XCOM: Enemy Within - Interview @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Rock, Paper, Shotgun  interviews Senior Game Designer Anand Gupta of XCOM: Enemy Within.

RPS: During the presentation, Enemy Within was described as a ‘Civ-style’ expansion. Is that a Firaxis staple now and what exactly do you mean by it?

Gupta: I describe it as same stage, more actors, more sets, more props. It’s not a prequel, it’s not an additional episode on the end of the game. It’s the same alien invasion as in Enemy Unknown, but we’ve added more variables and more challenges. At Firaxis, we make these big strategy games and we structure them so that they are accessible but still complex. When you have these games, especially XCOM which has the tactical and the strategy component, the way to expand it is not in bits and pieces, it’s to do a lot all at the same time, all integrated into the campaign.

This is one of the things that makes DLC very hard for a game like XCOM. It’s a little easier for Civ because Civ is not asymmetric, but XCOM is very asymmetric. Even making decent DLC for Civ is very challenging, but there are more options as to how it can be expanded than with XCOM. For this game, we prefer to make Brave New World and Gods & Kings style expansions, and that’s what Enemy Within is. It’s a comprehensive set of new content.

Here at Gamescom, we’re talking mostly about tactical stuff, but we know that the spirit of XCOM is that it has both, the strategic and the tactical, feeding into each other in interesting ways. Missions in one affect the other and you can’t tank either one or you’re in trouble. We know that the spirit of XCOM dictates that we expand both of those things.