ysbreker

XCOM 2

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I hope I can still rename everyone. I did a great Enemy Unknown game where all the characters were friends of mine and I would tag them in screenshots of the deaths on facebook.

 

According to one of the IGN previews, the full customisation is still there. You can even change a soldier's nationality and swap individual armour pieces. Changing nationality is especially nice for putting your friends in, since now I don't have to keep recruiting soldiers until I end up with enough Scottish women.

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I just saw the preview. Argh! Awesome! 

 

really need to finish the Xcom but I always lose enthusiasm after I have a party wipe. I then come back a few months later, and restart because I need to be reminded how to play. 

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really need to finish the Xcom but I always lose enthusiasm after I have a party wipe. I then come back a few months later, and restart because I need to be reminded how to play. 

 

It's a deep game, I was still learning new things in the final final mission of my first playthrough. I savescummed all the way, not necessarily for cheating but mostly for seeing if my dudes could move there and still do that or how this upgrade or gear behaved. I still needed savescumming on my second playthrough trying out the different equipment I chose that time round. 

 

I'm attempting CI these days, it's going slow. Classic Thin Men don't give a shit, just fuck you up.

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I got way further in my iron man play through than any other. It was more enjoyable. I remember I hit a point in my last attempt where the aliens suddenly upped the ante, while I was trying to stabilise my income. When they introduce the robots and berzerkers the difficulty feels intense.

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FUCK.

The most obvious change resulting from those conversations is how the team is optimizing the interface to be mouse-and-keyboard friendly, moving UI elements and grouping them logically so that buttons we’re likely to press one after the other aren’t placed on opposite sides of the screen. “It will certainly be recognizable, but there isn't one UI widget that's the same,” said Solomon. We’ll also see more tactical information (such as detailed explanations of why your chance to hit is increased or decreased) displayed on the tactical interface, since Firaxis can now count on players sitting closer to their PC monitors and being able to read smaller text. And though Firaxis plans to add it in the future, the current plan is to launch without gamepad support.

Nothing quite like reading a paragraph like that, which boils down to "We decided to double down on all the elements you hate and are trying to get away from".

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FUCK.

Nothing quite like reading a paragraph like that, which boils down to "We decided to double down on all the elements you hate and are trying to get away from".

 

And I read that and think, "Fuck yeah!" 

 

 

I wonder, since they're talking about going the resistance route, if there will be room to tell a few more personal stories of your soldiers. In the interview, it seems like they're trying to shift away from a military complex sending hundreds of marines into the grinder, and that could be one way of doing it.

 

Having it be a resistance group does seem to be ripe to dig into some more personal stories, but on the same hand, I'm not sure how you meld that with the replayability of XCOM without those feeling stale after you've seen them a few times. 

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Considering that the premise for this game seems to be "all those XCOM campaigns you lost are canon," I really hope there's a mission where you have to raid the now-ruined former XCOM base for supplies.

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And I read that and think, "Fuck yeah!"

It's just that I don't like gaming sitting at my actual PC. I play basically everything on my couch with a controller and my PC piping video out to my TV.

I will play stuff actually sitting at my PC, but it's just a real kick in the pants that a game I really, really want to play has gone backwards.

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It's just that I don't like gaming sitting at my actual PC. I play basically everything on my couch with a controller and my PC piping video out to my TV.

I will play stuff actually sitting at my PC, but it's just a real kick in the pants that a game I really, really want to play has gone backwards.

 

Understood, I guess it's just a matter of perspectives. Your idea of backwards is another person's idea of forwards. I know a lot of people complained about the UI in the first game. I'm personally ambivalent about it.

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I also play the vast majority of my PC games on my TV, but for stuff that requires KB+M I just have a board I sit on my lap to comfortably use them.  I've also gotten used to sometimes having to make some config file changes to do things like bump up text size if it's not something in game you can change.  But depending on the game/TV size, even more information in smaller font crammed onto a screen can be a game breaker.  The first time I tried to play Space Rangers 2, it was the font size that made me put it down. 

 

Also, the Steam Controller should be out by the time this is out, so maybe that will still let it be super controller friendly?

 

Edited to add: And one of the reasons I think Fuck Yeah at that description is actually the speed of play.  I'm excited they're thinking about how UI design and button layout affects game speed.  Once I went over to PC, I was surprised at how quicker a campaign was vs the 360 version.  Some things you need to do might only be delayed by 2-3 seconds per action with the old UI and a controller, but when you make thousands of actions in a game, it can add up to hours of playtime. 

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Any hint of adding undoable moves or at least a consistent understanding of what moving into a square will allow you?

