XCOM 2 Will Push Your Resistance Movement To Its Limits

[samgdawg]

But I'd rather be negative and correct than constantly getting let down by AAA shittiness. Being positive doesn't make bad games better. Just means you have no pattern recognition.

There's a skill I like to call "Cautious Cynicism". Basically instead of swinging wildly between any two extremes of being SUPER HYPED or SUPER ANGRY NEGATIVE, you take a little of both and live in a realistic balance. I've been excited for games that let me down and ones that I'd predicted correctly. I've also dismissed games that I thought wouldn't be fun that later proved successful and worthy of praise. If we really put this into perspective, you're saying that everything is shit. AAA games CAN'T be good. Positivity and optimism are childish retreats from the soul crushing reality of game developers working hard to deliver steaming piles shit.

Why would anyone want to live in a world like this? Why wouldn't you want to get excited for something that's been proven to be a difficult genre to be continuing? It's like presuming Persona 5 is going to be shit because I don't get to play as Yu Narukami/Souji Seta anymore. Or Fallout New Vegas and 4 are pointless because I'm not the Lone Wanderer. Or hell, ANY fallout game after 1 because you're not controlling the Vault Dweller.

It also discounts the AAA games that ARE actually really good. Transformers Devastation, Portal 2, Spec Ops: The Line, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Shin Megami Tensei IV. The list can go on. Positivity is not a "blindness". Only bad JRPG villians really think that.

Anyone can be negative. SMT IV has an awful painful map system, Transformers Devastation is kind of short, Link Between Worlds changed the mechanics on how you get tools, Portal 2 had a couple kind of bad puzzles and changed the ending so GLaDOS wan't really dead, Deus Ex: Human Revolution had bad boss fights. It's pointless to just be mean and spiteful of things just because they weren't made how you wanted or were made by big name companies.

 

[Bobular]

I'm honestly not sure which I'm looking forward to most at the moment, X-COM, Dark Souls or Persona but every time I hear anything about X-COM I get more exited about it.

The alien progress thing sounds good, but I think its going to be hard to balance. You want it to be really close to completion at the end of the game for drama, but you don't want to put the game into an unwinnable state if you aren't quick enough in the middle and didn't realise you don't have time at the end to win. I'm hoping that these missions will be that balancing factor.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Just think...In XCOM 3 they'll say all of 2 never happened, your resistance failed(again!) and that all of humanity was destroyed and now you have to play as above average IQ raccoons to stop the aliens.

The butthurt is strong with this one. While in essence, it's nothing different from just any developer deciding that their game has a canonical and non-canonical ending.

Like darkside Revan in Kotor, darkside Kyle Katarn in the Jedi Knight series, all the female / male character in games where only one gender is canonical, etc. All those endings and possibilities were ignored as well to make the sequels or the continued story more coherent and interesting.

There's zero need to be butthurt. The fun times you had still existed, they weren't erased. Plus XCOM2 looks to add a ton more to that.

 

[Tiamat666]

I would like to know how the aliens won, considering that Xcom was designed to be won.

A newbie was playing it on hard difficulty, lost the game miserably, and the aliens used a ripple in the space-time continuum to propagate that reality to all other X-COM installations.

 

[Tiamat666]

I have to say, this is starting to sound exciting.

with so much more attention given to character development, losing them will naturally be far more upsetting - which is one reason why Firaxis expanded on the memorial wall

When I played the original X-Com (actually TFTD) as a kid, I kept a roster of my Aquanauts on paper, so I could figure out who died, what their rank was and how many kills they got... after a "campaign" I would peruse the roster of the fallen heroes and compare it to the ones from different playthroughs. This created a "meta game" where I could compare the best soldiers of any playthrough with each other and gauge how well I did based on the number of losses. It really added a lot to my game.

And somehow I think that the tendency to do something like this and to be interested in capturing the statistics of a game is something of a natural, emerging phenomenon in strategy games. It's really a shame most developers neglect this area of gameplay.

 

[zombiejoe]

I really don't get why some of you are so upset about XCOM 2's plotline. Yes, I was a little be peeved when I learned that the plotline of Enemy Unknown wasn't being continued, but this is basically a "what if" scenario, and as that, it has a lot of potential. An Earth society that is controlled by aliens? XCOM being seen as terrorists? That's really cool! Yeah, we could have gone with the aliens coming back in stronger numbers or something in XCOM 2, or had a plot similar to some of the older games, but this is honestly full of great potential. Hell, some of the Legend of Zelda games, plot wise, come from a timeline where Link is killed off before saving the day in earlier games, and that gave us some good gems.

