XCOM2 - Glorious PC Exclusive (for now)

degrassinoel

Figured we might as well have our own thread for it, where we can be superior and bask in our own glory

I cannot feckin WAIT til November!

http://xcom.com/#overview

Reveal Trailer

The story this time is somewhat different to Enemy Unknown,

Earth Surrenders
The governments of Earth, despite heavy resistance and some major victories finally gave up and dismantled the XCOM project and surrendered to the Aliens. The Aliens have integrated themselves into our society. 20 years later, the roles have changed.
We are the invading force now, the resistance.

Seems like Firaxis have been listening too, they've been plugging Procedurally Generated maps as a selling point. something that was imho sorely missing from their original.

You'll be playing on the run - so no static base (at least that we know of yet) but there is mention of the
Avenger

A stolen alien cargo vessel which also appears in the reveal trailer, it'll have room for inventory, scientists and engineers and upgrades, including the ship's rooms.

There's going to be 5 soldier classes, including engineer, ranger, sniper (you see those three in the reveal) not sure about the last two or if there will be more than 5, but 5 is the official number atm.

• You can carry fallen comrades to the extraction point now

Stealth plays a major factor - you'll be able to walk around the map (within reason) before combat begins and use concealment to ambush the aliens. So it wont be entirely like how combat worked in EU/EW. The aliens will become hostile when you take your first shot. You can also leave the mission after the primary objective is fulfilled or you can hang around and do secondaries.

• The three known enemies at the moment are the vipers/snakewoman, sectoid and advent.

Vipers work similar to the stealth drones things in EW, they can incapacitate a single soldier in the same way through constriction or they can use their frog-like tongue to pull a soldier of cover, they also have a nasty venomous bite.

Sectoids appear to be lot stronger than they were in EU, they've been augmented with human DNA - they're taller, stronger and have more potent mental abilities than before.

Advent appear to quislings, human forces working directly for the aliens as security/army.

• It'll have proper mod support unlike EU/EW.

And multiplayer is back too

fairly sure there's going to be a tonne more info at E3.

Cannot wait to sink another thousand hours into XCOM

VinLieger

5 months away!!!! I want more announcements like this with the release within the year

Sabre Man

Detailed article on IGN:
http://ie.ign.com/articles/2015/06/02/xcom-2-welcoming-our-new-alien-overlords

Dair76

degrassinoel wrote: »

Seems like Firaxis have been listening too, they've been plugging Procedurally Generated maps as a selling point. something that was imho sorely missing from their original.

This is HUGE. Really excited for this.

degrassinoel

Same here, as it's just been very briefly described in the IGN video, it sounds like they have it working right too, can only imagine how difficult it would be to get something so roguelike fit into a proper XCOM campaign - i'm looking forward to hearing more about it

degrassinoel

Some more on the reveal here with Jake Soloman and Garth DeAngelis the lead designers of XCOM2

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2015/06/03/xcom-2-reveal-trailer-rewind-theater?watch

Reiver

What a lovely surprise to stumble across.

Still playing through Enemy Within. I thinking downloading The Long War will keep me active till this comes out. I hope my laptop can handle it!

Dave_The_Sheep

Reiver wrote: »

What a lovely surprise to stumble across.

Still playing through Enemy Within. I thinking downloading The Long War will keep me active till this comes out. I hope my laptop can handle it!

Playing the Long War, I don't think your laptop will break first.

Nody

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Playing the Long War, I don't think your laptop will break first.

I disagree; his laptop will break when he does a punch through screen moment on a mission :P

degrassinoel

some more official word on the Procedural Generation used in XCOM2, this is so exciting ))


*it's an IGN link, but Firaxis have officially endorsed them as their spokespeople i guess (see here) and here on IGN

Imagine a map in XCOM 2 as a quilt, with holes where a pre-constructed modular building will be placed – those are the parcels. The holes are big, small, and medium-sized, with a range of unique buildings that could fit into each size. These buildings, and the holes in which they’re socketed, are the parcels of the system.

“You might get a gas station next to a park, next to a parking lot in one playthrough, and that's your experience,” DeAngelis said. “Even though the ‘quilt’ is the same, all of these elements are procedural, mini set piece bases.”

Dair76

Sounds like a good approach!

Hopefully the destructible ceilings and floors work well, from both a tactical and aesthetic point of view.

degrassinoel

that will definitely be the first thing i try out with the grenadier

jaxdasher

No more teleporting enemies!

Gbear

I loved XCOM in small doses.

Just so bloody frustrating. I eventually had to accept that the only way I was going to make it through was extra-judicious use of save scumming.

I'll almost certainly pick this up at some stage even if it does drive me demented.