One of the worst parts of EU was moving a soldier into position to take out an enemy, only to discover that apparently it's not an adequate spot for line of sight. The soldier can't do anything else in their turn and now the alien gets to move in on the idiot that ran so far they couldn't see the alien any more.

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Also there's like a couple dozen instances burned into my brain of accidentally sending a soldier just to the left or right of a piece of cover.

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Also there's like a couple dozen instances burned into my brain of accidentally sending a soldier just to the left or right of a piece of cover.

those kinds of mistakes made me a save scummer

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One of the articles mentioned a "waypoint system" or something to that effect, so it sounds like you'll be able to set a specific path for soldiers to follow instead of having to rush directly through a poison cloud.

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SO, I've played Vanilla, but i haven't played Enemy Within or the Long War. Should I go ahead and do an Enemy Within playthrough, or just skip straight to Long War?

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those kinds of mistakes made me a save scummer

Those made me play on Normal, because I got tired of reloading. But yeah, the UI for the first game was pretty awful. When I have more trouble knowing if I'll get line of sight on an alien by moving to a square in XCOM than I do in the original X-COM, something is wrong. (And of course it doesn't help that if I guess wrong, I'm up shit creek.)

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SO, I've played Vanilla, but i haven't played Enemy Within or the Long War. Should I go ahead and do an Enemy Within playthrough, or just skip straight to Long War?

 

Enemy Within is great in itself but it doesn't really prepare you for Long War, it's a completely different game.

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SO, I've played Vanilla, but i haven't played Enemy Within or the Long War. Should I go ahead and do an Enemy Within playthrough, or just skip straight to Long War?

 

If you're really interested in the difficulty and length of Long War, I'd read up briefly about what Enemy Within adds to the game (Meld, Genetic Enhancements, Cybernetic soliders, and EXALT) so they don't catch you by surprise, then start Long War. I still haven't made it to the point where Meld has even mattered in a Long War game, but if you do manage to hold it together that long you can really screw yourself if you haven't been collecting it since the start.

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IGN article on Xcom 2 and modding~

 

http://m.ign.com/articles/2015/06/08/xcom-2s-exciting-modding-potential-ign-first

 

Normally I would be skeptical of dev/publisher's promise of good modding scene, but given how Jake Solomon often name dropped Long War (instead of the usual "we love mods" as in nameless, ambiguous stuff) and Firaxis' history on mod support (especially recent support, they gave Long War modders lot of direct support), I pretty much buy this promise at face value.

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I actually managed to miss that there was a trailer for this back in that original announcement (I keep a script going that disables all auto-play videos).




I like that we'll probably see more missions in population centers where civilian casualties are a thing you will have to account for. Also, adding drones is of course the most logical thing. I'll be interested to see how disposable they are. Having comparatively cheap drones you could treat as disposable could be incredibly useful during some encounters.

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If you're really interested in the difficulty and length of Long War, I'd read up briefly about what Enemy Within adds to the game (Meld, Genetic Enhancements, Cybernetic soliders, and EXALT) so they don't catch you by surprise, then start Long War. I still haven't made it to the point where Meld has even mattered in a Long War game, but if you do manage to hold it together that long you can really screw yourself if you haven't been collecting it since the start.

 

Thanks, sounds like it is Long War then. I had an idea of what was in store for me with Within, but i was thinking it might just be Enemy Unknown with a few extra (cool) things thrown in. Long War sounds like a cool new experience which already has the EU stuff baked in.

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So they kind explained what happen that lead to the alien victory

 

spoilers

Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/11/xcom-2s-bleak-future-why-impossible-iron-man-mode-is-canon-ign-first

 

“We've all had our losses with XCOM, and so we use kind of a light touch. But the idea is that XCOM never made it out of conventional weapons; that the aliens came in overwhelming force and overwhelming numbers,” he said. “To say Impossible Iron Man is canon is perfect. We think that’s basically the experience that XCOM had.”

....

 

“It’s interesting, because when we thought about it, we asked ‘Out of all the millions of times Enemy Unknown was played, how many of them resulted in this story line?’ And we think half maybe, maybe more?” Considering only 27% of players on Steam have beaten it on any difficulty level, that’s a generous estimate."

 

Yeah, while I kind expect something with the character that stays behind (since there they hint that there was even greater threat coming, but I understand that might result in more of the same), the "Impossible Ironman is canon" does work really well.

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In all the excitement yesterday, I completely forgot that IGN showed the first XCOM 2 gameplay.

 

 

 

Thoughts:

Bradford is looking rough. As is required for gritty dark sequels, he's grown a terrible beard.

