''We are making a worthy successor, and it is going to contribute something new'': Firaxis Answer Your Questions on XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[News Portal]

Last week, we asked you for the questions that you'd been dying to put to Firaxis about the upcoming [app=8761]XCOM: Enemy Unknown[/app] remake. We then sat down for a chat with Pete Murray, the game's Associate Producer, and blasted him with a broadside of your questions. Here's what he had to say.

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Read full article by Tim Colwill

[Yurtles]

That was a top notch Q&A, it's made me a lot more excited for the game.

[Marius]

I'm kinda disappointed that interceptions are staying so close to the original game. It was always a system that I thought could be improved.

At least improve the UFO AI so you have to use actual tactics in the interception combat...

[vcatkiller]

Managed to answer the questions really well. Great article.

[Gnavin]

I'm kinda disappointed that interceptions are staying so close to the original game. It was always a system that I thought could be improved.

At least improve the UFO AI so you have to use actual tactics in the interception combat...

That's not something I'd considered, but by the sounds of things I think it might be something they've likely thought about.
Just wait and see, I guess.

Yay, one of my questions got in ^_^ The headless soldiers sounds like it would have been a blast :p

So overall, it sounds like it was a very honest, open interview. They seem to have been very forthcoming about their plans and details, and they've certainly raised my confidence in their ability to deliver a good game.

[IIIMystIII]

Not a huge fan of the smaller squad sizes. One of the main elements of the X-COM series is that it wasn't afraid to make your guys bleed. Seeing how stupidly easy it was for the aliens to murder humans created an atmosphere of desperation that worked well with the general theme of the game.

Having smaller teams means the game will have to be a lot more forgiving and put on the kid gloves, especially earlier in the game when you only have a team of four. I was not hoping for Terror From the Deep levels of pain but I'm struggling to see how you can capture the original X-COM's sense of danger without obliterating a few rookies.

[Bronze_D]

By the very same token though,

4 dudes, CLASSIC difficulty settings...

yeah, bring it on... i can take challenge and kick it's arse.

So i don't see the problem, if the reasoning for more dudes is precisely to amp up the lethality of the foes then that reasoning vaporizes if you just increase the difficulty back to what it was.

I mean you CAN set the difficulty anywhere from casual to classic and extra hardcore.

So conversely with smaller squad and maximum difficulty, well... if Xcom was spartan enough, try that with 4 dudes and gals with even higher difficulty, if that doesn't make you fear the aliens, i don't know what will.

[Marius]

At least there won't be any lobstermen.

[Bronze_D]

you realize they would do JUST that right? I mean why wouldn't they...

[sgt_Pitt]

If there's any company good enough to do a UFO remake it's Firaxis

Looking forward to this.

[caitsith01]

Thanks for asking my questions!

My excitement levels are back up from very very excited to extremely very excited!

[jakerusin]

one question that i would have loved answered would have been if there are any elements from terror from the deep in this game? essentially TFTD should have been an add on, but atleast the ability to land on/intercept tankers and cruise liners for terror attacks would be fantastic, and using some of the aliens from TFTD would also add variants to the enemy list, and ofcourse underwater would be a a nice locale for battles!

[Marius]

From the base answers given I'm assuming "no", since TFTD requires a whole sea focus. It might go a little past the scope of the game to include both environments.

But they totally should have made this a reimagine of TFTD instead of UFO. UFO was boring compared to Terror's complexity.

[Gamer87]

I'm kinda disappointed that interceptions are staying so close to the original game. It was always a system that I thought could be improved.

At least improve the UFO AI so you have to use actual tactics in the interception combat...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts
Check out their interception vids... I would love to see something like that in this xcom

[Marius]

Thanks, that actually looks like something to keep an eye on.

I'd love to see something like that aerial combat in Firaxe's version, but also fear that their message of "It's a true remake mostly" will stop them doing innovative things apart from graphics and fancy camera shots.

I do want a tactical game done really well, but at the same time I don't want a game shackled to the gameplay ideas of the early 90s. A lot of the gameplay seems really simple nowadays, just like the early RTS games.