F4T C4T

XCOM returns

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So I take it Mr. Gaynor is going to be working on this?

(note how I avoided an obvious 'Hot Scoops' joke...)

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Interesting decision to take a game franchise best known for turnbased strategy games to fps territory. X-Com Enforcer and the cancelled Alliance of course comes to mind, but I bet this won't go the same way.

I'm not superhappy that Ufo/X-Com is going the fps way, but as this is just the first announcement it will be interesting to see how this project develops.

Nothing bad against Steve Gaynor and the other people in 2K Marin, but I had hoped that Ken Levine's team takes over the X-Com return like it had been hyped and rumored for so long already. Good luck and I hope you guys and gals make a worthy sequel to the classic franchise.

I really want to play a good new game from the franchise. It went downwards really quickly with Interceptor and Hasbro's Enforcer. Hopefully there will come new information in the upcoming months.

It would be cool to have Julian Gollop as consultant on the project. :)

EDIT: I hope they keep all the management stuff in the game, especially the research and base building was very core of the first games. The one thing I loved about the first game was that you could build the first base anywhere in the world, it felt like you had total freedom to make your own choices and not be stopped by invisible walls that try to guide you.

EDIT2: It's a bit too weird and typical internet behaviour to study too much a short press release and two pictures, but the main protagonist is an FBI agent? I thought it was supposed to be X-Com, a global organisation? Maybe the main character becomes one?

Edited by Kolzig

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I love the first two X-COM games and I still play them now and again. I've never managed to finish Terror From the Deep though (man that game is tough).

I agree a lot with Kolzig. I would prefer a strategy game. Even as an FPS it needs certain things to make it XCOM. Some kind of R&D would be nice and wide-scale strategic choices as well as battlefield tactical ones. The aliens need to be mysterious with elements of their technology and nature discovered over time as a result of hard work, extreme daring and luck. Also terror missions. Also world governments secretly siding with the aliens. Also randomly generated terrains of a number of different types. Also X-com soldiers having a high rate of attrition, something made all the more painful for being able to name them after all your friends and favourite movie characters (I have one TftD game where everyone is named after Battlestar Galactica crew). Also the possibility of being completely unprepared for a new alien species or size of craft and being totally wiped the floor with (It has proven impossible to keep any of the Apollos alive. Even Apollo XIII).

I love XCOM.

edit: Kolzig, I seem to remember it being stated in UFO: Enemy Unknown (as it was called here) that X-COM agents are drawn from intelligence agencies and special forces all over the world.

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I was very sceptical to hear it's being built as an FPS, but it's encouraging to learn it'll be 2K Marin developing it.

I've never managed to finish Terror From the Deep though (man that game is tough).

Develop guided rocket launchers and get to

Cydonia (Can't actually recall if that's a spoiler or not...)

,

pronto. When I first played it, I wanted to mop up every last alien base, until I realised they were springing up faster than I could take care of them and attacks on my own were ramping up. A ship full of troops with guided rockets backed up with rifles can lay waste to just about everything.

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Never played Xcom, but have heard of the pedigree.

The logo branding and description on their site is pretty killer though; absolutely captured my attention.

Since it's been a rumor since Bioshock 1; whos to say Levine never had a first draft at the design?

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edit: Kolzig, I seem to remember it being stated in UFO: Enemy Unknown (as it was called here) that X-COM agents are drawn from intelligence agencies and special forces all over the world.

I don't remember how it was exactly, but if it is so then it could be that this game could serve as a prequel to the first games.

I mean, the main protagonist could be just an FBI agent doing regular mission or two in the beginning and then get suddenly in the middle of things when all hell breaks out when the "unknown enemy" comes marching in on Earth. Then after that we could get more into the classic X-Com way with the micromanagement and base building and researching when he/she is drafted to the organisation. That way actually the game could be your regular FPS in the beginning and then evolve into something unique. I'd certainly hope something like that.

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First person shooter?

I still wish it was more of a top-down view strategy game.

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First person shooter?

I still wish it was more of a top-down view strategy game.

If they can get the strategy elements in a very subversive way into a first person game I think that would be pretty amazing.

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Making X-COM into a fps COMPLETELY defeats the purpose of reviving X-COM. WTF, dudes, wtf? :tdown::erm:

No one makes games like that any more. For five minutes seven years ago, I thought Nival was gonna take up the genre, but they never followed through with a multiplayer Silent Storm and now they're busy helming the Heroes of Might and Magic revival. That was a really lovely game, S2, never finished it though. Maybe I should dig it out and give it another whirl.

