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XCOM returns

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It's like the world portrayed before the bombs went off in Fallout. I like the era, as world war 2 level weaponry is the best suited for first person shooters. But that video wasn't really impressive.

It looks like it was lit by Vincent Van Gogh. The effects look pretty early on as well.

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I just saw the latest trailer on Rock Paper Shotgun. I'm really not feeling this game.

Combat seems just as lame as Bioshock 1, which forced you to shoot shoot shoot at mindless enemies for too much of the game. Your squad as depicted is comprised of multiple Slippy Toads---if these men are anything but alien bait we haven't seen it.

One of the promises in the PC Gamer preview was that X-Com style research and base upgrades would come into play. But from this trailer, research seems to mean "Snap pictures with the same camera you used in Bioshock." Will we also see ammo vending machines in every suburban home?

It's still fair to say "wait and see, keep an open mind, etc. etc." But I really want something that shows me why this game stands out, and nothing like that has yet been released.

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One of the promises in the PC Gamer preview was that X-Com style research and base upgrades would come into play. But from this trailer, research seems to mean "Snap pictures with the same camera you used in Bioshock." Will we also see ammo vending machines in every suburban home?

I still kind of hope there is a larger meta game involved that is more like Xcom. Really the "game-play" portion that we've seen is a sliver and could just be what they are doing right now to sell the world, IP, and core combat mechanics. So I'm hoping there is a lot more going on in it, or will when it gets shipped.

But something still feels off about it, can't quite describe what that is.

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Gameplay looks alright, and I like the aesthetic, but after watching that trailer on RPS, I'm even more confused as to why they are calling this XCOM. I only played a bit of the first on a friends machine (and I think I rented/borrowed the Playstation version once), so I'm hardly an expert, but I thought the aliens were standard Greys (or Greens, as the case my be). What the hell is that black shit? I didn't watch with sound, if they said.

Edit: Watched again with sound. Still don't get how the goo monsters are tied to the original "lore".

Edited by Garden Ninja

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Gameplay looks alright, and I like the aesthetic, but after watching that trailer on RPS, I'm even more confused as to why they are calling this XCOM. I only played a bit of the first on a friends machine (and I think I rented/borrowed the Playstation version once), so I'm hardly an expert, but I thought the aliens were standard Greys (or Greens, as the case my be). What the hell is that black shit? I didn't watch with sound, if they said.

Edit: Watched again with sound. Still don't get how the goo monsters are tied to the original "lore".

There were lots of alien species in X-COM. the 'Sectoid' greys were just the first ones encountered. The black goo is posibly a Silacoid.

Nappi: there's not much humour in the originals. They are some of the scariest strategy games ever made though.

I like the 50's aesthetic in this new game and the Space Odyessy reality bending UFO. But I have a suspicion: the last scene shows some kind of abduction scene; who wants to bet that the protagonist is returned to Earth with 50 years of missing time, á la Flight of the Navigator?

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It's not X-Com and nothing in it reminds me of X-Com, but I know this game will sell a ton just because of the name.

If it sells really well, I don't think it will be because of the name. People have heard of it, but not enough people in the game's target market.

At this point it's weird that they're calling it XCOM. I think what must have happened is that Take-Two wanted to use the name for its legacy, and by the time they ended up with the current design and setting, it had changed a great deal, but it retained the name since that's what it was conceived as.

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I think Chris pretty much nailed the plausible reason; what I don't get is it pretty much happens so often in games today that why we need to get all bent out of shape over it.

Granted if they trounced out one of my beloved classics I'd be dissapointed and probably think it's a shame, I may even go so far to post other ways they could have brought back the classic and still have it just as marketable.

However, what I see is just a constant harping on that one little fact. I think the idea of whatever they are doing is interesting, they get instant credit from me by not having another army dude game. My comments stem more from the property that was being presented rather then trying to connect it to the previous titles.

Also, wasn't Xcom in the future to this, maybe this is connected by the fact it's a prequel in a narrative sense? But as several people have mentioned, I don't think that matters so much as this is essentially a new property that retains a basic premise from the originals.

