Below is a little background on how Apocalypse came to be and the stuff that almost made it into the game, which would have been cool, but were cut out due to various reasons. After years of development by Mythos Games, this title still turned out to be incomplete in some respects. The original ideas called for a more detailed game which, due to various constraints, just wasn't feasible. Below is an excerpt from the official Mythos Games website, stating how the game could have turned out very different!!
Mythos Games said
After completing this game I know how Francis Coppola felt after filming 'Apocalypse Now'. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and the amount of effort required to pull it into shape was immense. After three years of hard work and five different producers 'X-Com: Apocalypse' finally hit the streets. The initial game design was definitely too ambitious and too complex. The aim was to recreate in some detail the events, organisations and personalities within a futuristic megalopolis. Each corporation had a leader who could be tailed, arrested, interrogated or assassinated. Organisations could buy and sell buildings as their financial fortunes changed. X-COM agents could spy on other organisations to gain valuable information. A sophisticated diplomacy display allowed the player to instigate aggressive or defensive alliances with other organisations.
There were multiple alien dimensions, generated pseudo-randomly, and the aliens gradually expanded their empire as the game progressed. The game also featured a scenario generator and multiplayer options using a hotseat turn based system or a real time LAN option. Most of these features were implemented to some degree, but were finally stripped out due to the horrendous amount of work involved in QA and debugging.
We decided right at the start of the project to include an option for real time tactical combat or turn based. This decision alone caused many of the headaches for the programmers, but the final implementation of the real time combat stands up as a truly innovative system.
Truly the plans for a great game. Shame it didn't turn out quite that
way, but click on the links below to see some of the things the program
designers left in the package that were never used!!
Weapons | Equipment | Vehicle Equipment | Facilities | UFOpaedia
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Weight: 4 Size: 1x3 Manufacturer: Megapol Power: 0 Damage Type: Smoke Range: 25m Fire Rate: 1.00 r/s Max Rounds: 20 |
UFOpaedia: NOT USED! Notes: Designed to tag organisational leaders, criminal gang members and other suspicious people around Mega-Primus. Not used as this game aspect was never finally incorporated. |
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Weight: 1 Size: 1x1 Manufacturer: Megapol Rounds: 20 |
UFOpaedia: NOT USED! Notes: Ammo for the Tracker Gun. Consensus seems to be some sort of microchip tagging system or the like. Once tagged, a unit could be followed using one of the tracking devices. |
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Weight: 6 Size: 1x3 Manufacturer: X-COM Power: 80 Damage Type: Stun Range: 6m Fire Rate: 0.75 r/s |
UFOpaedia: An energy beam device which can render a target
immobile for a short period of time. The target remains conscious but
is unable to move or use equipment. Notes: Now HOW useful would this have been? VERY methinks. Freeze Aliens!! You're under arrest!! Would have been good on Poppers, Megaspawn and Psimorphs alike. Maybe this would have introduced an unfair advantage to X-COM. |
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Weight: 3 Size: 1x3 Manufacturer: X-COM Power: 70 Damage Type: Disruptor Beam Range: 62m Fire Rate: 0.90 r/s Rounds: 1 |
UFOpaedia: N/A Notes: Ammo for the ForceWeb. |
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Weight: 3 Size: 2x3 Manufacturer: X-COM Power: 55 Damage Type: Disruptor Beam Range: 62m Fire Rate: 2.57 r/s Rounds: 28 |
UFOpaedia: An X-COM developed Disruptor Beam weapon based on
Alien technology. It is a faster firing and more effective weapon than
the Devastator Cannon. Notes: Oh how I could have done with this to deter would-be humanoid base invaders!! Die Cultist mothers, DIE!! Never mind eh. It would have been useful on Superhuman setting though... |
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Weight: 1 Size: 1x1 Manufacturer: Marsec Power: 80 Damage Type: Psionic Blast |
UFOpaedia: A device which causes a Psionic disruption blast.
Any target with high Psionic capability is particularly vulnerable to
Psi-grenades. The blast will drain Psi-energy and possibly render the
target unconscious. Notes: A particularly nasty device, but it would have helped considerably when trying to capture a live Psimorph. Still, never mind eh. No sleep lost over that one. |
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Weight: 2 Size: 2x2 Manufacturer: Megapol |
UFOpaedia: NOT USED! Notes: A device used to track multiple tagged units at the same time. Most likely used in conjunction with the Tracker Gun to keep tabs on VIP's. |
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Weight: 3 Size: 2x2 Manufacturer: Marsec |
UFOpaedia: The Mind Shield is an expensive, clumsy device which protects the wearer from Psionic attacks. Notes: Players of X-COM who managed to REALLY annoy MarSec may have seen a few of these late on in the game. Whilst X-COM could never use them, I suspect MarSec could. This would have also been one of my all-time favourite items. Still, never mind eh? Teleporters still ROCK!!! |
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Weight: 2 Size: 1x2 Manufacturer: X-COM |
UFOpaedia: N/A Notes: Another type of tracking system, perhaps this one for aliens. |
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Weight: 4 Size: 2x3 Manufacturer: X-COM |
UFOpaedia: N/A Notes: Most likely a shield or a way to partially block Disruptor technology. |
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Weight: 110 Size: 3x3 Manufacturer: X-COM Dimension Shifts |
UFOpaedia: NOT USED! Notes: Just like the name implies, this allows vehicles to dimensionally jump without the need for a Dimensional Gate. |
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Const. Cost: $1,200 Days To Build: 2 Weekly Cost: $100 Capacity: 10 |
UFOpaedia: NOT USED! Notes: Advanced containment for Mega-Primus' more colourful citizens! Never needed as this part of the game was never incorporated, but it just goes to show that a lot of plans had been drawn up for these more complex game aspects. Oh how I would have loved to interrogate prisoners and access advanced diplomacy functions and so on and so forth... |
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Const. Cost: $14,000 Days To Build: 7 Weekly Cost: $700 Capacity: 20 |
UFOpaedia: NOT USED IN GAME ANYMORE! Notes: Designed to hold twice the number of aliens, as well as larger Alien life-forms. Never incorporated into the game, as a small facility was sufficient to house everything (with the possible exception of an Overspawn, which would have been bigger than your base anyway!!). Would have been nice though, as the Psimorph and the Megaspawn do take up a lot of space... but when weighed against the amount of space it would have taken up in your base, it was best left out really. |
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UFOpaedia: N/A Notes: This is an unused picture which apparently is part of a UFOpaedia article about the walls in the city. |
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UFOpaedia: NOT USED! Notes: Rumor has it that this is another way of winning the game. Ever visit the Main Pod Site in the Megapod Chamber in the next to last mission? If so, this looks very familiar. Maybe this was a way to bypass the mission and/or destroy the pods? No one knows. |
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UFOpaedia: N/A Notes: As mentioned above, there was supposed to be a way to tag, capture and interrogate organizational leaders in the game. This image (title: Vipttl.pcx) is a rarely seen file artifact and hints at (at least) a UFOpaedia article and (at most) a UFOpaedia category for the different types of taggable units. |
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UFOpaedia: N/A Notes: This image (title: S-title.pcx) is another rarely seen artifact pertaining to soldiers. It evidently is background or possibly soldier information. |
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