If they found a way to make losses open up new opportunites rather than just be outright bad, it might mitigate some of that frustration - get bonuses for taking revenge on the alien who killed your soldier, get bonus research for bringing back their body (studying your armour and tactics effectiveness could be the fluff), give your squad a buff after losing a high-ranking officer to reflect how pissed they are, give more opportunity to find ready made bad-asses in the form of rescue missions and so on.

Getting an unsalvageable situation in a game you've put 15 hours into is not, IMO, great design. That works for something like FTL, especially seeing as you can unlock new ships regardless whether you win or not. Even in failure you can achieve secondary successes - I think that's an important element to have in any perma-death based game.

Kiith

I save scummed my way through it as well. I know it's practically cheating, but i just couldn't handle getting XCommed (missing a 94% crit, then getting 1 hit crit while behind cover). Anger like no other :P

Gbear

Kiith wrote: »

I save scummed my way through it as well. I know it's practically cheating, but i just couldn't handle getting XCommed (missing a 94% crit, then getting 1 hit crit while behind cover). Anger like no other :P

It kinda sucks because you stop playing properly.

You start off restarting when bull**** happens but eventually you just start playing stupidly and recklessly and don't really get the true experience anymore.

It feels like they need to meet you half way - punish bad play but somehow soften the harder and more frustrating edges of the game - at least on some game modes.

Some sadists will always want Ironman mode.:P

Kirby

Well the fact that you can revive a dead squad member now will help alleviate that.

If some fecker gets a massive lucky crit, you dont reload. You just drag him back to the dropship and stick him in the XCOM lazarus pit. :P

degrassinoel

Gbear wrote: »

Some sadists will always want Ironman mode.:P

lol man, i always play ironman, but there's no point for me doing it on anything other than normal - it's hard enough at that difficulty for me, classic is insanely hard to ironman and cruel, it's cruel too, really cruel lol

I did a few ironman playthroughs on twitch with some boardsies names tagged onto soldiers, iirc most of them lived to the end

jaxdasher

I can not play on Ironman Classic, its the only level that feels right to me. Im not saying that I coasted through it, I started over and over just to get that perfect early season and I love the way it is. I lost a few good squads but I think it was justified loss. You got to take the bad with the good on Ironman Classic.

degrassinoel

Official news is steadily leaking through from IGN - their latest, an interview with Garth DeAngelis and Jake Soloman again.. says that they are using the unreal 3.5 engine, heavily modified to the point of being almost unrecognisable.

They also mention the reason it's PC only, and that it's possible it may have a console launch but it's not something they're giving thought to at the moment.

they go into some sales figures on steam and speculation on console sales, but it's next to impossible to garner accurate numbers for consoles and 2K arent giving them out either. Apparently, according to steam, 2.6million copies were sold through steam since enemy within's launch, it's maintained a top 100 slot since launch and still averages at between 3000 & 4000 players at any given time.

All the details here

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2015/06/05/why-xcom-2-had-to-be-pc-exclusive

degrassinoel

even moar modding info here, official too

degrassinoel

Meet the ranger, and the Specialist very brief lowdowns on the Ranger & Specialist classes, and two of it's top tier talents, sounds fun

degrassinoel

some more IGN news on XCOM2, there's not much news in it today tbh, but..

Central Officer Bradford will be back as confirmed in the article

Firaxis was willing to confirm there’s at least one piece of the old XCOM that’s survived to bridge the gap between Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2: Central Officer Bradford, your right-hand man from the XCOM base, will be back. “It’ll be cool to show Central, as he’s 20 years older,” said Solomon. “He’s a great face for XCOM, because he’s gone through the difficulties that XCOM has, and so he’s a different character as well. He’s as hardened as the rest of the XCOM troops have become.”

degrassinoel

some more tidbits on the new aliens

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2015/06/12/meet-the-xcom-2-sectoid-and-viper-ign-first?watch

Sectoids and Vipers/Snakemen/women

degrassinoel

Xcom 2 live stream tonight from E3, around 12.30 in the am showing off the first gameplay to be seen from the game so far

degrassinoel

yay, it looks awesome!

i think it's the same as the enemy unknown tutorial mission reveal, but it gives a really good idea of what to expect

Dair76

That looks great - basically employing guerilla tactics against the invaders. Every new mechanic looks like it's going to add variety and replayability. And this is the vanilla, unmodded game!

Kiith

That looked brilliant. Wonder how much of it was scripted (i.e. Berserker hits unit who smashes into car). Can't wait to see more info on the abilities of the new units. Hacking will probably be hugely important.

I hope there's a way to got back to concealment after a few goes.

Dair76

I'd say it's a tutorial mission, hence the scripted bits.

Edit: degrassinoel already said that.

Gbear

It's interesting to see how they're building on the old game.

It looks very much like a huge amount of development of the mechanics and not just a shallow reskinning or a new campaign.

degrassinoel

Garth looks wrecked at that lol - i like Garth, he's a sound dude. Some interesting questions answered in that quick interview, and XCOM apoc redux is put to bed nearly straight away

Dair76

Total conversion mods could make this playable for years! I am excite.