Oh yeah, OT, everything system wise sounds great.

 

[zombiejoe]

I would like to know how the aliens won, considering that Xcom was designed to be won.

You can lose in XCOM. It's a potential route that can occur, and XCOM 2 is following that route.
If you refuse to believe that for whatever reason, consider the fact that the aliens you were battling in Enemy Unknown were just the servants of some greater alien force, which would probably see that the humans were acting uppity, and then send a much greater attack against them.

 

[Naldan]

I don't like the decision to basically retcon XCOM EU/EW, because playing it now feels to me like playing a fan (fiction) game. But I'm one of the guys that trys to be precise with fictional canon. Also, it's so cheap since all they needed to do was to write a scenario where the end sequence, for those who know it, had terrible consequence. The potential was there and is so easy to write with this ending. So that's why I can not understand it.

But the game will be great anyway. Believe it or not, but you can criticize and enjoy it anyway. It's not like.... Let's forget about that.

 

[GARforGunman]

I really don't get why some of you are so upset about XCOM 2's plotline. Yes, I was a little be peeved when I learned that the plotline of Enemy Unknown wasn't being continued, but this is basically a "what if" scenario, and as that, it has a lot of potential. An Earth society that is controlled by aliens? XCOM being seen as terrorists? That's really cool! Yeah, we could have gone with the aliens coming back in stronger numbers or something in XCOM 2, or had a plot similar to some of the older games, but this is honestly full of great potential. Hell, some of the Legend of Zelda games, plot wise, come from a timeline where Link is killed off before saving the day in earlier games, and that gave us some good gems.

Oh yeah, OT, everything system wise sounds great.

Like I've said before, I don't have a problem with XCOM 2 starting from the game over scenario. I take issue with how its being implemented. You're expected to lose in XCOM (quite often if you want to achieve and Ironman/Impossible victory) and its from those failures that you learn and grow, making your victories more satisfying. Now, here's Firaxis scripting their sequel from the standpoint that you are a failure for losing your first game and you gave up trying to achieve victory. It hurts the player immersion and, in my opinion, the potential story possibilities for the sequel.

Now, that's not to say I'm not hyped as hell for XCOM 2. Far from it. I'm following the news feeds, working to finish my Long War I/I campaign, I even read the shoddy novel they made to "bridge the gap" between the two games. (Spoiler alert! Its pretty bad and only provides vague hints of what happened to cause the loss scenario).

Point is, I'm psyched to see what XCOM 2 will offer, but I'm worried Firaxis is taking two large steps forward in terms of gameplay features, but potentially one step back in terms of world-building and player investment. Yeah, those of us who beat EU/EW know what the alien's end-goal is and had hints of something far more threatening on the horizon, but now those achievements are being reversed to keep us fighting a similar gallery of xeno scum. Granted, our foes are looking more challenging and varied this time around, but if we're stuck fighting the same Ethereal foes and their lackeys for another game, I worry boredom is going to set in.

Don't be afraid to let humanity start fighting some new foes with the tech they gain from their victories, Firaxis. I'm not the only one who would like to see how mid-to-late game weapons and armor hold up against TFTD's Lovecraftian nightmares or Apocalypse's trans-dimensional invaders. Let humanity and XCOM continue to grow instead of finding reasons for them to re-tread the same path.

 

[Do4600]

The whole resistance thing is incredibly cliche in this game environment. I honestly could not count how many games I've played in the past decade where I've been part of a group called "The resistance" or "the rebels" all ways for saying not "The Man".

I sort of feel that the X-Com games always had that specific quality where it was the only game where a coalition and collection of government resources actually created something worthwhile.

Sure, this does let them explore different mechanics in the series, but those mechanics are necessarily mechanics that are already showcased in like eight other games where you play as a rag tag bunch of resistors fighting against the oppressors. TFTD felt like a B-movie sequel with harder mechanics, X-Com2 looks like Red Faction:UFO Afterlight.

I'm sure they'll do it really well, Firaxis always does, but when I heard you were "The Resistance" I groaned so hard, so hard. How many games do you play as the resistance?