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I think Chris pretty much nailed the plausible reason; what I don't get is it pretty much happens so often in games today that why we need to get all bent out of shape over it.

I'm assuming the biggest reason people get bent out of shape over it is because it feels like a nail in the coffin for the original games, reducing the chance that another "true" sequel will ever be produced. For example, I don't expect there to be an isometric turn-based Fallout game any time soon.

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I'm assuming the biggest reason people get bent out of shape over it is because it feels like a nail in the coffin for the original games, reducing the chance that another "true" sequel will ever be produced. For example, I don't expect there to be an isometric turn-based Fallout game any time soon.

Erm, good point, as a non-fan of Fallout 3(that's right) you strike a very poignant cord there. Not to say I really need a Fallout game to be isometric, since the view point had nothing to do with me not liking Fallout 3.

But I see what you mean and yeah that does kind of sour it.

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Those articles raised my optimism overall. then I read this in the interview:

We didn’t want to make a game about grey aliens, because part of the impact of seeing these aliens is that they’re not bipedal things walking around

Damn. Need to readjust expectations again. I can see where 2K are coming from, but I will miss the Sectoids. They were so iconic; they've become a cliché yes, but being in firefights with them felt good.

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Damn. Need to readjust expectations again. I can see where 2K are coming from, but I will miss the Sectoids. They were so iconic; they've become a cliché yes, but being in firefights with them felt good.

That's actually one thing I really like about what they're doing. Sectoids are iconic, but I wouldn't be able to take them seriously at all. I don't care how badass their psychic powers are or how awesome their weaponry is; they're so goofy looking all I can think of is suburbanites sneaking up behind them with a baseball bat or taking them out with ridiculous Home Alone-style traps. The black goo and monoliths that they've shown so far have really impressed me because they're so other and inscrutable. Regardless of what I think about the rest of the decisions they've made, I really agree with this one.

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It is hard to come up with truly interesting other. They're borrowing heavily from The Thing playbook. It is more inspired than your average up-side-down heads with spider legs, but still... meh.

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It's more interesting that more goddamn grey people with anime eyes.

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I've got a lore question about this: in the original games is there an original "x-com" organization already sort of in place at the start, be they shadowy, mysterious, inactive, whatever?

If so, and this turns out to be sort of a first contact story, maybe getting into the formation of a shadow agency sort of thing, I think that could be pretty rad. If not, carry on.

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I've got a lore question about this: in the original games is there an original "x-com" organization already sort of in place at the start, be they shadowy, mysterious, inactive, whatever?

If so, and this turns out to be sort of a first contact story, maybe getting into the formation of a shadow agency sort of thing, I think that could be pretty rad. If not, carry on.

The original X-COM was a newly-created multinational organization in the first game. Timeline-wise this upcoming game takes place too early to lead directly into the first game's X-COM.

And the developers haven't said much, but they did indicate that this is more like a reboot.

RPS: In terms of referencing the original X-COM, are you are going to leave most of the story stuff behind[?] ... will we expect to see returning enemies or anything like that?

We’re forging a new mythology, but what we’re retaining is the core elements that made X-COM X-COM; the strategy, the base, the research, agents, all of those things being in charge, and dealing with this problem as you see fit. You are the one that’s driving the investigation, those elements remain but we want to create a new world with a new set of enemies that’s genuinely compelling for players to learn more about.

RPS: It’s definitely not a prequel?

No.

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Here's the manual notes from the first game

It is 1999 and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have started appearing with disturbing regularity in the night skies. Reports of violent human abductions and horrific

experimentation struck terror into the hearts of millions. The mass public hysteria has only served to expose Earth's impotence against a vastly superior technology.

Many countries initially attempted to deal independently with the aliens. In August 1998, Japan established an anti-alien combat force; the Kiryu-Kai. Equipped with Japanese-made fighter aircraft, the Kiryu-Kai certainly looked like a powerful force. However, after 5 months of expensive operations they had yet to intercept their first UFO. The lesson was clear: this was a worldwide problem which could not be dealt with by individual countries.

