XCOM Debut Trailer Revealed!

[Matri]

*sighs* That makes two of us, Psy Guy.

[Bomb Bloke]

Side Note: Sectoids (Grays) are iconic UFOlogy that goes back before the Roswell incident. The 40s to 70s had a major amount of published government activity in the search for UFOs, and even some search for extraterrestrials. Not having them in the game would be a complete disservice to both the X-Com series and the entire UFO lore which X-Com is heavily based on. Not having Mutons and Chrysalids would just be a waste of good source material.

Come to think of it, I'd forgotten how true this is. The Sectoids have had some representation in every X-COM game to date.

[Pete]

Indeed BB - even Alliance and Genesis! I even felt sorry for them in Apoc when they turned out to be a rare delicacy for the new batch of aliens. Porr little mind-controlling blighters

[Matri]

Don't be. You can get some half-Sectoid staff too.

 

Guess some of them did a little more "probing".

[Gimli]

2K has been given (or bought) a golden goose which is X-Com. Sadly this poor goose has had some horrible owners in the past and because those owners tried to rush egg production, didn't feed the goose, and then locked the goose away in storage. This poor goose never got the chance to live out its life properly and yield a good batch of eggs so it sits quietly hoping to be able to one day see the sun again, receive the love it deserves, and be able to again lay some eggs. Well it seems 2K decided to let the goose out of storage and is giving it what it needs to lay more eggs. But instead of letting it lay the golden eggs that its meant to do there planning on taking there rare and unique eggs and turning them into an omelet. The same omelet that any chicken egg can make in doing so destroys everything that makes the golden eggs so unique.

(if you don't get the message 2K is taking X-Com and instead of using the parts of the series that made it so wonderful there just using the other parts to make something that any other IP can do.)

 

Why would somebody take a legendary series like X-Com that never really made a ton of money and ditch the aspects that makes it legendary?

 

X-Com is great because (IMO)...

- The insane levels of tension (the feeling that every move you make can get your soldiers killed)

- The randomly generated soldiers that develop based on mission performance (also that these faceless soldiers start to become the key pieces to your squad. Risking these soldiers adds layers of tension and the resulting anguish from there death gives an experience that very few games can duplicate)

- Randomly generated levels (so you are never 100% sure where the enemy is)

- The macro game of balance between money, research, production, and base building.

- An enemy that both easy to hate and yet sometimes scary without actually trying to scare you.

- An end result that creates limitless replayability, great memories of both legendary soldiers and epic battles, absolute fun, and entirely organic without annoying story or scripted events to try to force to you act or feel a certain way.

 

There are ways to make X-Com into something besides a tactical strategy but 2K just seems to be completely leveling the foundation to the point that none of this had any similarity to X-Com.

 

Its a bad sign when the game doesn't fit into the series its suppose to be apart of, and resembles other IPs far more than this one (This game screams the X-Files. I even recall there being black goo creatures infesting or taking over people in an X-Files episode)

 

While having sectoids wouldn't distance it from the X-Files (Mulder if I'm not mistaken had some run ins with the grays), at least it would remotely try to tie the games together.

 

Side Note: Sectoids (Grays) are iconic UFOlogy that goes back before the Roswell incident. The 40s to 70s had a major amount of published government activity in the search for UFOs, and even some search for extraterrestrials. Not having them in the game would be a complete disservice to both the X-Com series and the entire UFO lore which X-Com is heavily based on. Not having Mutons and Chrysalids would just be a waste of good source material.

Also 2K restart X-Com Genesis and publish it for hand-held consoles and PC.

 

This sums up my feelings quite well.

 

Indeed BB - even Alliance and Genesis! I even felt sorry for them in Apoc when they turned out to be a rare delicacy for the new batch of aliens. Porr little mind-controlling blighters

 

No! It was just a ploy by the Sectoids to infiltrate Earth and The Frontier in order to sabotage them when the aliens take over the Earth in Genesis.

 

And now it won't happen.

 

*Gimli sobs quietly in a corner*

[chiasaur11]

For whatever it's worth, from what I heard about the plot of Genesis, I was not enthused.

 

Gameplay sounded swell, no denying it, but man oh man did the plot sound dumb.

 

First, the aliens you had proven you could kick the hindquarters of six ways to Sunday?

 

They're back, and instead of a Nova bomb to the face and being done with the whole matter, they wipe out almost everything, rendering several games worth of effort a moot point. And all the guns in Mega Primus don't work, so there goes the point of Apocalypse.

