly enough, it seems like other games either already or destined to be classic are very hard to class as being just one genre of game.

These days in games we are constantly seeming to get our peanut butter in with our chocolate - that RPG has a bit of RTS, that RTS has a bit of RPG, that FPS has a bit of RPG, and they all borrowed heavily from the dearly departed Adventure games or the casual platformer. Because of that, you could do XCOM again these days, just be sure to let us blow up the walls, build those secret bases where we want, play up those squad character building, and research a the booty we steal to use in interesting "human" ways.

Since one of my biggest problems with XCOM these days is just getting it to work at a reasonable speed, kinda hard to intercept a UFO when they only appear on the screen in the blink of an eye, since I haven't found any of those programs that supposedly slow your computer down to actually work, if someone would take the original and just make it work at the right pace for today's computers, I would play it again.

UFO: Extraterrestrials - I thought this version doesn't let you blow up structures, build bases around the world and research or maybe I have that mixed up with a XCOM mod and missed out.

 

[stevesan]

my opinion on a proper sequel:

i would love to see an X-Com sequel, but it needs to be more than just graphical and interface updates to justify me playing it - much less paying for it. i don't think you need to fudge the original core-formula much, but fill it out with very different stuff.

didn't TFTD do this? they added new weapons, monsters, etc, right? well, i don't think they did really. i played it for quite a bit, and it didn't really feel different. sure, some guns only worked under water, but mechanically they still did the same thing. so it felt like X-Com...but underwater. and the underwater didn't really change things much.

how about X-Com with multiple planets, new vehicles and weapons that actually change gameplay, new armor-types straight from the get go, new deployment methods (paradrop?), new gadgets (invisibility, CoH-style buildables?), and new enemies (some HUGE enemies, flying aliens, etc.)? i think that would be a sequel worth playing and buying.

i think every successful sequel follows this pattern. they keep the original formula, but really take it to the next level, making a transition that's smooth yet very noticeable. TFTD did not do this successfully. Fallout 2, God of War 2, Doom 2, etc. all pulled it off. i don't think there's anything special about X-Com that makes a proper sequel impossible.

 

[EGOinside]

Well start to get excited because their a remake on it's way -

http://ufo.yaa.dk/

It's a highly professial remake with an alpha coming out soon. I think as do stargeycore who reviewed the team - think it's one of the best looking remakes coming up. Ok i'm part of the team so i would say that but hey it's pretty damn good looking. Nightbird brings you UFO:CF

 

[CanadianWolverine]

how about X-Com with multiple planets, new vehicles and weapons that actually change gameplay, new armor-types straight from the get go, new deployment methods (paradrop?), new gadgets (invisibility, CoH-style buildables?), and new enemies (some HUGE enemies, flying aliens, etc.)? i think that would be a sequel worth playing and buying.

OMG, I would so buy that. I think you just got my Alpha Centauri mixed in with your XCOM.

 

[stevesan]

how about X-Com with multiple planets, new vehicles and weapons that actually change gameplay, new armor-types straight from the get go, new deployment methods (paradrop?), new gadgets (invisibility, CoH-style buildables?), and new enemies (some HUGE enemies, flying aliens, etc.)? i think that would be a sequel worth playing and buying.

OMG, I would so buy that. I think you just got my Alpha Centauri mixed in with your XCOM.

w0rd. i only played Alpha Centauri for a lil bit, but yeh, half-way between AC and XCom could make for an interesting game. really take X-Com's multi-level gameplay to the max...

 

[Dancing Muton]

Thanks for the nice article, I made a news post on StrategyCore (used to be x-com.co.uk), which covers X-COM and similar games.
There's a lot of thoughts buzzing in my mind right now, hopefully I won't forget anything.
I'll go with the flow of the article:

First of all, I see you have quotes from Nick Gollop, did you make contact with him? I would be most grateful if you could somehow provide me with a means of contact. The reason is simple: I have been trying to piece the history of X-COM and people surrounding it together, and although I have collected quite a bit of interesting information (scoured some 60 pages worth of old newsgroup threads on Google), there is a lot more missing and I think it would be very interesting. I imagine it as a combination of a long article and interviews with developers. And Julian and Nick Gollop are top priority, yet sadly they have been impossible to reach so far. I have a few other contacts and know where to find some people, but this is really the most important.
Mr. Goss, PM me with contact details, please. I'd be very happy to hear what you could tell us, too.

As for the comment about the popularity of X-COM, although it may not have been popular in the U.K. back then, it seems to me that the fans now are mostly spread between Europe, USA and Australia these days, with an occasional fan from other places. In Europe, X-COM seems to be quite popular in Eastern Europe, which is not a surprise really.

