X-Com Creator Weighs in on Remake

[zHellas]

On the other hand this game looks quite good and I'll be able to enjoy it in it's own merit and not in the shadow of its predecessors.

Really? It looks like another lame shooter that totally divorces itself from the original. Just like "The Karate Kid".

I didn't know that the re-imagining of The Karate Kid was a lame shooter! Hmm... I guess you do learn something new each and every day.

 

[Nickisimo]

X-COM: UFO Defense(or Enemy Unknown depending on where you live) is still my all-time favorite game, beating out Legend of Zelda and System Shock 2. It was just so intense, so difficult, and so scary(yeah, it really was; play it with the lights off and the sound way up and that opportunity fire around a dark corner can still make me jump at age 28).

It's always bugged me that the X-COM franchise has gone from that gem to crappy spin-offs to obscurity to nothingness. Now there's an FPS? Whatever. It can't be any worse than when they tried to make X-COM into a flight-sim. Actually, the last X-COM project was going to be an FPS anyway but it never saw the light of day.

I don't really care that they're making an FPS so much as I just wish they would make a proper sequel to the game after almost 20 years. You want to make it into something different and use the license? That's cool...but for those of us who loved the original, can we just have more of THAT...but not circa 1993 graphics and sound effects?

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Gollop is fucking right man ! they could have given him a job at least!

there's actually a very good Indie And FREE game inspired by the XCOM series called "UFO: Alien Invasion" and personally i really enjoyed it! it's fanmade and it keeps updating!

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/News

check it out it's worth while

 

[zHellas]

How is it bold, to make it an FPS? Does everything have to be about twitch players and FPS? Thank the heavens, Starcraft II didn't go the FPS route. And Civ V is coming out. X-Com was fun, I miss some of the older stylings, overhead views, multiple people in your party not online. Everything has gone the one player view from their eyes route. Not that they are bad, just no variety.

A Star... Wait, I mistook that for Warhammer for some reason. I was about to state that a Warhammer FPS could work if it were about Ciaphus Cain and had a lot of RPG elements.


And a Civilization game that's not turn-based(or at least had some turn-based gameplay that wasn't the majority of the game) could work if it was an RPG, and was of you as either the major leader of the nation you were building in each age(like Chieftan early on then King later, then President/High Priest or whatever) in a first-person perspective where you can actually oversee your nation from the inside rather than out, and actually being able to speak with your generals, advisors, merchants, and other heads-of-state from different countries.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I heard in another thread references to the UFO series... what has that got to do with X-Com?

UFO: Enemy Unknown was the original name of X-COM in the UK and Europe. The UFO:A* games made later didn't really have anything to do with the original series other than having a vague and mostly unfulfilled promise of being a spiritual successor. UFO: Extraterrestrials is something else and has more similar gameplay but doesn't really live up to the legacy. UFO: Aftermath actually started life as a cancelled Julian Gollop game "Dreamland Chronicles" but it is very different to the concept of that game and Julian Gollop had almost nothing to do with it as his work was taken from him and given to a foreign developer.

And a Civilization game that's not turn-based(or at least had some turn-based gameplay that wasn't the majority of the game) could work if it was an RPG, and was of you as either the major leader of the nation you were building in each age(like Chieftan early on then King later, then President/High Priest or whatever) in a first-person perspective where you can actually oversee your nation from the inside rather than out, and actually being able to speak with your generals, advisors, merchants, and other heads-of-state from different countries.

Rise of Nations was an attempt at making a Civ RTS, maybe Age of Empires as well. I prefer Civ games myself.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Well I never played the original series (I was young and had no idea about it) but I have read up on this new X-COM and I think it looks and will be amazing, also it's not the only FPS X-COM, there was one that came before

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Well I never played the original series (I was young and had no idea about it) but I have read up on this new X-COM and I think it looks and will be amazing, also it's not the only FPS X-COM, there was one that came before

...yeah, and chickens have lips!

 

[Greyhald]

sigh. Blasphemy. I spent a LOT of time, often to the wee hours of the morning, glued to a glowing screen killing alien invaders in turn-based warfare.