Booo FPS X-COM, BOOOO. :(:(

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HoMM revival? How come I've never heard about it before?

I still need to finish Armored Princess, gotta love the King's Bounty series.

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Ok, sparked by a brief conversation with Infovore, which current studios have any expertise in making turn based games?

The only really good examples we came up with were both Japanese: Nippon Ichi and Intelligent Systems. Are there *any* current equivalent Western studios we might have expected XCOM to make its way to?

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Ok, sparked by a brief conversation with Infovore, which current studios have any expertise in making turn based games?

The only really good examples we came up with were both Japanese: Nippon Ichi and Intelligent Systems. Are there *any* current equivalent Western studios we might have expected XCOM to make its way to?

Nival.....

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Ok, sparked by a brief conversation with Infovore, which current studios have any expertise in making turn based games?

The only really good examples we came up with were both Japanese: Nippon Ichi and Intelligent Systems. Are there *any* current equivalent Western studios we might have expected XCOM to make its way to?

I hear that Firaxis has made a game or two that requires turn taking. They were made by some some guy Baron Von Sidious Meir.

But in terms of "who has experience" people seem to forget that turn based strategy games were extremely popular in the 90s, and a lot of studios have experience. Jeff Green told a great story on GFW radio about how the other editors at CGW wouldn't let him claim StarCraft as one of the best strategy games of all time. They didn't think any RTS could compare to turn based games, and this was after Dune, C&C and Warcraft 2.

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I had hoped that Ken Levine's team takes over the X-Com return like it had been hyped and rumored for so long already.

On the plus side, this leaves them free to get to work on Freedom Force 3. Right? Anyone?

:getmecoat

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In all honesty you've got to respect how high they set the bar at 2k Marin. It's like a chubby kid coming up to the plate and pointing at the bleachers. Everyone balked at the idea of Bioshock 2 but they seem to have hit it out of the park. Now chubby's up to the plate again and he's pointing out to left field.

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In all honesty you've got to respect how high they set the bar at 2k Marin. It's like a chubby kid coming up to the plate and pointing at the bleachers. Everyone balked at the idea of Bioshock 2 but they seem to have hit it out of the park. Now chubby's up to the plate again and he's pointing out to left field.

I belive this might be a sports metaphor.

¬_¬

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I belive this might be a sports metaphor.

¬_¬

I dunno, I took it as the fat kid coming up to his plate of dinner, pointing at the bleachers and swiping his brothers porkchop... crafty chubby that one is.

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looks like the cat is out of the proverbial horsebag :fart:

!!!

*plastic crinkly noises*

*horse whinny*

From a marketing perspective, I don't really understand how doing this is better than doing exactly the same thing and calling it "Invisible Threat" or whatever, then telling the press "Yeah, it's an FPS spiritual successor to XCOM".

That way you still do what you want, you reap the cred by association, and you dodge a fair bit of the fan hate to boot.

It's like if Bioshock had been called System Shock 3. It's uninspiring and doesn't indicate that you're taking some of the ideas in a new direction.

"spiritual successor" Is the classy way to say/play it, 2K.

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Ok, sparked by a brief conversation with Infovore, which current studios have any expertise in making turn based games?

Ahem... I would like to make a suggestion:

X-COM: Total War

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Nival
Firaxis
But in terms of "who has experience" people seem to forget that turn based strategy games were extremely popular in the 90s, and a lot of studios have experience.

RTS muscled them out though, and a decade or more of staff turnover, attrition, acquisitions, studio closures and non-turn based projects will have done that experience no good at all. Unless you're using it, in an institutional sense at least, it will largely rot away.

Also, the average time for someone to remain in the games industry in the late 90s and early 00s before burning out and going to work for a bank (etc.) was about four years. A lot of people promoted into senior roles over the past 5 years or so will have no experience of turn-based whatsoever.

So yeah, I'm not all that surprised to learn that XCOM is going this way. Developers with even related experience are thin on the ground nowadays, an given that 2K own XCOM, it's very unlikely it would have gone to any of them. FPS is exactly what 2K Marin should be doing with it; constantly switching genres from project to project is basically asking for your studio to disintegrate.

X-COM: Total War

Total War has real-time combat... I'd still like to see this though :)

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