I think you have the wrong impression when it comes to Apocalypse. I think it is incorrect that it had no audience, and it still does. From my observations on the internet, it seems that the fan base, in the broadest sense of the word, is split between those who like Apocalypse and those who don't. I couldn't tell you the correct ratio, though. And quite frankly I can't think of a good way to collect such data.
Also, going back into 1997, from the newsgroup postings I read it seems Apocalypse did have a following, most notably Robert Fermier who was one of the three founders of Irrational Games, together with Ken Levine and Jonathan Chey. By the way, when it comes to the "Irrational doing X-COM" rumors, I did a lot of searching back when I first heard that and one thing I can definitely say is there's quite a few fans of X-COM in Irrational including all three of the founders. Plus, a good deal of the Canberra team consists from the Microforte team which worked on Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel. With all of that taken into account, I can definitely picture this as a possibility.

As for Interceptor, Alliance and Genesis, there's a good three-part interview with Dave Ellis on TLO written by cyke. Here's a link: http://www.thelastoutpost.co.uk/games/dave-ellis-early-days
The Genesis intro looks like it would have been great!
There's also an interview with Bob Kathman about Alliance here:
http://www.thelastoutpost.co.uk/games/bob-kathman-reveals-all
Enjoy!

Dreamland Chronicles indeed looked like it was X-COM 2.0. There are still some things that are not clear surrounding its cancellation, so I can't really say more. By the way, I think it was Titus who actually canceled it, and if I'm not mistaken the man in charge was none other than Herve Caen. If you don't know who he is, ask the Fallout fans.

When it comes to Chaos Concept's UFO: Extraterrestrials, I have to admit I haven't noticed a lot of people saying that it was too much like X-COM. I do remember the time around its release, and one of the first things that turned a lot of their potential customers off were the "immortal soldiers" as an attempt to prevent players from constant reloading in order to save them. I heard there was also criticism about the recruiting system and criticism that pertained to the game economy, i.e. buying and selling equipment. However, I hear that the game has since been modded (Bman's mod) to be more like X-COM which got some interest from the fans.

I wouldn't say that the fans don't want a new X-COM game, and each of the many "remakes" has gotten attention from parts of the fan base. My personal favorite right now is UFO: AI, but it still has a long way to go. Still, it looks the most mature and is in some aspects even better than X-COM. Still being an open source fan project, you can't expect things like destructable terrain, and it isn'ta one-on-one copy, but its future definitely looks bright right now. UFO: CF has some nice design, especially the excellent music, but it's still early in development.
What I think most people don't realize though, is that even making a straight update of the original would not be an easy task. How many 3D games do you know with "fully" destructible terrain and random maps? I don't know any, and it seems like a difficult task. Add to that the fact that some things would not pass these days (interface!) and you'll see why developers aren't jumping on it. It's not impossible to make a good spiritual sequel though, but you need to give it love and you need to understand what is it that makes it so good.

That we consider the game to be flawless would be incorrect. Not to go too much into the subject, I'll just mention it has stability problems, balance problems (PSI!), setting/story problems, interface problems (no hotkeys, doesn't remember squad equipment between missions) etc. etc.
But all that doesn't matter, because despite some issues, the gameplay was superb. Randomly generated maps, destructible terrain, tense atmosphere, R&D, base management, the ability to rename soldiers are things that made it so good that a lot of us still play it. I have intentionally left out the combat engine, which was superb, and although it could be improved, there's not a whole lot of games these days that could compete with it. There's just so many little things about it that most people are not aware of. For example, if you destroy the roof of one of the 2-story farm houses, the floor under it would get lit differently on night missions. A few of the fans are digging through the tactical game, and it's really amazing how many things there are in it (I think it's all documented on the wiki). Still, Apocalypse has shown that it can be further improved, though the combat in Apocalypse suffered from some of its own problems as Nick Gollop notes.
I think the main reason that we ignore some of these flaws despite being well aware of them is that it was basically made by two guys, and it was quite a complex game that more than made up for all its shortcomings. For me it's the same thing with say Fallout, Serious Sam, the original C&C, Planescape: Torment and my other favorite games. While there hasn't been a game in my book that deserves more than a 90% rating (although I dislike ratings) each of them more than makes up for its shortcomings to me.

It would actually be quite interesting to really dissect each of the X-COM games, there's a lot that could be written about the good and the bad sides of each game, but one never has enough time sadly.

Well, that's all from me.
Cheers,

Gimli
StrategyCore staff
(www.strategycore.co.uk)

P.S. Mr. Au, I noticed you said there were more quotes from developers, would you mind PMing me with those, I'd be most interested in reading them.

 

[Alan Au]

So yes, X-Com is far from perfect, as anybody who has played it lately can tell you. One quirk is that nostalgia is often better than reality. For instance, consider that TFTD was better than the original in many ways, but what fans remember is the emotional impact of the original and the emotional letdown of TFTD (and to some extent, Apocalypse). I guess that means that fans really want an emotional successor to X-Com, which isn't created by simply replicating the feature-set or improving the graphics.