 

You start off in Concealment, which means the aliens don't know you're there and you can position your squad for an ambush. The red tiles show you where enemies will detect you. When you attack an enemy you'll break concealment and they'll run for cover, but you can set up your team in Overwatch to automatically shoot at them before they get to cover.

 

The movement range for soldiers looks huge now, which I guess means the maps are also alot bigger.

 

I like that your soldiers can appear on wanted posters in the cities, that's a neat touch.

 

It looks like every mission now also has an objective to accomplish that's randomly placed on the map. That could be something like hacking a computer, sabotaging something or rescuing someone.

 

Holy fuck, Vipers! Snake ladies can pull soldiers out of cover and I guess straight-up kill them too.

 

The soldiers with swords can rush up on enemies and slice them up, but it looks like that leaves them exposed and out of cover. They mentioned a perk that lets those soldiers move again after killing an enemy with the sword.

 

That African soldier has an accent! I always wanted to hear more accents for soldiers from different countries, I hope they get a good variety.

 

Enemy soldiers can drop in as reinforcements at any point in a mission. I hope they don't drop in behind your squad and get a free flanking shot to kill them all because that seems lame.

 

The specialist can hack stuff. Depending on his/her Tech stat they can get different effects from hacking something. Sounds like you can hack anything that's considered "robotic".

 

Aliens look nasty! I guess you're not supposed to take them on until later in the game where you have the equipment to deal with them.

 

When you want to leave a mission, you place a waypoint for the Skyranger. If you want to recover dead/wounded soldiers and their equipment you have to have another soldier carry them to the landing zone.

 

They don't show the pathing system, but they explain that the automatic paths your soldiers take will avoid hazards like fire. You can set manual paths for soldiers to follow that take them exactly where you want, but even if you don't use it you're not going to run into poison clouds by accident.

 

The Muton Berserker is also female. Aliens are confirmed SJWs

 

Sectoids can "Psi-reanimate" either aliens or dead XCOM soldiers to make them fight against you. Sectoids are the new Chryssalids.

 

This looks great! I love the new changes they're making, it sounds like this will be alot more replayable than the first one.

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In all the excitement yesterday, I completely forgot that IGN showed the first XCOM 2 gameplay.

Thoughts:

Bradford is looking rough. As is required for gritty dark sequels, he's grown a terrible beard.

 

You start off in Concealment, which means the aliens don't know you're there and you can position your squad for an ambush. The red tiles show you where enemies will detect you. When you attack an enemy you'll break concealment and they'll run for cover, but you can set up your team in Overwatch to automatically shoot at them before they get to cover.

 

The movement range for soldiers looks huge now, which I guess means the maps are also alot bigger.

 

I like that your soldiers can appear on wanted posters in the cities, that's a neat touch.

 

It looks like every mission now also has an objective to accomplish that's randomly placed on the map. That could be something like hacking a computer, sabotaging something or rescuing someone.

 

Holy fuck, Vipers! Snake ladies can pull soldiers out of cover and I guess straight-up kill them too.

 

The soldiers with swords can rush up on enemies and slice them up, but it looks like that leaves them exposed and out of cover. They mentioned a perk that lets those soldiers move again after killing an enemy with the sword.

 

That African soldier has an accent! I always wanted to hear more accents for soldiers from different countries, I hope they get a good variety.

 

Enemy soldiers can drop in as reinforcements at any point in a mission. I hope they don't drop in behind your squad and get a free flanking shot to kill them all because that seems lame.

 

The specialist can hack stuff. Depending on his/her Tech stat they can get different effects from hacking something. Sounds like you can hack anything that's considered "robotic".

 

Aliens look nasty! I guess you're not supposed to take them on until later in the game where you have the equipment to deal with them.

 

When you want to leave a mission, you place a waypoint for the Skyranger. If you want to recover dead/wounded soldiers and their equipment you have to have another soldier carry them to the landing zone.

 

They don't show the pathing system, but they explain that the automatic paths your soldiers take will avoid hazards like fire. You can set manual paths for soldiers to follow that take them exactly where you want, but even if you don't use it you're not going to run into poison clouds by accident.

 

The Muton Berserker is also female. Aliens are confirmed SJWs

 

Sectoids can "Psi-reanimate" either aliens or dead XCOM soldiers to make them fight against you. Sectoids are the new Chryssalids.

 

This looks great! I love the new changes they're making, it sounds like this will be alot more replayable than the first one.

 

Everything about that sounds wonderful!  Wonderful in the sense that we're all going to discover new ways to get soldiers killed for awhile. 

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