What are our concerns about X-COM2?

[irontwinkie]

1) Shen 2's drone.

I don't really view the drone as a SHIV replacement but as a means to give the support class more stuff to do. Beyond being better with medkits and being able drop smoke, supports didn't bring much unique to a fight and this strikes me as a fix to that.

2) Dr.Vahlen goes Kerrigan on us.

Yeah right there with you. A random face/heel turn would just be a dull, ball-numbing plot twist.

3) Swoooooooooords!

I was pretty negative about this at first but I'm starting to warm up to it. It's a gameplay tool to stealth around and up close attack option. It probably makes more sense for the new lower tech XCOM to have an over-sized machete than a pneumatic fist at least when starting out.

4) "Filthy casual!"

I'm going to be that guy. I hate the Long War. It may have some good ideas burried in there but I just find it a dull, grinding slog. For me, XCOM on classic was about the perfect sweet spot for pacing , difficulty, and game length. I've sunk close to 500 hours on this game and most of them have been on Classic. I'm honestly worried that Firaxis will take too much inspiration from the Long War.

5) We need to discuss Timing, Firaxis. / The Visitors are our Friends!

I feel like the two of these really deal with the same problems, setting and tone. The thing with Sci-fi tropes is that they tend to be products of their time. The idea of a hostile, alien force taking power has a much different feel back in the 80s. The USSR is long dead and it's corpse has been torn down and paved to make a parking lot. It doesn't really send the same message.

Sitting and thinking about it, and at the risk of going full Kojima, who does ADVENT represent a worse future for? Do you think that the millions of war refugees right would jump at the chance to be welcomed into gleaming, safe cities instead of drowning in the Mediterranean or getting gunned down by ISIS? Does ADVENT's dystopian, militarized police force have a better track record on not killing unarmed black people than our current dystopian, militarized police force? Doesn't ADVENT present a better future for the world than eight years of President Trump? If anything, the only people this future is worse for is the people that aren't in charge anymore, the Council.

6)Random Events (and why we will hate them).

It think the big issue with randomness is level of impact. Missing a 95% shot is one actions out of many. I think the worst randomness in XCOM 1 was in the strategic layer where the randomness can have punishing consequences that the player can't do anything about. If you start a new game and your only steam vent is in the middle square on the bottom floor, there's nothing you can do, it just sucks and you should probably just restart. If on the first month the abductions and UFO events don't fire fast enough, you're only going to be able to get one satellite out instead of 3-4 with nothing as a player you can do about it.

7) Stealth Zepplin?

I get where your coming from. However it let's them rework the geoscape to slowly taking back the planet from the aliens while still letting the players the antfarm base from the first game.

 

[BrokenTinker]

Umm... Have they confirmed that X-Com 2 is taking place in the US? That you can't choose where your base is this time?

Also, I don't have a problem with the swords. I can't be the only one who, after missing a shot at point blank 99% range, shouted "Oh for sweet nondenominational deity's sake just hit the fucker!" right?You shouldn't have to be a walking tank man to punch a grey midget.

This guy gets swords. Xenonauts added a basic melee bash to the x-com formula, and on my second campaign, I'd captured 2 aliens before I even unlocked stun weapons. Options are good.

I think anyone that ever got ambushed by a chry would get it, "ahh, alien is going to grab my guy next turn and he can't defend himself!" made absolutely no sense to me.

 

[wings012]

I don't mind melee attacks. If anything it seems odd that my troops aren't able to defend themselves with a basic combat knife or something in close quarters.

I doubt melee will be a viable build though. You're probably going to have to pick between having a machete or grenades.

I hope MEC troopers and their rocket punches make a comeback though.

 

[FrozenLaughs]

My only concern is that there is nothing I've seen yet that won't run just fine on a XB1 or PS4. Not porting it when this generation is still sorely lacking on quality games is just lazy. Console players loved the hell out of EW/EU not just pc players. Claiming it's to focus on quality is a scapegoat when it already looks like it's (still) running on 75% of EU resources.