 

On the other hand, Alliance's whole Farscape bit sounded aces.

[Bomb Bloke]

If I remember correctly, they never got as far as making a plot for Genesis? I do remember that Ellis wanted to do away with all the progress made in all the previous games; it gave me the impression he was aiming for a rebuild of the original, as opposed to an addition to the series.

 

(Which immediately caused me to lose interest; I don't like canon re-writes).

[Space Voyager]

Surely X-Filish black blobs are not the only enemies in the game. Not having Sectoids (Greys, whatever) in the game would be pissing against the UFO winds. I would be very surprised if they were not in the game.

[chiasaur11]

If I remember correctly, they never got as far as making a plot for Genesis? I do remember that Ellis wanted to do away with all the progress made in all the previous games; it gave me the impression he was aiming for a rebuild of the original, as opposed to an addition to the series.

 

(Which immediately caused me to lose interest; I don't like canon re-writes).

 

No, they had one.

 

Read about it in an interview linked on wikipedia (cursedly inactive now. )

 

Basically, if I remember right, the aliens do an end run around the X-Com forces on the frontier and kick sand in Earth's face.

 

The frontier goes "WHOA NELLY!" and sends the fleet to take out the aliens around Earth. It could have gone better, as, well, most of them die horribly.

 

Take a lot of aliens with them, though, and one ship manages to get to the last big alien ship in orbit. Their ship being pretty near dead, the X-Com troopers board the alien ship and take over. (apparently the first mission every time) The aliens are prevented from sending more forces down to the planet, but they've pretty much won. Which means the one ship available has to send missions planetside to restore the planet to its rightful owners. The Aquatoids The Gilmen Homo Sapiens.

 

Mega Primus managed to hold out for a bit, but without any of the alien tech from Apocalypse working, they went down. Unfortunate. And now the aliens are terra-unforming Earth.

 

Well, after some big missions and nastier than ever Chryssalids attacking (Seriously, these Chryssalids did sound nastier than ever), X-COM prevails. Yay!

 

Better, they manage to use the alien terraforming engines to restore Earth to a pristine paradise, not just fixing the current alien mess, but fixing the T'Leth disaster, pollution, etc. It could almost be called...

 

A second genesis. An... X-Com genesis. (Cue Won't be Fooled Again and sunglasses)

 

So, that's what I remember. Think it's accurate, but...

[Bomb Bloke]

Ah, that's certainly a fair bit more advanced then anything I read.

[chiasaur11]

Well, I only found one interview with any details, and now the site's as dead as a Chryssalid victim near a blaster bomb operator with an itchy trigger finger, so...

 

Going to see if a wayback machine does any good.

 

Edit: Looks like Mr. Peabody is as on the ball as always.

 

Here it is.

 

And they say the past is a place that you can never return to.

[Pete]

Woah! TheLastOutpost shouldn't be down like that as I own the domain! Just going to check what the issue is

 

EDIT: Something went funky with where the domain was pointing to so I've hooked it up to the server again and it should be back to normal within 24 hours.

[Bomb Bloke]

Ah, yes, that's the same one I read. And yet I'd still managed to get it ingrained in my head that it was a rebuild. Probably because of the whole "let's raze MegaPrimus and go back to the old aliens" thing.

[Matri]

And all the guns in Mega Primus don't work, so there goes the point of Apocalypse.

 

Also, it was made extremely clear that all the tech based on the dimensional aliens will stop working at the end of game. You know, what with your final mission in the game to go destroy the power source and all.

[Gimli]

In the version of Genesis I made up in my head, part of the reason the Sectoids were there was what I wrote above, but also because they were actually in charge of The Alien Dimension. The whole Alien Dimension thing was also an elaborate experiment, because the original aliens tried to imitate the technology of the only major race that they couldn't conquer - the Ascidians. The two had been in war for a long time and the Ascidians had some very advanced genetic engineering. The idea was that everything they used in battle was in one way or another genetic engineering, much more so than the Apoc aliens. I've seen some very interesting documentaries about animals which show just how "efficient systems" they really are and that's the basis for how it would work for the Ascidians.

That's just a rough idea, I never got into the details of the whole story. I know I intended to make it a lot more complex than that.

 

As much as the story is probably the weakest link of X-COM, at the same time there's a lot of room to actually fill in the blanks and breathe some life into it. Of course, you would have to be careful not to force the story on the player too much, but that has been done before.

