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Thorondor

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XCOM Enemy Unknown

 

A familiar foe makes its appearance in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and it's deadlier than ever. We remember him from his mid-air skulking days and now he's looking to surprise you with its speed and aggressiveness.

 

It's the Floater, in pain and looking to dish out some your way too. Acting fiercely and in packs these creatures are able to suddenly zip behind your front lines, in teleport-like fashion, to wreak havoc upon your more vulnerable squad members.

 

The exclusive preview comes from GameTrailers TV in their latest episode, and the introductions are made by Firaxis' Mr.Jake Solomon himself. Head on over, place that video playhead at the 13:28 mark and get ready because it's payback time!

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I've seen people in the comments opposed to the new design (it is a bit of a deviation from the original after all) however I think it was necessary to make him a bit more deadly as they always seemed like laser rifle fodder to me rather than a serious threat.

 

It's nice to see them giving each enemy more specific traits and Floaters, assuming they're still relatively easy to kill as an early-game bad guy still, will be far more deadly for hunting in packs.

 

You could post a link for some people are lazy tongue.png

 

He did, unless that wasn't there before, but you can't link to the specific scene.

 

Oh, and well done Thor for skirting around the whole "teleport" terminology until we know more - it doesn't sound right in the commentary that accompanies that specific video so we'll err on the side of caution and assume they just move very fast, which they do in the vid :)

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https://ui01.gamespot.com/2890/quakewars3_2.jpg

 

I don't know if it's something subconscious on the part of the art team at Firaxis or not, as influences go, but, as before, with Mutons, I see a lot of Strogg in Floaters here. huh.png

 

::

 

It even brought back to mind Quake II's Icarus.

 

https://images.wikia.com/quake/images/3/39/Icarus_2.png

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Is it still going to be called a "Floater"? I'm not saying the redesign is bad by any means, but I have a hard time meshing such a serene name with those things. :laugh:

 

I notice they seem to stick close to the ground, which opens them up to grenade attacks and would generally make it easier to use explosive splash damage on them. Will be interesting to see if they can maintain a decent amount of height above ground, or if their abilities boil down to being able to quickly "hop" over obstacles.

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Like Thorondor, I'm a bit concerned about the "strogg-ness" of some aliens, which might turn up to be more forcibly cyborgized humans than actual aliens. I thought it was just the Muton, but now the Floater as well... Cybernetic 'enhancement' and genetic manipulation were definitely in the aliens' doctrine in the original games, but they mostly did it among themselves. I'd rather they kept the assimilation to a minimum: we should primarily be fighting aliens, after all.
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True, quite some Q influence in the new X-COM. I'm one of those who does not really like the new Floater. Not only because it is a major deviation from the original - and I'm sure they could make Floater as deadly as they wanted, even if it was visually just the same - but also because it looks half a creature. Still, I'll have my guys shoot it down gladly.
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They did look a bit comical before - "Look! We're aliens in capes balancing on exercise balls and our favourite past time is aiming badly and happily falling to barrages of gunfire" :D

 

I'm not 100% sure about the redesign, but they do look like more of a menace now at least.

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If you bounce up and down on a space hopper too hard you turn purple and stay in a permanent state of levitation - they're not even aliens.

 

How did Microprose not see a market for a space hopper based on the original floater? It's genius and you get to wear a cape as well.

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The new Floater might be a half-alien, half-machine cyborg.. but it's still half-alien. Come on now.

 

No, it's half-machine, half mutilated human. I don't see any "alien-ness" beyond the technology.

 

And yeah, the old Floater wasn't really scary, but then again neither was the Muton, being just a purple guy in green spandex. But scariness isn't really the point I was trying to make. The problem is I want aliens! The occasional modded human slave of sorts is good, but I really hope it's not a trend. We have two specimens of that already.

 

Segway + cape + purple face paint = awesome XCOM party Floater costume.

 

That's fantastic. grin.gif

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No, it's half-machine, half mutilated human. I don't see any "alien-ness" beyond the technology.

 

Er, quite a few of the original designs are open to that same criticism. Floaters, Sectoids, Ethereals, Mutons etc were all humanoid and very human in appearance. It's an integral fault with people's imaginations, because they can't be arsed to put any effort in, they just make aliens as basically "humans but a bit different." They want them to be an evil faction of humans rather than actual aliens, which makes telling the story easy.

 

If real aliens turned up they would be so different that we could have difficulty realising they were 'alive' at all. Look at the biodiversity available on Earth. Despite the fact it has all sprung from the same origin, we've ended up with a huge variety of life. How much is a human like a squid, or a banana, or a virus, or a bee? Aliens would be many many times further removed from us than the most different Earth species you can think of. They wouldn't be like insects, or reptiles, or mammals, or anything you can envision easily.

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