On December 11, 1998, representatives from the worlds most economically powerful countries gathered secretly in Geneva. After much debate, the decision was made to establish a covert independent body to combat, investigate and defeat the alien threat. This organization would be equipped with the world's finest pilots, soldiers, scientists and engineers, working together as one multi-national force. This organization was named the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit."

It's cute that it's set in 1999. Made now it would probably be 2012.

Although a scenario like the one you described does happen at the start of the second game, Terror from the Deep. X-COM is almost totally decommissioned and forgotten about except for one base running on auto and funded by a wealthy philanthropist, when the first aquatic aliens turn up...

Man I need to finish TftD eventually. So hard. So scary.

Edited by DanJW

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And the developers haven't said much, but they did indicate that this is more like a reboot.
From reading this at kotaku it sounds more like they appropriated the license and stuck it on top of a game already in development.
As a big fan of the old series, and someone more than a little disappointed to see the turn it had taken, I wanted to know what had came first for 2K? Was this already a pre-existing game concept that's simply had the XCOM brand slapped on it, or did the XCOM license come first, and this game was built around it?

Turns out it's a bit of both, some of the existing ideas making into a game that's also been shaped by X-Com hallmarks like research.

"We've been working on this game on and off for around five years now", Jonathan Pelling, creative director at the studio, tells us. "Before BioShock 2, before BioShock."

"It gave us a chance to implement a lot of ideas in the first-person shooter space we've wanted to introduce for some time now. Make this game a new kind of FPS, something that's never been tried in the genre before."

"So when the chance came to use the XCOM license, it was a great opportunity to take some of those game ideas and blend everything together, taking everything we thought was important from the old X-Com to make something new for those who had never played that game before."

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From reading this at kotaku it sounds more like they appropriated the license and stuck it on top of a game already in development.

I don't think that's the case. I think they've just been trying to figure out what the new X-Com game would be for a really long time. Take-Two got the IP rights back in 2005.

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Even if it were the case that they put the IP on an existing prototype, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. It's exactly what happened with Arkham Asylum.

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I know this is the wrong place to say this, but Bioshock has ruined everything forever.

v8otmMpaIdQ

Thrill to this trailer, which once again hints at research, but only guarantees that "somehow you will get to use alien weapons".

And the enemies are essentially all possessed humans! One man in the trailer even has the glowing-eye effect from Bioshock Infinite!

Splicers are the worst implementation of mindless zombie enemies ever, but apparently now they need to be in every game.

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*Strained face* that looked interesting...

Seriously though, all relation to xcom aside, I really liked the first trailer, I love the premise, I love the era, and the gameplay looked really interesting.

That trailer above kind of just, sort of didn't highlight any of that and seemed to show the most generic shooty bits ever and summer blockbuster music... so yeah.

It's a bad trailer and doesn't kill the hope it'll be a cool game, but it's looking kind of iffy right now to me.

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If it sells really well, I don't think it will be because of the name. People have heard of it, but not enough people in the game's target market.

i'm going to have to agree with this. the crossover between people who are buying FPS games in 2011 and those who fondly remember the original X-COM certainly can't be enough to justify a AAA title alone.

and thinking about it, what format could they even make a AAA X-COM game in and stay relatively true to the original, and still sell copies? As a multi-platform game, it's certainly not going to be strategy. Or even turn based, honestly. kind of depressing actually.

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I really really like the non humanoid, non sensical, non-organic design of some of the aliens:tup: Not unlike Rez!

I'm not so sure about the bigger emphasis on nightly moody environments (the FPS genre features way too many of those it seems to me) and hollywood explosions that this trailer has vs. the suburban quietness of the first one.

Also, yeah, the art direction is hugely reminiscent of Bioshock (very similar character design, identical bloom ratio) : which is kind of :tup::tmeh:

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