Firaxis remaking XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[silencer_pl]

The sound thing.

[Pete]

I think what they mean is that you'll be able to hear strange noises and scurrying about when you get close to a hidden enemy. I just hope some of them are more stealthy than others.

[Kret]

If it's only being able to hear them when you're close enough, then it's similar to how Apocalypse was, but it could also be more like Silent Storm where you would get ghost-images placed where the sound originated from with an ear icon, or even resemble the UFO:AS and UFO:AL sound detection. Personally, I liked the SS method because sometimes the image would not be at the exact spot where the unit actually is adding uncertainty. Hopefully, we might get to see some of the mechanics at work today at the 2K Pax East stream.

[Pete]

I keep meaning to pull all of these bits of information together into one bulleted list of known features split by sections of the game (sound, geoscape, tactical etc) but I've been otherwise occupied lately.

 

It would be awesome to have something like that, crediting the sources of the information as we go so I'll look to do that at some point.

[silencer_pl]

Yes I know but I would like to see how it works though

[Pete]

Or even hear how it works

[FullAuto]

Oh, Pete, you and your japes.

 

I've been told the system is in place, don't need to see it. If they're not careful they'll reveal the entire game and there'll be no sense of discovery. You need to keep the majority of it under wraps for the player to find when they play it.

[Pete]

Indeed, I remember back in the days when I first played TFTD - I didn't have internet access back then so we took a chance on an unknown title and never looked back, buying Enemy Unknown shortly afterwards.

 

If I know it all before playing I'll only cry.

[Thorondor]

Jake Solomon continues to give us the goods on the new XCOM in this latest piece at RPS.

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/12/feb/x6.jpg

 

Excerpt:

 

Tactically, flanking is extremely valuable in XCOM so if you were to ever get flanked by an alien, that increases the damage that they’re going to do and so it’s the sort of thing where you really have to be careful when you don’t know where the aliens are, or when you do know where they are, you have to make sure positioning is really important.

 

::

 

[ShadowBlade]

Great find!

 

Could've done without the nonsense Pokémon comparison, but RPS interviews seem to be the most informative so far.

[silencer_pl]

They've covered many stuff. There are few things that bother me though. Solomon stated that you start with 4 men per mission and 6 men in late game. So that means Skyranger can transport 4 men and avanger 6? How then are SHIVS replacing men ? Is it 4 men + 1 shiv or 1 shiv + 2 men ?

 

He also said in order to get a weapon you need to capture alien ? This might be very difficult on early stages.

 

I wish there was somekind of talk on Armor for XCom.

 

It is good to know that they are playing the game so this means we will definitely get very well done game.

[Bomb Bloke]

I would guess the HWPs aren't stored where the troopers sit, so the limitation on those will be independent of the trooper headcount limitation. Though that leaves the question of why the troopers can't sit there... maybe they hang under the dropship?

 

Not sure how plausible the weapon destruction thing is. The only logical way I can see for it to work is if the guns have some sort of technology that checks for live aliens in a certain radius, and causes them to blow up if none are found (simply being let go of doesn't work, because unconscious aliens will be doing that just as often as dead ones). Makes me wonder if researching an alien pistol will lead to an improved version of the motion scanner.

 

Also don't think much of the idea of only starting with a stun rod for collecting captives. Realistically speaking, X-COM would at least try stun darts; even if they don't initially work, after a few autopsies and tests on live subjects some ideas for improvements would start to surface.

[Space Voyager]

Looking for reasons as to why there aren't more soldiers in a Skyranger or why can't they sit where HWPs are may be pointless, the only reasonable answer is surely gameplay. If they allowed more, they would need bigger maps, more aliens, better alien AI, better pathfinding... A lot of better things. We should ask Firexis if an expansion would bring any of this.

[Pete]

I'm wondering if more troopers would simply make the maps take too long. Missions were a reasonable length in UFO, but could still go on for over an hour or more. In Apoc it got a bit ridiculous at times because the maps were so much bigger.

 

My bet is that they're trying to keep the missions to under an hour, which is fine if there are going to be more of them as part of a larger storyline (that's my hope anyway).

 

I'm just not so sure about Chrysalid's though as if your men are grouped too tightly then surely you cn lose most of your squad in one turn?

 

That said, I suspect they're trying to stop people doing my usual tactic on a daylight terror site of sending half the squad walking down the main road in a line. Suicidal, I know, but fun

[Bomb Bloke]

In Apocalypse, the extra troopers reduced the time you spent in a mission - You could cover more map area in less time. On top of that, it added some options on movement speed, and also allowed you to hand out orders to groups of units (and while those groups were "remembered" so you could quickly select them when you wanted them, regardless of whether they were on screen or not, you could redefine them on the fly as well).

 

That and real-time mode really sped things compared to how it could've been. The main obstacle was the map size - not so much the width/length, but the amount of floors you might need to sift through.

[Sorbicol]

Hi Chaps

 

Been a long time since I posted here I know, but just to say that I've been following all the news about Firaxis's vision for XCOM via RPS (and other outlets) and it's starting to feel to me that they've got the right ideas for the game, while having the courage to attempt something a bit newer with it. It'll be interesting to see how they balance it for smaller squads (although to be honest I don't think I've ever used more than 8 or so squaddies in any team on the original - plus tanks of course. I'm hoping the tanks in this new version are in addition to your squad and not a replacement for a squaddie.

 

Looks like we're going to get this for something a bit different and Xenonauts for something a little more Authentic. All in all not a bad year I think.

[FullAuto]

Could've done without the nonsense Pokémon comparison

 

I suspect it was made in jest.

 

They are, however, superbly engineered games, and a lot more gamers would be playing them if they were dressed up with different graphics. The problem is they're aimed at kids and it puts off a lot of people who consider gaming 'manly'.

[ShadowBlade]

Yeah, probably. Jake obviously replied in jest, but it was the initial observation irked me, since it didn't make any sense to begin with (and it's not the first time it's brought up). Don't get me wrong, I've played Pokemon games and they're great, but there's a billion better comparisons.

[Space Voyager]

My bet is that they're trying to keep the missions to under an hour, which is fine if there are going to be more of them as part of a larger storyline (that's my hope anyway).

 

I sure hope so. I'm ok with special missions that take longer, but having an average mission take an hour would probably mean I'd never play it through.

 

Apocalypse did have LARGE maps, but it also had real time option with a possibility to speed up time, which was phenomenal for finding that last alien egg stowed in some closet. I can not even imagine playing Apoc in TB mode, I'd have to shave between missions.

[silencer_pl]

They still were faster than infamous shipping routes in TFTD. Specially those cargo ones.

[Space Voyager]

:shudders:

[Thorondor]

Lead programmer Casey O'Toole speaketh...

 

 

::

 

[Space Voyager]

Mmmmm, these vids could be news posts. It is X-COM. https://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b348/SpaceVoyager/Smiley/notworthy.gif

[Pete]

Weeeeell... technically he's not saying anything new here.

 

I can understand why though - they don't want to spoil it after all.

 

I'm still very much hoping we don't see a Chrysalid until the first playthrough of the actual game. I'll have to lock myself away for a few days when it's released I think as I don't want to see it on any websites prior to encountering one down a dark alley.

[silencer_pl]

New stuff to watch