 

[Cecilo]

I am fine with the swords as long as they do not bring back Lobstermen. Seriously, fuck those guys.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

As someone who won, I'm perfectly fine with them taking the people who lost as canon.

It's how you test something. It's how you prove something is a good model/design or it isn't. If you had years of gun practice and were able to overcome a faulty sight or barreling of a new assault rifle, that speaks of you as an individual. If you had to give that gun to tons of new army recruits and have them replicate your ability and they couldn't... well, the designers would be piss poor to constantly point to you while thousands of new recruits couldn't get it.

There's a large number of the army population who never touched a gun before. They can't count on the recruit's natural ability to overcome. They need to be Stupid Simple and be able to be touch to a wide variety of people. Not just the natural gifted.

So Xcom was the test. We failed. Just like military strategy, if only a handful of general can win the proposed maneuvers, then you must plan for your actions after the defeat. That's where Xcom 2 comes in.

Me too, but for an even simpler reason: This way, the concept remains fresh. If it had been XCom 2: Enemy Unknown: New Enemy Unknown that'd probably work well enough for me to get my XCom jollies on, but it would not be very groundbreaking or appealing to have even more aliens show up and just do what the previous bunch did. It would also raise a bunch of questions about how they'd deal with technology (would we begin the game with Plasma weapons and Titan armor?), where all the old veterans are etc. etc.

By saying that the Good Ending (because, let's be real here, being able to lose in XCom is kind of the game's appeal, it is the Bad Ending, not the "respawn at last checkpoint" kind of game over) in XCom never happened, they can reuse some of the systems that worked and people liked in XCom, like research, leveling your squad etc., without making it seem implausible or headdesk worthy. It also opens up for a whole new take on XCom and allows them to play around with concepts. As far as design choices go, I think it is the single best one they've shown us so far.

 

[Phil the Nervous]

I think we should be more concerned about them adding John Carpenter's "The Thing," or the fact that Chrysallids are still terrifying as hell.

They burrow now, and teleport around the field.
Oh! and three of them spawn per corpse now instead of just one. (don't remember the third buff they got...)

 

[Terminal Blue]

1) Shen 2's drone.

Honestly, it seems like you've got completely the wrong idea about this.

Nothing we've seen suggets that the drone is anything remotely resembling an autonomous unit like a SHIV. It's purely a cute visual reference point for the abilities of the specialist class. It seems like they attempted to make classes more visually and thematically distinct.

Ever since original X-COM, yeah, I was sitting there going "Man, if only I had a sword! I'd show those Chryssalids what's what then, oh yeah!"

Swords (in a sense) were already introduced in Terror from the Deep. Granted, they were more like drills than swords but if anything that made them even more ridiculously impractical. Melee weapons more broadly have been a part of x-com from the beginning. If you find them bothersome, just impose an artifical limit on yourself by not using them. It seems like you're already familiar with that via long war.

You know why Americans loved Star Wars? Because of the Revolutionary War. We love the rebels, we love the underdog, because once upon a time that was us - the scrappy young mavericks bucking the system and taking on the evil empire in the name of liberating our country from a hostile foreign power. That's why the Imperials all had British accents.

Your point is rendered somewhat invalid by the fact that Brits loved Star Wars as well.

Also, by saying this you're missing one of the genuinely great things about X-Com as a franchise, one which has been present from the very beginning and, from the looks of it, will be greatly improved in XCom 2, and that is that its focus is international. It is not accidental that they introduced the little flags on everyone's backs in Enemy Unknown, and it wasn't simply to give you an edge in pub quizzes. X-Com is about the world (however American accented) coming together to face a bigger threat. That's one story which doesn't deserve to be tied down by peculiar American self-obsession.

The real enemy that we've all faced (and hated) more than any other has always been the RNG. And this is important because it shows something about the real, underlying dynamic of all our tactical machinations: We're not trying to beat the aliens. We are trying to beat the RNG. We're not visualizing a war movie - we're looking at numbers.