 

[zombiejoe]

I really don't get why some of you are so upset about XCOM 2's plotline. Yes, I was a little be peeved when I learned that the plotline of Enemy Unknown wasn't being continued, but this is basically a "what if" scenario, and as that, it has a lot of potential. An Earth society that is controlled by aliens? XCOM being seen as terrorists? That's really cool! Yeah, we could have gone with the aliens coming back in stronger numbers or something in XCOM 2, or had a plot similar to some of the older games, but this is honestly full of great potential. Hell, some of the Legend of Zelda games, plot wise, come from a timeline where Link is killed off before saving the day in earlier games, and that gave us some good gems.

Oh yeah, OT, everything system wise sounds great.

Like I've said before, I don't have a problem with XCOM 2 starting from the game over scenario. I take issue with how its being implemented. You're expected to lose in XCOM (quite often if you want to achieve and Ironman/Impossible victory) and its from those failures that you learn and grow, making your victories more satisfying. Now, here's Firaxis scripting their sequel from the standpoint that you are a failure for losing your first game and you gave up trying to achieve victory. It hurts the player immersion and, in my opinion, the potential story possibilities for the sequel.

Now, that's not to say I'm not hyped as hell for XCOM 2. Far from it. I'm following the news feeds, working to finish my Long War I/I campaign, I even read the shoddy novel they made to "bridge the gap" between the two games. (Spoiler alert! Its pretty bad and only provides vague hints of what happened to cause the loss scenario).

Point is, I'm psyched to see what XCOM 2 will offer, but I'm worried Firaxis is taking two large steps forward in terms of gameplay features, but potentially one step back in terms of world-building and player investment. Yeah, those of us who beat EU/EW know what the alien's end-goal is and had hints of something far more threatening on the horizon, but now those achievements are being reversed to keep us fighting a similar gallery of xeno scum. Granted, our foes are looking more challenging and varied this time around, but if we're stuck fighting the same Ethereal foes and their lackeys for another game, I worry boredom is going to set in.

Don't be afraid to let humanity start fighting some new foes with the tech they gain from their victories, Firaxis. I'm not the only one who would like to see how mid-to-late game weapons and armor hold up against TFTD's Lovecraftian nightmares or Apocalypse's trans-dimensional invaders. Let humanity and XCOM continue to grow instead of finding reasons for them to re-tread the same path.

I don't know, man. I mean I can see why you were be worried in some aspects, I would hate it too if it turned out we were just retreading old ground when it came to the aliens that we were fighting, but from what I've seen there are some really interesting and new looking xenos to go up against, even if we need to battle a few of the old classic aliens along the way too. And let's be honest with ourselves here, the way that the Ethereal's revealed their "master plan" in EU/EW was pretty messy. "We're trying to find a great race, so we like that you're fighting us and are disappointed when you lose, but also how could you kill us this wasn't part of the plan." Exploring a path where the aliens take over gives us more room to explore just what that "master plan" actually entailed, and what their next step would be. I also can't feel whatever loss of immersion you're feeling, because to me, this is a separate timeline than my victory in EU/EW. This isn't "you know that victory you fought so hard to get? Yeah, well, that's pointless", it's "you know that victory you fought so hard to get? Well here's what would have happened if you lost. It's a separate path, and I don't think it hurts potential possibilities for the sequel, because an Earth run by xenos is actually really cool. There's a lot of world building potential in that. Though it may sting that you won't be able to see a stronger, more advanced XCOM, a weaker, resistance force XCOM seems just as cool to me.

 

[Kajin]

Its such a desperate and needless way to raise the stakes. Hitting the Reset button on the previous game's plot is weak. There are so many better ways to continue the story instead of saying "Nope, the story never happened!"

Where could they POSSIBLY take the plot, though? Congratulations! You beat back the alien invasion and won the last game! Time to repel another alien invasion, but because you were so OP at the end of last game we took away everything you had so you have to start over. Or they reboot it and say the events of the last game never happened at all and THIS is the new XCOM, bigger and shinier but pretty much just the same game. This is actually a really good idea for a sequel.

 

[Callate]

The more I hear about this game, the less I like it, honestly.

I don't love the "the humans lost" angle, sure, but I can live with it. But the whole thing seems so unrelievedly grim, and the first game wasn't exactly a bowl of cherries to begin with. If you're going to be staging a rebellion, that ought to open your options up; instead, it seems like they're keeping to the "Do this or this, either way you're losing out on something" format of the last game. There's so much emphasis on what you're losing- failing a mission, losing a soldier, losing a resource, missing an opportunity. Everything I've read so far emphasizes human collaborators, not the possibility of creating new cells of human resistance. And now your one aircraft is also your base, and can just be shot out of the sky for a flat-out game over; am I supposed to applaud that? No, thanks, I think that's a crummy idea.

