XCOM 2 - Interview & Trailer Rewind

IGN has a new interview with Firaxis about XCOM 2 only being released on the PC.

“Yeah, we figured that would surprise some people,” said Lead Producer Garth DeAngelis.

A focus on PC was the only way to make the XCOM 2 that Creative Director Jake Solomon and his team envisioned when they sat down to talk after completing Enemy Unknown. “When we looked at what we wanted to do with the sequel, we had all these very, very ambitious goals,” said Solomon. On his must-have list were high-fidelity characters and environments, better-looking destruction, physically based rendering, and the crown jewel he’d wanted to get into Enemy Unknown but couldn’t: procedurally generated maps. “To do that, we had to use all of our studio expertise … and our expertise here is PC. That's our home, and that's where we're really comfortable.”

Focusing all of Firaxis’ efforts on the PC made logistical sense to DeAngelis, too. “Internally, with a relatively small team for the size of the game that we are, to be able to say we can focus on our platform that the studio has a pedigree for, and that X-COM: UFO Defense has a pedigree for, as PC-only… it just made a lot of sense, and that's how we wanted to dedicate our time.” XCOM 2 runs on a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 3.5 (Firaxis’ customizations are too extensive to easily move to Unreal 4), which in some ways has been rewritten to the point of being “unrecognizable,” and it’s much simpler to make that work on one platform than three or more at once.

They also have some developer commentary about the announcement trailer.

This week we got our first look at XCOM 2 and the war to free Earth from alien occupation by way of an action-filled cinematic trailer depicting an XCOM attack on an Advent and alien patrol. You can probably pick up on many of its hints on your own (watch the original trailer below if you missed it), but to dig deeper and unearth some juicier secrets, I sat down with the brains behind the game: Creative Director Jake Solomon and Lead Producer Garth DeAngelis. Watch the video above to hear them elaborate on how the classes and abilities shown will affect gameplay in XCOM 2.

I'm surprised that trailer hasn't been featured in the news feed, or did I miss something?

Anyways, I'm really not sure what to think so far. I don't care for the 20 year jump into the future, and I definitely don't like the 'Earth has been subjugated' scenario.

And the guy with the big sword? Sorry, but that's just not XCOM.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm surprised that trailer hasn't been featured in the news feed, or did I miss something?

Anyways, I'm really not sure what to think so far. I don't care for the 20 year jump into the future, and I definitely don't like the 'Earth has been subjugated' scenario.

And the guy with the big sword? Sorry, but that's just not XCOM.

Well, the original X-Com and TFtD both had melee weapons, so I don't think it's that big a deal.

Originally Posted by JDR13
And the guy with the big sword? Sorry, but that's just not XCOM.

Yeah, but they explained it a bit in another post that Couch put up on the news (Tanx, Couch). It's a 20 minute interview with 2 Firaxis guys going thru that trailer bit-by-bit. They've got one class out of many, the ranger, that's got melee specials. That's one of his things. So melee is just a small subset, although in that interview they made it sound like melee might be more valuable than you might think.

I'm trying not to judge it with so little having been shown yet, but I'm just not getting a good vibe here.

I still have faith in Firaxis though…

Swords are effective enough in combat. In a melee fight the guy with sword is going to beat the guy with the assault rifle. The issue is often getting into melee range in the first place. I agree that putting in swords in Xcom 2 is silly. Knives as a melee option would have been cool, but swords no. There is a reason that modern soldiers don’t carry swords around. The extra weight encumbers you further. Switching between a sword and an assault rifle takes too long. Having a sword strapped to your back can knock over trash cans and make noise when are trying to sneak.

I don’t really care if there is sword in the game or not though. As long as everything is properly balanced to provide interesting and challenging gameplay, that’s what matter in a turn base strategy game. We’ll see how the game really is when gameplay videos start coming out. Trailers are just hype pieces anyway, they never show any actual gameplay.

In Xenonauts they use Shields vs Plasma weapons, how is that any less stupid?!