- Alan

 

[Dancing Muton]

Yes, TFTD is a very mixed bag. As an end product I tend to look at it as the second episode of the same game, rather than a full fledged sequel. Still, it was marketed as a full sequel by Microprose which is their own fault. TFTD is like the big, bad brother of UFO Defense. I remember reading an interview somewhere with one of the TFTD developers who said something to the effect of: "You think it's tough? You should have seen it before we made it easier." Actually, that would make sense, because thanks to UFOPaedia we know for example that the Hallucinoid was going to have a freezing ranged attack which wasn't in the final game, but I guess they forgot to cut it.
I really loved the inclusion of melee weapons into the game, those were quite useful. The music was a lot better than in UFO and there were some memorable aliens. I think to this day the Lobster Man is the trademark of X-COM, closely followed by Chryssalids and Ethereals. But the Lobsters could just take so much more punishment that virtually everything below the Sonic rifle was useless.
I also think that the terror sites with the 5 alien species strike squad was a great idea.
The single biggest complaint I think was those dreaded shipping routes where all the flaws of the combat engine really "shined". The funny thing is that, as much as Apocalypse got a fair bit of criticism from some, it actually got rid of a lot of flaws of the old combat system. Remember the overpowered Psi? In Apocalypse it was toned down quite a bit, with the amount of time units the alien would have under your control depending on your agent's Psi power, so you'd never get to have the alien's full TUs. Your agent also had to make visual contact which prevent some unfair strategies from the first two games. Hehe, I remember making chains of aliens under mind control which I would use to clear the map. The trick was to keep the aliens in each other's sight and then just MC the first one. The second one would then be in his view, so you'd MC him, then the next alien would be in his view and so on. By carefully moving this chain around the map you would need only one of your own units in the field which drastically reduced the death toll. But that was kind of a cheat, so it was good that it was gone in Apocalypse.
Also, remember how everyone hated searching for that last alien, especially in the TFTD shipping routes? It was for the most part gone in Apocalypse, all thanks to the exit arrows and the fixed AI which would seek them out once you killed most of the aliens, and the remaining alien or two would flee.
The reaction system was also heavily improved, with the aggressiveness controls which meant that you could assign your rookie who was a poor shot with the least aggressive behavior, and when he spotted an alien, he wouldn't try to shoot him, he would hide. Things like this gave you even more tactical options.

I think that if you combined all the best features of each game's combat system, and added a bit more to them, you'd have a real beast of a tactical engine.

As for Apocalypse's RT mode, I do think it was good on its own, but I guess the problem was that the tactics were more headfirst, whereas the first two games were a lot more stealthy, going from cover to cover, because if the aliens could see you even the best armor didn't ensure survival.
In other words, the RT system was good, it just didn't fit X-COM's style for a lot of people.

Not to go even more into the games, I can definitely say this: each of the games had some really good ideas coupled with some not so good ideas. I think in the end UFO remains the favorite for the most part due to being the first game to seamlessly combine a global base management game with a tactical squad based game.
But in the end, I can also say that there is still a lot of room for improvement in X-COM, which was shown by each attempt to copy the game. Altar's UFO series added a lot to the base management part and also introduced skill specialization which is a great way to create a team in which everyone has his own role, be it medic, sniper, engineer or demolition man. The open-source UFO: AI has added better research reports that sound a lot more authentic than X-COM's ever did. Recently I got an idea that it would be cool if the aliens also responded to your ships on the map. You may have noticed that the aliens never initiated interceptions of their own. Then you'd have to send a transport and protect it with a fighter craft, which would force you to think more about your actions in that area. Imagine my surprise when I fired up the new UFO: AI build and sent a transport to a crash site, when all of a sudden it came within range of an alien vessel which happily shot it down.

In the end the biggest problem I think is that if you go and do a direct sequel, you'd have to have destructible terrain and random maps and show some improvements, otherwise as you said, people would just go back to the old games. I saw a post on the Quarter to Three boards (I've been waiting since December to get my account validated there, lol) by one of the now defunct Iron Lore developers who said that this would mean a budget of at least 8 million dollars which goes hand in hand with what I heard about the Dreamland Chronicles' budget which was at 10 million at the time and reportedly climbing when it was canceled.
The somewhat sad though understandable thing is that those who would be willing to do this either don't have the money to pull it off or have more than enough money but are focused on more mainstream games (such as Blizzard).

I guess that X-COM is just one of those lucky games that as you said was made by the right team at the right time published by the right company.

Is it all so black? Well, I honestly couldn't say. There was a report in one of the recent Game Informer issues which said that TFTD was selling really well on Steam and that a chance of a new X-COM game is 99%, which brings hope.
The biggest problem with TFTD and X-COM right now is that the Windows (Collector's Edition) version doesn't work in Vista, and with no source code it looks like in a few years we may not be able to play the games anymore, except for those who have the DOS versions which can always be run in DOSBox. It seems that Infogrames/Atari didn't get the source code from Hasbro, and now Take 2 (current owner of the X-COM IP) doesn't have a way to make the game working on newer systems. The only ones who might have the source are the developers, but even that is a long shot.

Cheers,

Gimli