But we can personalize our personnel so we can be that much more bummed when they miss their 95% shot and get nailed with auto-fire. [dripping sarcasm]Awesome[/sarcasm].

The original X-Com wasn't exactly innovative in good ways in where it went after the first entry: Underwater (more or less the same game, now tinged blue), a space station, various action-oriented quasi-tie-ins. But I can definitely think of other ways this could have gone. (What about the other planets the invasion has culled from? What happens to all that alien tech that ends up on Earth's black markets?)

If this sounds like your cup of tea, fine; I won't deny that some of it sounds intriguing (broader procedural generation is definitely a plus). Your mileage may vary, more power to you. I'm still waiting to hear something waiting to hear something that makes me think I'd actually enjoy this experience. It sounds like an abusive relationship simulator.

 

[EternallyBored]

The more I hear about this game, the less I like it, honestly.

I don't love the "the humans lost" angle, sure, but I can live with it. But the whole thing seems so unrelievedly grim, and the first game wasn't exactly a bowl of cherries to begin with. If you're going to be staging a rebellion, that ought to open your options up; instead, it seems like they're keeping to the "Do this or this, either way you're losing out on something" format of the last game. There's so much emphasis on what you're losing- failing a mission, losing a soldier, losing a resource, missing an opportunity. Everything I've read so far emphasizes human collaborators, not the possibility of creating new cells of human resistance. And now your one aircraft is also your base, and can just be shot out of the sky for a flat-out game over; am I supposed to applaud that? No, thanks, I think that's a crummy idea.

But we can personalize our personnel so we can be that much more bummed when they miss their 95% shot and get nailed with auto-fire. [dripping sarcasm]Awesome[/sarcasm].

The original X-Com wasn't exactly innovative in good ways in where it went after the first entry: Underwater (more or less the same game, now tinged blue), a space station, various action-oriented quasi-tie-ins. But I can definitely think of other ways this could have gone. (What about the other planets the invasion has culled from? What happens to all that alien tech that ends up on Earth's black markets?)

If this sounds like your cup of tea, fine; I won't deny that some of it sounds intriguing (broader procedural generation is definitely a plus). Your mileage may vary, more power to you. I'm still waiting to hear something waiting to hear something that makes me think I'd actually enjoy this experience. It sounds like an abusive relationship simulator.

Some of your information is off, you don't get shot down then get a game over, you get a chance to defend your base and then if you lose that it's a game over. There are also human allies, they show the overworld map in one trailer emphasizing how your missions inspire the human populace to rise up and resist the aliens.

Your complaints about soldier customization just sounds pointlessly cynical, are you really trying to spin it as a negative because you get more attached to your soldiers and thus work harder to keep them alive? Sure you get that soldier that misses a dumb shot and gets crit slaughtered the next turn, but you also get your team of customized badasses that survive all odds and win the final mission, rather than being a bunch of faceless mooks only differentiated by their class and weapon load out.

Xcom has always been really grim, the first game ends with mass devastation to most countries, the second gets the whole world destroyed in the aftermath so that the third takes place in one of the few surviving areas not destroyed by the aliens.

While there are likely ways they could have continued the plot and made it work, your idea of just going to alien planets to fight seems less interesting than what we've currently got, and deemphasizes the earth defense aspect from the most popular of the early Xcoms as well as running the risk of just turning the units into generic space marines. I don't care about alien planets involving the species from the first game, none of the individual species were ever that interesting that I'd want to see what their planets looked like bar maybe the ethereals and snake men.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

You can lose in XCOM.

I have lost troops, but I have never lost a campaign. Every ending I got was the same;

Spoiler

My Psi trooper ordering the remaining off the ship ending

In regards for your possible explanation, while it is feasible, I would have the Devs tell us the official reason why.

 

[zombiejoe]

You can lose in XCOM.

I have lost troops, but I have never lost a campaign. Every ending I got was the same;

Spoiler

My Psi trooper ordering the remaining off the ship ending

In regards for your possible explanation, while it is feasible, I would have the Devs tell us the official reason why.

It is possible to lose the campaign itself. Just because you yourself didn't do it doesn't mean it's not something that can't happen. Just look up "XCOM Enemy Unknown Game Over." The devs consider it an ending, and that's the one they want to explore.

Though I agree, a more in-depth look at how the humans lost the war wouldn't be so bad. I don't feel that its that important, but more details and story are always welcome.

