First Person X-COM

[Amaror]

One could of easily said the same about Total War.

"You can't turn a complex RTS into a hack and slash with a story!" then we got Spartan Total Warrior and it was amazeballs. If anything XCOM going strategy to FPS would be the one genre it makes the most sense.

Ok and how is Spartan Total Warrior a Total War game? As far as i can see it's not a complex Rts turned into a hack and slash game, but it's an hack and slash game with the IP of an RTS slapped on. What about Spartan Total Warrior makes it a Total War game?
The mechanics aren't similar (obviously), the story isn't similar, since Total War generally doesn't have one, the only thing similar is a historic setting and Total War is hardly the only franchise to do this.
That's exactly what everyone else is saying here. Turning Xcom into an FPS isn't possible, because the things that make Xcom special can't be done in an FPS. Every attempt to turn Xcom into an FPS would just result in an FPS that happens to have the Xcom label slapped on.

 

[Simonism451]

Make it a spooky FPS where you shoot aliens? That might not end up being X-Com as an FPS, but it would certainly suffice for an X-Com FPS. Maybe (but only if you can actually make it not feel out of place) add in randomly selected, relatively open maps (although supplemented by certain "fixed" missions for major story beats) with some level of destructability, a base hub area you can walk around in, talk to members of your unit and select upgrades, and add in some element where how well you do on your missions influences the progression of the story.
Don't put in perma-death but rather focus on making the player's comrades seem like fully fleshed out characters so they can care about them that way, since I doubt the whole "growing-attached-to-an-interchangeable-meatpuppet"-thing would work if you A) didn't have control over all their actions and B) actually had to interact with them on ground-level. (Feel free to kill most of them off whenever appropriate though, since misery is just the X-Com way.)

Oh, and please do make cornfields at night the most terrifying thing ever.

tl;dr: The original XCom FPS/Bureau looked good and the people that hated on it are stupid poopy-faces who deserved the lukewarm half-way mess that it actually ended up being.

 

[Amaror]

What else is it supposed to be exactly? Games in the same universe but being different genres is somehow impossible now and doesn't make it a "true" game? You all never heard of spin offs?

Having an FPS in the Xcom universe would make it exactly that...an FPS in the Xcom universe. It doesn't have to play like a strategy game because it wouldn't be one. To say it's impossible is just downright laughable.

As the article that's being discussed here said it is supposed to be the xcom strategy game turned into an FPS. The whole point of the article was to point out game that would to well if they were transformed into other genres. There has to be a reason why an xcom fps would do better than any other fps, otherwise there's not much point in it being mentioned.
And Spinoffs are fine, but i see no reason why Spartan Total warrior has been enriched by being a Total War Spinoff. Setting games of other genres in the same universe can be a great idea, but then the universe has to offer something. The Xcom universe just doesn't really. There's a tiny bit of story in the new games, but mostly these games are all about the mechanics. So the universe of xcom doesn't really offer anything that could enhance an FPS experience in my mind.

 

[Pseudonym]

What else is it supposed to be exactly? Games in the same universe but being different genres is somehow impossible now and doesn't make it a "true" game? You all never heard of spin offs?

Having an FPS in the Xcom universe would make it exactly that...an FPS in the Xcom universe. It doesn't have to play like a strategy game because it wouldn't be one. To say it's impossible is just downright laughable.

Well, when developers make an artistic decision that will impact the entire game and their only argument is 'because we can' I'm lose a bit of interest in that game. It would be nice if the decision to set a game in a certain universe improved the game in any way whatsoever. Being in the X-Com universe does nothing for a shooter. It would also be nice if the next game in a certain franchise was remotely fitting into the rest of the franchise and being a x-com shooter is pretty far from fitting. It would just be another mediocre shooter with x-com slapped on. I much prefer a shooter that has thought behind it about what makes shooters good or an xcom game that has thought behind what makes x-com games good to an x-com shooter which will in all likelyhood have neither.

It's not impossible to make a spin-off game but they are ussually not that good. Sometimes they are as good as you'd expect anything else in the genre to be but very rarely does the universe it's set in do anything for the game that couldn't have been done better in an original universe. This is even worse in the case of x-com where there isn't even a story or world to copy. If you want to shoot aliens, you could just make an alien shooter and it would probably a better game if it wasn't developed as an x-com game.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Tactical FPS game? Like the Original Rainbow 6 game perhaps?

Where you spent long periods planning out an operation, setting go codes, theorizing the locations of enemy units and planning out how to storm and take a location?

Organizing loadouts and equipment and managing the health and safety of various characters with separate stats and skills to keep a team best suited for a mission?

Agonizing over the death of a single operative which completely destroys your team dynamic and forcing you to make difficult choices?

Forcing yourself to take less talented meatshields to overwhelm a position that you don't want to hurl your expert operatives into because they might be gunned down effortlessly by an enemy that knows you're coming?

Choosing advanced technology and techniques to utilize in an attempt to gain a slim advantage over a foe that has many more advantages than you could hope for?

Having to make hard choices in rescuing civilians in a combat zone which limits how you fight and making you take less appealing options for taking a location so you put your troops in jeopardy to save a civilian otherwise you could lose the mission?

I don't know about you guys but that all sounds a helluva lot like my experiences with X-Com.

 

[Recusant]

Also, what you talkin' 'bout Recusant? Fallout 3 was damn good, it just kind of missed the point and didn't feel like Fallout. New Vegas remedied this, but took away the random encounter elements from Fallout's overworld.

Would that it were so. Fallout 3 was post-apocalyptic Oblivion with guns. No depth to decision making, no complexity to enemy tactics, no logical flow to the story, no believable justifications for the plot elements brought in from the previous games (which felt tacked-on in a desperate attempt to say "no, really! We're a Fallout game!" already). As a game, it was decent enough; as an adaptation, it was mediocre- not awful, but distinctly sub-par.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

There was a FPS X-com game being made called Xcom Alliance, but it was cancelled. There was one called The Dreamland Chronicles on the PS2 that was a remake by the original developers but it was never finished. If it was like original Ghost Recon with the massive maps and added plenty of crashed ships etc like in the original X-com game then it could work.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I don't know why, but I keep thinking "Would it basically be Space Hulk?"

Suppose it'd be some kind of amalgamation of games like Republic Commando, Rainbow 6, and perhaps early SWAT titles if it were more modernized...but we're getting that SH remake, so I'll just play that instead.