XCOM Enemy Unknown Interview

We were lucky enough to be able to prise Jake Solomon, Lead Designer Firaxis away from working on XCOM Enemy Unknown to answer some questions from the community here at StrategyCore.

Rather than re-tread old ground, heniv over at the 2K forums has kindly allowed us to reproduce his list of known features from the game, so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.

Jake started off by making us feel all warm and fuzzy, then it's straight down to business.

Jake Solomon: On a personal note, I love StrategyCore. I’ve been getting my strategy news from you guys for years.

Tactical

StrategyCore: Will we be able to save tactical replays once the mission is completed (or failed for that matter) that can later by viewed, or shared? If so, will there be a way to also upload these to YouTube?

JS: That would be very cool and something we’d love to have, but it’s not going to be in XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

SC: We've seen a destructible environment, can we actually cause a building to collapse with enough damage dealt to its structure?

JS: You’ll be able to blast your way through the walls of a building; most of the buildings are designed to have additional points of entry, but full destruction isn’t implemented. Fully destructible buildings have huge implications for gameplay and level design that have to be balanced. Also, once you discover that high explosives solve all your problems, then there’s this temptation to have high explosives be your ONLY solution. That would have removed some of the fun of the game. It’s much more fun to say “okay, that plan worked. But what if I came at that a different way next time?”

SC: We’ve seen the Skyranger very sensibly dropping soldiers into missions. Does each map feature an extraction point you must reach if you want to abandon the mission?

JS: Yes. There’s an extraction zone flagged on each level. If your soldiers make it back to the dust-off point, then they get extracted safely. If they don’t make it and you abandon the mission… I’m not sure I want to think about what happens to them. They’re gone. I’ll leave it at that.

SC: Will morale still be playing a big part in the game or is it more about being pinned down by enemy fire now and losing the opportunity to shoot back?

JS: Morale is still really important. Your veterans will be more fearless than your rookies and your rookies may be something of a liability if things start to go badly. Panic was such a key part of the original game. It caused so many memorable moments for me (and for lots of other players) that it would have felt incomplete not to have some of that in our game.

SC: Sometimes you had to make some really tough choices, like having to shoot a mind-controlled soldier to prevent them from killing the rest of your squad – will this still happen?

JS: Yes, you’ll be making tough choices all the time on the battlefield. Sometimes you’ll need to leave a guy hanging out as bait for the aliens. Sometimes you’ll have to… I don’t want to give too much away, but yeah, there are still tough choices.

SC: Whilst we’ve already heard a little in terms of in-game sounds in various videos, can we expect to hear dynamic, event-driven music, or are you trying to stick to the suspense of the original?

JS: It’s a bit of both. That spooky ambient music was such an important part of the suspense of the original that we wanted to ensure it made a comeback. We also have music that’s more orchestral and dynamic than in the original game. It’s so great at highlighting the mood at times and really adds something to the experience.

SC: Will time of day still make a difference in missions? In the original night-time missions were pretty brutal affairs with the aliens having far better night vision, however the drawback was that you could often just leave a crashed UFO until daylight before launching a mission to its location – is this still the case?

JS: We have both day- and night-lit maps, but there’s no gameplay effect for lighting. The good news is that this means that your visibility is better at night! The bad side of this is that now Chryssalids come charging out of the shadows during the day, too.

Squad

SC: Will there be support combat classes in addition to the ones we’ve seen, such as Medic or Psionic?

JS: There’s already a soldier class called “Support.” There are talents in that class that let them use a Medkit more effectively, but since any class can equip a Medkit, any class can be a medic, so to speak. But each soldier’s job is, first and foremost, to kill aliens.

SC: How complex is the skill-tree going to be for each class? Can we have two or more soldiers of the same class with completely different skills and can we unlock new classes with R&D?

JS: Mostly when a soldier levels up, you’ll be selecting one of two possible new perks or skills for them. This sort of biases the class in one of two directions. For example, with our Sniper, you can build up this guy who is best at finding the highest point on the battlefield, hunkering down, and then raining death across the map, OR you can build him up as this sneaky hit-and-run kind of soldier. This lets you build the soldier in such a way that he fits his class description and also fits into whatever your preferred tactical plan is. You can build two guys from the same class in completely different ways and bring them both on the same mission.

A soldier’s class is determined when they first level out of being a Rookie. At that point, you find out for the first time what their potential is. This also means you will often be bringing rookies along on missions in order to make sure that you’ve got some bench depth in case a key veteran eats plasma later on in the game.