[Bomb Bloke]

Frankly I thought the whole "Sectoids too powerful to conquer" thing was bunk. Their mind control abilities - which most of the race couldn't even use - would do jack all against most of the Micronoid's "critter" army, so it's quite conceivable that the small group you found could've been overwhelmed and captured. Physically, they wouldn't be much more powerful then naked children with night vision goggles; their one trump card would be their Elerium-based technology.

 

But Elerium runs out. Disruptor-tech just keeps working.

 

I dunno, the Mutant Alliance just makes it hard for me to see them as villains in that game, even though that group is the one plausible reason why the Sectoids would try to hide their involvement. It's hard to dislike a hybrid species who allows you to field their units in battle, especially when those units quickly turn into your most lethal agents.

[chiasaur11]

And, also worth noting, the guys taking the worst lumps if you screw up.

 

Most of them (initially) can't take a hit and they still put their lives on the line?

 

Seems a bit risky for a long game.

 

(Also, I really hate villains who don't know how to STAY DOWN. I mean, it was nice in Apoc and, to a lesser extent, TFTD, that the Ethereal's butts stayed kicked. Having the foe be an invincible force makes no sense given how thoroughly 90s X-Com clobbered them. Tough, sure, but I can believe they'd wind up out of their depth sometimes)

[Matri]

(Also, I really hate villains who don't know how to STAY DOWN. I mean, it was nice in Apoc and, to a lesser extent, TFTD, that the Ethereal's butts stayed kicked. Having the foe be an invincible force makes no sense given how thoroughly 90s X-Com clobbered them. Tough, sure, but I can believe they'd wind up out of their depth sometimes)

Ethereal pilots in Interceptor. You will come to hate them with a passion.

[Gimli]

I treated the UFO aliens as a sort of faction which separated itself from the other aliens and then came to Mars. But they lacked resources to wage a full scale war hence all the abductions (to get genetically engineered soldiers). Again, there's more to it than that but I never got a lot deeper.

[ShadowBlade]

This new "XCOM" is gonna blow, hard. The trailer was all FPS, probably meaning the macro-structure will be nothing but a shallow gimmick (choose mission A or B to reach the same C) with just the illusion of choice. At best.

 

I think I said this earlier, but if I had developed a robust macro-scale part to go with the FPS, I'd have shown it off as well from day 1. But they didn't when they launched the official site, and this trailer is no exception. This won't be Alliance. Not by a long shot.

 

Sorry for the negativity, but I've yet to see a glimmer of hope.

[The Veteran]

Not sure if this has been linked somewhere already but if it has I'd suggest it's in the wrong place as it should be in here So time to claim the cherry in this forum! Never done that before, what a lucky boy I am.

 

But not lucky enough to be getting a new XCom I think... Watch this video from last years E3 and think about what you've just seen before you read on for my personal thoughts -

 

Have you watched it?

 

You're sure?

 

Becasue I don't want to create a biased opinion of the game by you reading any further before you've watched it...

 

So you've definitely watched it now right?

 

Ok...

 

What a load of old crap! At what point when they were making this game did they decide it bore enough similarities to ANY of the games in the XCom franchise to give it the same name? Honestly I'm hoping they come to their senses before they release this game as based on that trailer it's just another generic FPS with nothing to tie it to anything we love about the games who's name it is claiming as it's own.

 

Firstly, notice the 2 men entering the house with shotguns and no uniform... So they aren't from XCom then are they as there ahs never EVER been a single case in any of the games when an XCom operative worked without a uniform. Also the apparent lack of squad is disturbingly, well, disturbing... The only time in XCom history when a sole operative was in action is Enforcer and as that is widely regarded as a parallel arcade adventure it doesn't count! Also interesting to note that that was an official XCom FPS with a certain amount of faith to at least a few enemies and it bombed. How well do they expect an unofficial, out of it's time, unfaithful game to do when the actual creators failed in the first place?

 

So we have no uniforms, no squads, no landing craft and most likely no strategic value at all. Oh and did I mention it seems to be set in 50s suburbs? Everywhere are suspenders and PI hats, strange that there is no alien activity in that era in ANY XCom fiction either official or not.