 

[F-I-D-O]

To the ending discussion - I think they just wanted to avoid the immediate follow up of a plot device like TFTD, which is infamous for its difficulty curve and unexplained challenges. Yes, everyone likely shot a UFO down over the ocean, but it still feels a tad tacked on. They could easily have an XCOM 3 following this where the aliens use their control over Earth to establish underwater bases, left behind after XCom stages a rebellion.
If they wanted to. A cool ending would be you kick aliens off Earth, but they have enough time to spread to Moon/Mars requiring Xcom to launch and build stations around the solar system to combat the menace. Add back in regular base invasions, require shipping management, and escalate the scale while maintaining the idea of being underdogs entering an arms race a few dozen years late.
But I think the main reason that's been cited is that the majority of Xcom campaigns either end in failure or frequent reloading. A lot of people's first experience was failure, so it's relatable for starting the next entry. They can always say you stopped one splinter of the invasion, and they just sent the whole force afterwards which Xcom couldn't fend against.

On topic for Xcom2, I'm excited about it. Recovery of bodies was a huge missing note from EU, and will make me more likely to equip rookies with experimental tech. Hopefully the new random missions prevent players from hitting April, outlasting mutons, and then turtling as progression creeps into the endgame. New base interactions are always fun.
I'm looking forward to more customization, but I've always named soldiers after friends in each XCom game. Didn't care so much about color armor as I did about renaming. But new ways of distinguishing soldiers on the field will be cool.
Has there been any word on whether Exalt will return, or are they just part of Advent now? Same goes for EW content - it'd be cool if you could rescue mech and psi troopers.

 

[Erttheking]

Has there been any word on whether Exalt will return, or are they just part of Advent now? Same goes for EW content - it'd be cool if you could rescue mech and psi troopers.

Considering that they believed in aliens uplifting humanity, them being part of the Advent is a good bet. Hm. Rescuing PSI troopers is easily possible (Though they probably wouldn't be troopers considering that XCOM was apparently beaten early on. Most likely they'd be the result of Advent experiments, but considering that they wanted to exploit humanity for "The Gift" they're likely to do that.) As for MECs...can't say. Like with PSI troopers XCOM probably wouldn't have researched it, and if they did they would've been the first to go down under fire. Though maybe the Advent

Course we could always get our hands on some MELD and start over from scratch.

 

[F-I-D-O]

Has there been any word on whether Exalt will return, or are they just part of Advent now? Same goes for EW content - it'd be cool if you could rescue mech and psi troopers.

Considering that they believed in aliens uplifting humanity, them being part of the Advent is a good bet. Hm. Rescuing PSI troopers is easily possible (Though they probably wouldn't be troopers considering that XCOM was apparently beaten early on. Most likely they'd be the result of Advent experiments, but considering that they wanted to exploit humanity for "The Gift" they're likely to do that.) As for MECs...can't say. Like with PSI troopers XCOM probably wouldn't have researched it, and if they did they would've been the first to go down under fire. Though maybe the Advent

Course we could always get our hands on some MELD and start over from scratch.

Apparently not, just did some looking around and found this:
http://ap.ign.com/e3-2015/90382/news/e3-2015-no-meld-mech-troopers-in-xcom-2
Missed that reveal, and didn't realize how early Xcom was losing. I'd thought they'd put it somewhere around the base invasion or Chryssalid Alaska level from EW.
Going to get annoyed if they end up selling another expansion to put MEC and PSI back in.
Maybe some of that customization will come by rescuing alien experimental test subjects or more advanced SHIV options. I still didn't like replacing squad mates with SHIVs too often, but if they expand on it that could be fun.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Just think...In XCOM 3 they'll say all of 2 never happened, your resistance failed(again!) and that all of humanity was destroyed and now you have to play as above average IQ raccoons to stop the aliens.

Is that supposed to be a bad thing? A tactical combat game leading a squad of Rocket Raccoons? Hells yes I would play that.

But anyway, I'm absolutely stoked for this game, and I honestly love the "Resistance Movement" angle to the whole plot. It makes certain aspects of the game make so much more sense now (limited # of Soldiers, limited resources, etc.) and I love that the game now encourages you to be more proactive. When you get down to it, with the exception of a handful of story missions and being able to do Covert Ops missions, you pretty much just had to be reactive to the aliens in X-Com: EU or EW. You basically just had to wait around until they tried to abduct people or a UFO appeared or whatever. Now the game is actually encouraging you to take the fight to them and cause actual damage to their regime. Sounds awesome to me.