Stay On Overwatch

[Thorondor]

XCOM Enemy Unknown

Firaxis is about to strike again with more XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Namely with novel footage of their upcoming game to be aired live and with none other than Lead Designer Jake Solomon doing the honours.

https://www.strategycore.co.uk/site/assets/files/5263/news-thumbnail_xcom_eu_lv_strm_bnr.jpg

 

Here's the blurb:

 

This footage will be brand new stuff you've never seen before, so fans are definitely going to want to tune in. As always, we'll be answering some questions from the Twitch.tv chatroom as well.

 

Be sure to head over to the 2K channel on Twitch.tv and click the "Follow" button on the top left. You'll receive an email as soon as we go live. Another good way to make sure you don't miss anything is to leave the channel open in a tab in the background. As soon as we go live, you'll hear the sound from the stream and can switch on over!

 

The stream will start less than 8 hours from now at 2K's channel and will also have Producer Garth DeAngelis and 2K Greg in attendance, so stay on your toes and don't miss out.

[Space Voyager]

:sets an alarm:

 

Hot damn, they have me by the balls.

[silencer_pl]

:sets an alarm:

 

Hot damn, they have me by the balls.

 

and nipples too

[Thorondor]

Live Stream over - that was pretty cool indeed. Terror mission, all sorts of abilities in play, zombies, the works!

 

::

 

And, let's not forget we got teased with a demo!

[Pete]

I caught a bit of the first mission and all of the second and it was all pretty awesome.

 

I'm not even sure I have any more questions about the game to ask at the next interview

 

"Impossible Ironman" mode intrigues me. It's a cross between Impossible mode which is difficult I presume, and Ironman in which you can't save by the sounds of it. The fact Jake was saying someone there had got further than he thought possible alleviates my fear that the game wouldn't be hard enough.

 

They made it look a bit easy on Regular mode, but I can see there's a lot more margin for error too if you're a player of the first game and you get over-excited about being able to run a long way in one turn, especially if you don't use enough cover.

 

Health, Will, Offense and Defense appeared to be the only in-mission soldier stats that I saw. That's been simplified I guess, but it's down to the essentials I suppose.

 

The other nice thing was that although laser rifles and other weapons have no shortage of ammo, the reloading takes a whole turn. I also like the fact that unlike the original, the laser charge runs down and thus those weapons require reloading too. Technically I suppose it might be a bit easier to code the game so that all weapons require a reload, but I like it as the Laser Rifle could almost be too useful in the original.

 

I also loved the battlefield scanner device that they said essentially replaced electro-flares. I think that was alluded to in our last interview, and it's been shown in that playthrough as a hand-held scanner that you throw into an area which then reveals units in that area.

 

Also worth noting for those that missed it - that appears to be the first non-scripted playthrough footage, so was an accurate representation of the game. I liked it.

[Thorondor]

And, also to those who missed out - go absolutely crazy - the live stream session can be accessed here.

::

 

@Pete: I actually loved all the little details - the minutely desctructible surroundings, the rats (some birds even I think). That and death animations, aliens and human.

[Space Voyager]

And, also to those who missed out - go absolutely crazy - the live stream session can be accessed here.

::

 

@Pete: I actually loved all the little details - the minutely desctructible surroundings, the rats (some birds even I think). That and death animations, aliens and human.

 

I saw it until the beginning of the terror mission so far, the rest will have to wait for three days. DAMN work in the field. ANYway, love those details as well. A car passing by, grey market... [sN]I'll be back![/sN]

[CapnKill]

Do we know if there will be a game mode where the Alien HPs will not be visible? I would definitely prefer that.

[ShadowBlade]

Let me recall from memory, since I noticed a couple of inquiries here were answered at some point by the devs.

 

"Impossible Ironman" mode intrigues me. It's a cross between Impossible mode which is difficult I presume, and Ironman in which you can't save by the sounds of it.

 

In Ironman mode the game autosaves for you whenever something important happens (i.e. a squaddie kicks it), and you can't save manually. It's independent from the difficulty setting, being something that's either on or off. So you could play on Normal plus Ironman or, as you mentioned, Impossible plus Ironman.

 

Do we know if there will be a game mode where the Alien HPs will not be visible? I would definitely prefer that.

 

Jake once said things like visible alien HP could be disabled. I don't think he specified whether it was a standalone setting or something that came along with higher difficulty levels.

[AstaSyneri]

Fantastic showing. This game is absolutely going to rock. It's just unfortunate that the developers have to jump through so many hoops to try to make the general gaming populace aware of it.

 

The user in front of the keyboard wasn't very skilled, I thought - he overextended his forces without any thought about tactics (you don't want to have Snipers in the first line, and there ARE classes that can soak up some damage and survive. But then I am looking forward to Ironman - and that makes you more cautious.

 

If you like Achievements (or trophies) and are a completist, you'll have to beat the game on either Classic Ironman or Impossible Ironman. That's going to be a challenge .

[Pete]

I don't think he was as experienced as others on the dev team, but I think that A lot of the less sensible moves were made to show you what happens.

 

Would have been a bit less variety if they'd killed all the aliens without taking any damage whatsoever