XCOM: Enemy Within Standalone Expansion Changes and Additions

Greg Tito

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Sep 29, 2005
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XCOM: Enemy Within Standalone Expansion Changes and Additions

Lead Designer Ananda Gupta explains everything about XCOM: Enemy Within.

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Drummodino

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Jan 2, 2011
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Aaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwww yea! Woohoo sounds like an expansion worth coughing up the dough for :D.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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My main complaint regarding the new XCOM has always been that it's feature-poor. It's a solid game, the "bones" are good, but there's not much meat on them. Seems like this expansion will be dealing with that issue. Hopefully, after this it'll be the game it was supposed to be.

This does, however, seem to be a thing with Firaxis - Civ 5 was also pretty bare-bones on release, but after two expansion packs it's finally got the features and mechanics to measure up to (and perhaps even outstrip) older Civ games. Not Alpha Centauri, though... :p
 

octafish

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Apr 23, 2010
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Ok, they had me anyway, then I looked through the pics...

Cyborgs are cool, gene augmentation is pretty cool...HOLY SHIT IS THAT A BARN MAP? I. AM. IN!

I kind of hope the option to cyborg up a soldier is only available after they are critically wounded.
 

tmande2nd

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Oct 20, 2010
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Hmm yes this ...pleases me.
Right around when I am getting a new computer to boot!
 

lancar

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Aug 11, 2009
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November 12...
*looks at calendar*
So... about 2½ months from now, huh...

*starts shaking*

I'm... not sure I'm gonna last that long :D
 

The_Darkness

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Nov 8, 2010
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Hmm... Interesting, but I'm not sold unless they've finally fixed the frustrating teleporting enemies bug, or actually added some more plot (because the final mission of the original was a tad... boring, to be honest).

I do like the international voices thing though.
 

luthurus

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Jun 12, 2008
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What'd be a great feature would be a chance to bring high level soldiers back from the dead as a cybernetic soldier for both the price of revival & the powerful mech suit I'm thinking the handicap should be that its quite costly and you must revive on the mission of death unless they brought out a cryogenics lab to freeze top soldiers for the cybernetics program. :D
 

rembrandtqeinstein

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Sep 4, 2009
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I'm not sure I like the "play stupid so you can get all the resources" thing. On impossible the only way to survive is to carefully manage enemy spawns. I can't imagine any resources are worth playing differently since on impossible losing soldiers can quickly turn your game totally hopeless.

Unless they change the enemy spawning the extra resources won't matter and will just make you feel bad when the timer runs out and you have to keep your team hunkered down.
 

Berling's Beard

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Mar 2, 2010
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definitely stoked for this! i'm really glad there will be new items, classes, headquarters additions, and monsters.

This game has quickly become one of my favorites and I'm excited for new content to release. Thanks for the update, Tito!
 

GabeZhul

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Mar 8, 2012
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More weapons! Give us more weapons!!!

The MECs and genetic enhancements and whatnot sound great, but my biggest gripe with Enemy Unknown was the two weapon tiers where lasers were downright skippable with just a little forethought. I want to see more tiers, like say; traditional -> railguns -> lasers -> plasma -> quantum (or gluon, or unicorn fart or whatever), possibly with unique skills and special stats related to each of them (say, plasma weapons would be the strongest but volatile and each hit on the unit holding them would have a chance of rupturing them and causing and explosion while lasers would be the weakest weapons when it comes to damage output but silent, invisible and with infinite range, thus not giving away your position and allowing sneak attacks, just to name a few possibilities). This way weapon load-out would be actually engaging instead of sticking plasma guns on all your units ASAP and never worrying about it for the rest of the game.

I mean, they already did the balancing act with the armors when it came to raw protection versus bonus utilities, why couldn't they do the same with the weapons...?
 

Makabriel

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Wait, is that a Terran fighting a Protoss on the front page? I swear that looks like a Protoss...
 

Terminal Blue

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luthurus said:
What'd be a great feature would be a chance to bring high level soldiers back from the dead as a cybernetic soldier for both the price of revival & the powerful mech suit I'm thinking the handicap should be that its quite costly and you must revive on the mission of death unless they brought out a cryogenics lab to freeze top soldiers for the cybernetics program. :D
"It is better to die for the Emperor than live for yourself!"

Honestly, that's a very cool idea, although I do kind of like the rolling roster philosophy of Enemy Unknown.

Honestly, I'm actually interested to see how they integrate this into the story. It felt like there was a lot going on under the surface of Enemy Unknown's story when it came to the transhumanist themes, particularly in the interaction between Vahlen and Shen. Considering the MEC troopers seem to have had their arms and legs hacked off, it seems like maybe a good time to visit more of that.

rembrandtqeinstein said:
On impossible the only way to survive is to carefully manage enemy spawns.
One of the major criticism I keep seeing from hardcore players is that the game is too easy on Impossible because there's no incentive to do anything other than creep around very slowly waiting for stuff to blunder into LOS. If those people find impossible really hard (or even, dare I say it, impossible) now, well, good. Isn't it meant to be?

Maybe this is my roguelike background talking, but I have no problem with a "very hard" game mode being virtually impossible to beat. I mean, I'm sure loads of people will manage it in this case. Besides, it sounds like there's a lot of other gameplay tweaks too. Perhaps some of the new the new non-MELD items will help. If they're genuinely meant to encourage new strategies, they're going to have to be pretty game changing.
 

Terminal Blue

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Makabriel said:
Wait, is that a Terran fighting a Protoss on the front page? I swear that looks like a Protoss...
If you look at the screenshots, you'll see it's a sectoid in big-ass power armour (presumably fighting his human counterpart).
 

MCerberus

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Shut up and take my monthly funding, commander!
Anyway, I bet XCOM's lead engineer isn't going to be too happy about the new features.