Speak for yourself. I think you're missing out.

I actively enjoy managing RNG. For me, it's something I can do in the background while simultaneously laughing at how much that Swedish sniper sucks at life. Perhaps this comes from playing a lot of roguelikes and games where the whole focus is to grind you under the wheels of probability and to push your tolerance for fighting it, but that can be a source of joy and amusement because.. you know.. this isn't gambling. We aren't sitting at a slot machine with real money here, the lives we're risking and losing are fictional.

Please let the plot be deeper than a bad 1980s TV series.

..which is explicitly being referenced.

Yeah, that whole retro-future aesthetic isn't just borrowed from Apocalypse.

 

[Terminal Blue]

It would also raise a bunch of questions about how they'd deal with technology (would we begin the game with Plasma weapons and Titan armor?), where all the old veterans are etc. etc.

To be fair, X-Com has always had a great getout clause for that. Much of the advanced technology X-Com develops is based on alien materials which are not found on earth, so once the aliens are gone human technology rapidly regresses again (with the implied exception of psionics, which are presumably revealed to the public at some point between Terror from the Deep and Apocalypse).

By the time of Apocalypse, humans were travelling to Mars and bringing back a trickle of Elerium-115, so plasma weapons and power armour were available in very limited quantities, but apocalypse was more science-fictioney generally so that worked well. I wouldn't have minded a more futuristic XCom 2, but I prefer the compromise they've gone with.

 

[happyninja42]

Ok so apparently I missed a DLC or something for XCOM:EU, 'cause you all keep talking about this Long War thing, and I've never heard of it. Can someone clue me in on this? Was this a difficulty setting I just overlooked or what?

OT: I'm optimistic for the game. I had no real preconceptions for XCOM: EU when it came out, as i had only lightly played the original game back in the day when I was a kid. It was fun, but I didn't mold my childhood gaming psyche around it like some people have, similar to FF 7. It was a fun game, and the new game seemed like a fun one too. Turned out it was, really damn fun. I enjoyed the route they took with it, though some areas could be improved. I have zero issue with them making one plot direction canon, as others have pointed out, if we win, the only reason we can have for another game is "more aliens show up", which is pretty lame. TONS of stories have worked off the premise of "what if we lose?" Half-Life did it, multiple What-If comics did it, and several movies and shows have done it as well. It's a staple premise to use as a plot device.

Humans like playing as the underdog.

You feel way more morally justified in your actions, when you are the oppressed group, punching up at your slavers, than punching down at the smaller faction. I mean come on, by the end of XCOM: EU, my forces were so badass, that no UFO ever landed without me taking it out easily, and my squads would stomp every alien incursion on the ground with minimal effort. I had super snipers with mind powers, massive mechwarriors who could rush in and smash faces like nobody's business, and assault soldiers who could dodge laser fire and rush in to destroy the enemy with a blast to the face. I could enslave my enemies to work for me, thus turning my foes against themselves.

Humanity was a powerhouse of alien asskicking.

How likely would it be that any second wave of alien assault would be able to pose any significant threat to a force like that? They wouldn't. We were on alert now, globally, and had an infrastructure that would devastate any further attempts to take over earth. Of course they would have to have humanity lose to make a sequel.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Sounds like a lot of padanoia and pre-emtive nit-picking not based on much to me.

Swords? Really? Swords are a "concern"? lol. Think you need to be a bit more open to trying things, for all we know it could work superbly as a gameplay mechanice.

I don't really give a toss about the individual elements of the game, so long as overall there's a finely crafted X-Com game in there.

Since they announced the entire first game was basically non-canon and the aliens took over the world, I wrote this game off. It won't be good. There are so many red flags on this game that truly anyone who buys it is part of the problem.
Its gonna' go the way of Starcraft 2. Launch week is great, then absolutely everyone forgets about the crap plot and terrible characters.