2k, use your brains. Hell, even just use Google on this: X-Com: Enforcer.

 

[Haro]

I'm personally excited for the game, but I can understand how he's upset. There's no real need for it to be called X-com. The could have used a new brand and it probably wouldn't attract any less attention, and there really isn't any strong connection between the two. But with this, his game legacy has been twisted out of his hands and out of his vision. It kinda sucks.

 

[Scobie]

DELETED

 

[oranger]

I suppose it can't be worse than Enforcer, or Interceptor.
But yeah, this is a story about a content creator who got fucked over for his work.
Seriously, wtf is wrong with the world when you can't make something without selling it to an investor/publisher first in its entirety?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I liked the old concept of X-Com (I still own the original game and play it on DOSBox), while graphically inferior to todays games it still has a concept of suspense and strategy I don't find in a lot of games anymore. The turn-based gameplay and the fact that enemy moves are hidden except when in LoS make it a difficult yet fun game.
I don't like the idea of going FPS with it, just like I was never thrilled and very happy when SC: Ghost was not produced.

 

[Blue Musician]

I can agree with him, although I never played the old X-COM games. It just doesn't seems right of going into FPS.

 

[Greyhald]

Well I never played the original series (I was young and had no idea about it) but I have read up on this new X-COM and I think it looks and will be amazing, also it's not the only FPS X-COM, there was one that came before

Not really.

It was X-Com Alliance and it was never finished. It was shelved when Hasbro shut down it's gaming company (hasbro interactive?).

 

[snow]

I'm not going to play the new one because it's NOT a TBS game.

What sucks is... If a lot of people buy it, it will make the companies think that their changes were a huge success and we'll never see a TBS X-com again.

If the sales aren't up to par with what they wanted to make from the game, they're going to think that X-COM just isn't popular and will scrap any possibility of future games.

What a horrible dilemma.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Well I never played the original series (I was young and had no idea about it) but I have read up on this new X-COM and I think it looks and will be amazing, also it's not the only FPS X-COM, there was one that came before

...yeah, and chickens have lips!

Sorry, didn't mean FPS, what I meant to say was this new X-COM game is not the first X-COM to not be a tactical strategy game,

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Well I never played the original series (I was young and had no idea about it) but I have read up on this new X-COM and I think it looks and will be amazing, also it's not the only FPS X-COM, there was one that came before

Not really.

It was X-Com Alliance and it was never finished. It was shelved when Hasbro shut down it's gaming company (hasbro interactive?).

Yeah sorry, didn't mean FPS, meant tactical turned based, read my reply to someone else

 

[The3rdEye]

Glad they are making it first person . And not just remaking some old game.

While I agree to a point (Mario, Sonic, for god's sake go pick up your social security checks), the only reason they have to call it X-com at this point is to cash in on the brand power that the old franchise still has. And if you're cashing in on a license purely to move units... you know what you're working on is shit and will need all the marketing muscle it can get.

OT, I agree with Mr. Gollop, it's a "spiritual successor" in the same way you would consider MDK a spiritual successor to Doom. But you don't play MDK to relive Doom do you? I'd gladly work for him for free if that meant TBS X-com received a real 2011 makeover, because I know it would be pure awesome.

*Edit: After browsing around and watching the teasers a couple of times, my hypothesis is this: 2K's obsession with 50's steampunk aside, it looks and sounds like it has War of The Worlds as it's source material. But between licensing rites and royalties and blah blah blah, they thought "Hey, there's already a license out there that's connected with aliens and people fighting aliens, and we won't have to pay an arm and a leg for it since the property has been dragged through the mud since the third installment. We get to make the game we want and have some free publicity too! Sweet, my wallet just got an erection!"

 

[FFHAuthor]

Grr...I STILL have UFO: Enemy Unknown, and X-Com Apocalypse, AND a computer I can run the origionals on...still play them... There's a reason that the origional X-Com is considered the greatest game of all time. It MADE squad level strategy.

I spent damn near a decade looking for something to be similar to it, and find UFO Aftermath, Aftershocks, and Afterlight...

And I still want X-Com back.

Now they go with an X-Files style 50's setting FPS...

Can you say 'sell out'?