Azza

Having beat X-Com EW on Ironman Classic which was quite challenging, I'm a little dissapointed that the effort I went into doing is not being acknowledged by the sequel not following on from its ending.

From the interviews the developers are stating that X-Com 2 follows the premise that X-Com never got the chance to develop high tech weapons, they where simply overwhelmed by the Aliens.

It doesn't even appear to follow on from a losing X-Com EU/EW scenario where the Council is being controlled by the Aliens and X-Com has been disabanded as a result.

Nevertheless I'm looking forward to this game.

degrassinoel

I dont think the canon for the game is properly setup yet, Jake Soloman's remarks about impossible ironman difficulty being where the game is getting it's premise from might be being taken slightly out of context atm. I dont think that's specifically set in stone for the lore of XCOM2.

My own theory on it is that XCOM was a successful operation which prevented the annihilation of earth by the first wave and the temple ship - but it was literally the first wave. Upon seeing the size of the invasion force, earth's government capitulated and surrendered knowing that even with equal levels of technology we could never hope to withstand the sheer numeric superiority they had. Couple that with the fact that if they had wanted to destroy the human race, they could have done it from a high orbit without any resistance. They wanted the human species, and they weren't going to stop.

Fast forward twenty years and you have the advent cities and alien occupation, with only XCOM standing in the way of total dominance of our species. The fading remnants of an unpopular conflict have a last chance to sew the seeds of resistance and once again tear the aliens a new assh**e.


I think i might need to play enemy within again before November

Azza

I'll post up the link later when I find it, but one of the developers said the premise is that X-Com never won, never developed beyond ballastic weapons, they where just overwhelmed.

Your theory is also what I would assume would be the natural story progression from X-Com. I hope thats how they follow up.

degrassinoel

that'd be this one here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC8qfi_NnTc

He does put it out there that it's the reason for XCOM2, but like i say i don't think that's set in stone just yet - they had considered moving on from EW with another story arc but felt that resetting XCOM to the very basics of what made it awesome was the best option, that being said.. we know feckall about the XCOM program's storyline in 2 atm, bar Central Officer Bradford is back with some of the old XCOM veteran soldiers, we know their purpose in the sequel but not the 20 year gap since first contact

degrassinoel

just watching the E3 dissection video on twitch atm, and another tidbit of info
http://www.twitch.tv/firaxisgames - they'll upload it to youtube in a while if you've missed it

Overwatch will work sequentially. That means that before in EU/EW when you had a few units on overwatch and they all seen the same alien move, they would all fire on that single alien even after it was dead.

Now, it'll work sequentially - when a target dies/or doesnt, the sequence changes to the next nearest target. So theoretically you could have 6 on overwatch against 6 alien targets and kill all of them instead of just one.

degrassinoel

Nifty screenshot from the XCOM page




And a pre-visualisation video (gives a good idea how the game is being developed)

Awesome!

Azza

IGN has some details on the human enemies in the game, the Advent.
They are not directly connected to Exalt from Enemy Within.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7vPrPvNLgo

The_Valeyard

Really looking forward to this.

Wow, November will be a busy month for gaming!!!

Nody

G2A has it up for pre order at 35 EUR; anyone know of a better offer?

Azza

Same on G2Play.

ancapailldorcha

My laptop can run the original. I'm hoping it'll run this as well.

degrassinoel

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

My laptop can run the original. I'm hoping it'll run this as well.

It should, they're using their own heavily modified unreal engine again
Specs arent out yet, but i'd guess they'd be around the same as enemy within

ancapailldorcha

Fingers crossed. I can't remember the last time I wanted a new release so badly.

degrassinoel

November is gonna be awesome this year cannot wait!

ancapailldorcha

You're not the only one. I hope they don't ruin the release with rotten pre-ordering nonsense.

degrassinoel

Firaxis are fairly decent with their pricing, even on steam - i doubt there'll be much of anything but the stock game itself considering that a major part of it is full mod support and it being pc exclusive at launch. I dont normally buy special editions, but i would for this

ancapailldorcha

Enemy Unknown seemed to have a fairly reasonable release so I'm sure I'm fretting about nothing.

degrassinoel

hah, the only fretting i'm doing is watching the calendar and asking why it's not November yet

It'll be grand

degrassinoel

Firaxis and IGN at it again, 21 years of XCOM history article here

Dunno if i'll ever agree with their choice to run with IGN for stuff like this, i really just dont like the people on that site, half-clued-reviews for most part and by the looks of it IGN paid for exclusive rights to news from Firaxis which will inherently bias their eventual "first" review of the game.

All that paranoid pessimism aside, that's a sh!tload of rollercoasting history behind XCOM