Honestly just go replay Xcom Enemy Unknown. Its the superior game.

To call people who buy the game despite having any idea of what the game is actually like is laughable.

I also don't see the problem with the alien take-over, and think it's actually a great, novel way to go. It opens up far more fresh tactical potential options being the agressor than it would have if we were defending earth again.

 

[Synigma]

I know that I'm setting myself up for a "white knight" pile-on, but I don't care. I'm worried. I love X-COM, all the way from the old 4.5" floppy original to the last Firaxis reboot. Because I love the series I sincerely get scared when I imagine the possibility that they might screw up on X-COM2.

Hopefully you're not feeling too piled up on, because this is a legitimate thing to worry about. There has been a hole in my strategy game library ever since Beyond Earth's failure so I have similar concerns. The drone thing you brought up, definitely a concern, and the story related things (Vahlen, Friends?, stealth zep) of course I'm hoping they don't go too cliche but I could forgive.

I disagree with you on the swords for a couple major points; 1: they have said this game relies on stealth more and swords are a video game go to for stealth kills. 2: even in real life a blade is a dangerous weapon in close range. That being said as much as I like ninjas I'm hoping for a more 'versatile' application, maybe replace side arms with a meaner version of a bowie knife.

SNIP

Actually declaring the victory ending to be non-canon is the same as declaring the game to be non-canon.

Although I don't agree with your conclusion I do agree with this on a conceptual level. Even if you consider that most of us lost our first play through that means in all likelihood we were captured / killed by the aliens. I'm hoping they don't try to tie us to the commander in the first one because I would like to believe that the canon where we lost is a game that I wasn't the player in. The 'what if' being 'what if the commander was NOT the player and just another npc?'

This has 2 great effects (lists of 2 ftw); 1: it tells the player "we lost without you" and shows you what happened in a world where you weren't there to save everyone. 2: gives the world the soft reset it needs while also introducing new aspects to keep it fresh.

To elaborate on #2; we all know the real fun of the game is teching up and building a good team. If you start with your old squad that would take away from the over all gameplay and if you started with your old tech then they have to video game logic in why the top end of the last game is shit in the new one (the power-creep is real).

Besides, 'bringing the fight to them' is great in concept but how would that ACTUALLY play out? Their planet... first of all which one? They took multiple races from multiple planets which they all presumably conquered.
And are humans going to use the same 'send one ship of a dozen grunts at a time' tactic? You want to invade the aliens? Go play Starcraft as the Terrans vs Protoss because that is pretty much what you're asking for.

Besides, I hated the ending for X-COM, I'm all for forgetting that travesty where EVERYTHING is wasted.

 

[Breywood]

1) Shen 2's drone. A neat little novelty, to be sure, but after watching the YouTube demos just twice I was already sick of looking at the thing. Which is a concern because it looks like they're going to shove that thing in our faces every chance they get. It's a good gimmick, yes, but it is still just a gimmick.

It's something I've said over at Blizzard forums whenever someone whines about temp band and mentions that they're deprived of loot. "Don't let others define fun for you. Unless your fun is making others suffer." Which is funny because later you're claiming you're not about bragging rights.

2) Dr.Vahlen goes Kerrigan on us.

I can understand where you're coming from, and I felt the same way when the rumors were floating around that Blizzard was going to turn Tyrael into an act boss. On the other hand, it could be like Roland's death in Borderlands 2. A motivation to avenge a character you really liked. Either way, should I decide to buy the game, this won't be game breaking.

3) Swoooooooooords!

I have one thing to say: Terror from the Deep.

4) "Filthy casual!"

Well, at least there's varying difficulty. Can't say that about Dark Souls.

5) We need to discuss Timing, Firaxis.

Not worried about that. The game is still set two decades from the first one, and an alien invasion might divert the world's attention.

6)Random Events (and why we will hate them).

They didn't have random events in the first reboot? Oh dear.