SC: In tactical combat, other than visual contact and sound cues, what alternative methods/tools of detection are there? Will they become available, and improve even, through R&D?

JS: Right off hand I can think of the Battlefield Scanner, which is this grenade-like item that acts as a remote camera. You can bounce it around a corner or over a wall to see if anything is coming your way, in Overwatch mode, or otherwise inclined to do you harm.

SC: Will we be able to take more than the normal squad size on the very last mission?

JS: Nope. Those six guys will have their hands full.

Aliens

SC: Are you able to tell us about any as-yet-unseen aliens, or roughly how many alien species are there in total?

JS: I can tell you that we’ve tried to include the most iconic aliens from the original game. I can also tell you we haven’t shown you all the aliens in our game. I want players to really enjoy the first moment they run into them.

SC: Does this mean that a few will remain nameless until the game’s release? There are a certain few from the original that we’d love to discover for the first time on a night-time terror mission.

JS: Absolutely! And they will feed on your fear.

SC: Little reference is made in the original as to why some aliens are genetically or surgically altered whilst others – Sectoids and Ethereals – remain “pure” since they’re the leaders. Will you be delving deeper into the relationships between the various aliens as the game progresses to flesh them out?

JS: The relationship between the alien species, how they’ve ended up together and what mysteries they conceal within their bodies is something that always gripped me from the original game.  It’s something that we will definitely explore in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but I won’t say to what extent…

Research & Development

SC: What means are there available to the player in terms of weapons to capture live aliens?

JS: We will have means, but I’ll leave it up to you to find out what they are!

SC: Will you be able to modify weapons? For example different scopes for rifles?

JS: There are items you’ll be able to carry that can improve a soldier’s accuracy. However, bringing that item uses up that soldier’s equipment slot, so if you’re taking that, you’re making a conscious decision to give up something like a grenade. We’re really trying to make inventory tension more important by tying some abilities to your equipment, and making some of the inventory items usable only a limited number of times per mission.

SC: Will aircraft be more configurable than just their weapon slots to give them more longevity? For example better engines or advanced armour, or is the focus in that area on developing new craft?

JS: Right now the configuration point on most aircraft is the weapon slot, and you really will want to upgrade your aircraft over time, rather than finding new modules to bolt onto old ships.

Winning and Losing

SC: Are there multiple outcomes to the game aside from defeating the aliens, losing your main base or having the funding council cut all funding?

JS: I don’t want to go into too much detail about the possible outcomes of the game. XCOM is a rare game in that it’s possible to lose the game if you can’t fend off the alien invasion, and we wanted to bring that forward in this new game as well. Of course you’ll also be able to fight off the invasion, and that’s an awesome feeling when you’ve saved the world.

SC: Will there be alien assaults at your interceptor bases that you get to defend against?

JS: If you ignore an alien craft that’s passing through your satellite coverage, there’s a chance they’ll return and destroy your satellite when they’ve finished their mission.

Game Development

SC: Beyond playing the original, did you look at any other turn-based strategy games to see what had been improved upon over the years? (I’m specifically thinking Silent Storm’s excellent skill tree, combat mechanics and completely destructible buildings).

JS: We were drawing our inspiration from the original game. I’m sure people will say that different parts of XCOM: Enemy Unknown will remind them of some game or another, but that’s probably because we arrived at a design decision independently. When you’re making a turn-based strategy game, there are some ideas that work really well and if you’re-iterating regularly it makes sense you’d arrive at the same point as a different team.

SC: When the team were playing the original game during research, did you try out any of the multitude of mods or tools that are available such as XcomUtil or UFOExtender?

JS: I love XComUtil and to be honest, it’s hard for me to play the original without some of the key features it offers, the biggest of which is saving your loadouts between missions.  Rest assured that that feature was one of the first things we put into XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

SC: One of the best testaments to the popularity of the original game is the still-thriving modding community and the excellent projects based on it. Do you have any words of encouragement for modders and devs working on projects such as UFO2000 (multiplayer XCOM) and OpenXCOM (a total open source rewrite)?

JS: I consider anyone who has tried to re-create a crazy game like XCOM a brother-in-arms. When you consider how much stuff you have to pack into that game… I’m sure we could swap war stories all day long.

Other

SC: Do you know roughly what the system specs will be for the PC version?

JS: We haven’t finalized specs yet, but we’ll let people know what they are as soon as we have something more final.

We'd like to say a huge thank you to Jake and the team at Firaxis and look forward to bending their ear again with another interview in the not-too-distant future!