I left the last two off because I never pre-order. I'll wait and watch some footage on YouTube or play the demo before I plunk money down for it.

 

[Christian Neihart]

I think we should be more concerned about them adding John Carpenter's "The Thing," or the fact that Chrysallids are still terrifying as hell.

They burrow now, and teleport around the field.
Oh! and three of them spawn per corpse now instead of just one. (don't remember the third buff they got...)

Fuck.

 

[books of war 13]

OP's point 5 about rebels not being seen positively due to current world events isn't really that relevant since XCOM is clearly by it's name, advertising and art style a Science Fiction not a realistic or political game so there isn't really a worry the public will see it negatively, unless they see it as allegory I suppose? But I doubt that since a game like Dragon age inquisition can come out, which is literally about a self-proclaimed religious order that violently seizes power and kills prisoners, but can release without controversy.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I can see it going wrong with the procedural generation. Leading to nonsensical placement of cover or enemies and repetitive content.

The difficulty is also a good point, but even if it's too easy that will likely be one of the first mods for the game.

Another issue could be the lack of ability choice, it seemed like every class only had two trees in the demo.

 

[DoPo]

X-Com is about the world (however American accented)

I hated that in XCOM. Or rather, let me rephrase, I hate that everywhere it shows up. I mean the "everybody talks American English" bit. There is only one more annoying portrayal of foreigners - it's the bloody annoying "Let me talk English but randomly inject a word from my language and then immediately translate it into English". That, amazingly, has an even more obnoxios variant - when two people are supposed to be speaking and they are from the same country". Assassin's Creed 2's dialogue was absolutely cringeworthy because of that.

Anyway, back to XCOM - there was an option to allow all soldiers speak their own language - Germans talked in German and so on. I think it was introduced in Enemy Within.

 

[happyninja42]

snip

snip

I see, thanks for the info. I think I'll pass though, as I didn't really have any big issues with the vanilla game. Though you did mention one aspect I didn't like. The fact that you had to actually get a kill to get exp. I think simply doing stuff on the mission should be sufficient. I mean if you have your support character, and they're doing the stuff they are supposed to do, you know, healing people, tossing smoke grenades, etc, why shouldn't they get exp for that? They aren't assault, it's not their job to kill aliens specifically. Their job is to help their squadmates kill aliens easier. I'd like to see them do some kind of incremental exp reward system. You get a baseline amount of exp for simply surviving the mission, but you get further exp for actually doing stuff.

Killing aliens
Using class specific powers to the benefit of the team
Being the person to actually click on mission items
Etc.

Have they made any statement on whether or not that will be in the next game?

 

[DoPo]

Anyway, back to XCOM - there was an option to allow all soldiers speak their own language - Germans talked in German and so on. I think it was introduced in Enemy Within.

XCOM 2 they, to the best of my knowledge, all speak english, but they have accents this time around.

I'm actually OK with that. OK, I preferred soldiers to speak their own languages in XCOM just because all being American was really annoying, but then again having a squad where each person talked in a different language was a bit odd. Presumably they have to communicate somehow. If not amongst themselves, then with me. Then again, I suppose my soldiers could have been on the dickish side and understood English, just answered in Spanish/German/Italian/Whatever instead.

 

[Cartographer]

Anyway, back to XCOM - there was an option to allow all soldiers speak their own language - Germans talked in German and so on. I think it was introduced in Enemy Within.

XCOM 2 they, to the best of my knowledge, all speak english, but they have accents this time around.

I'm actually OK with that. OK, I preferred soldiers to speak their own languages in XCOM just because all being American was really annoying, but then again having a squad where each person talked in a different language was a bit odd. Presumably they have to communicate somehow. If not amongst themselves, then with me. Then again, I suppose my soldiers could have been on the dickish side and understood English, just answered in Spanish/German/Italian/Whatever instead.

Long war offered a lot more accents to English, though the generic "European" is a little disappointing.