 

Then of course we come to the disurbing fact that the ONLY showcased alien in over 2 minutes of trailer is an amorphous blob of protoplasm? Yep that's right, they're black calcinites! They have no weapons, no obvious intelligence (come on they're trying to suck civvies heads off whilst under heavy fire from a shotgun wielding pedestrian) no spacecraft, no personality at all! Oh but then I'm forgetting the strange black rectangular spaceship at 1.35 which forms from one of these blobs and proceeds to mutate further into a big ring doughnut (2mins) which then mercilessly vaporizes the badly dressed nobody.

 

The trailer claims 'Find them, Study them, Fight them and if all else fails run' but I seriously doubt there is any 'studying' involved. Not the way an XCom game is supposed to include it anyway. There won't be a base so there won't be research or manufacturing. The fact that this cold-war fellow seems to have a lightning cannon, fire bombs and some other very questionable firepower leads me to imagine a form of grinding and point spending to 'unlock' new weapons every few levels as you go (much like enforcer) and there's no fun in that.

 

Personally I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking when they slapped the XCom name on this product. If there are no Sectoids or Ethereals, it's not XCom. No base management, not XCom. No R&D, not XCom. No squad based, edge of your seat, terrifyingly unpredictable strategy. NOT XCOM!

 

This is going to be just like any other FPS, a fast-paced, linear, button-bashing mess. The point of a trailer is to show off the best bits of a game so if that's what they were trying to do when they made this I can already mark it up as an epic fail. Every single clip was in the same street in the suburbs with only 1 type of enemy (albeit in many different forms) yet the protaganist used a variety of weapons ranging from very low to very high tech which suggests even the later stages of the game are played in the same monotonous repetitive scenery. Sure the original games were a little like that if we're harshly honest but we've come a long way and we expect more these days!

 

Besides, every single one of the XCom titles had buckets full of personality. The diverse enemy races and tons of information about them all. Even though TFTD was a rushed game with a significantly inferior story than that of it's predecessor it was still fun and was chocked full of the same detail that made EU great. Apocalypse for me had the least character, what with the alien chatter and OTT doomsday weapon in Interceptor and the crazy OTT everything in arcadey death-fest Enforcer. But still it followed a basic formula of global tactics, strategic combats, R&D and the slow progression towards eventual destruction of the initially unknown alien threat.

 

A game that doesn't have these things will not succeed if it claims to be an XCom title, simply relinquish the claim to the name and you may end up with another Half-Life (although based on content I doubt it) As it stands though I see a soulless game which is described ratehr well by one of the posters in the video you just watched (because you DID watch it didn't you, because you promised you had)

 

Posted by some guy, some time, in some place:

This is no remake. They just coughed up their bioshock leftovers and decided to slap any old brand they could find on it. "Uhh...we have aliens. Johnson, what's an old videogame where you fight aliens?"

 

"Uhh...X-Com sir."

 

"Right. Buy that title and that's what we'll call it."

 

Wonder what would have happened if Johnson said "Space Invaders".

 

And that just about sums up why this game will suck.

 

Please 2k, DON'T make another game that isn't really XCom but still has the name on the box! You'll disappoint a great deal of fans with the anti-climax of actually playing it for the first time after waiting months to buy it and then we'll spend the next 10 years trying to think of reasons why 'it's not really a proper XCom game so we can pretend it never happened'. We just got over that with Enforcer, we're not ready to do it again.

 

I never expected anyone to say what I'm about to say on this site but...

 

I really hope this game never makes it to the shops...

[crazedc]

Yes, this is a mockery of the X-COM name. This is what happens when a company rustles through the IP file cabinet. At the time of announcement, there were thousands of loyal X-Commies lighting up 2K's Facebook page with all manner of complaints. This has nothing to do with X-COM. Take your mindless FPS elsewhere. X-COM has the potential to be a successful TB strategy series like Civilization. FPS are a dime a dozen. X-COM is immortal. I wish someone would give it the respect it deserves, and unleash its potential.

[Pete]

Just merged your thread with this one Vet as they're pretty similar.

 

Just had to clsoe the topic for a tick whilst I fixed up my botched attempt at splicing them together

[The Veteran]

Thanks Pete! Obviously I hadn't seen this thread before but it doesn't seem to be about the new game anymore anyway. Seems to have turned more into a discussion on the origins of the alien species, their relations to each other and which games are and aren't real XCom games...

 

So I guess it's time for another huge post in response

 

Note that I pointed out in my post above that a lot of us have been trying to right off Enforcer as being a real XCom game for years.

we'll spend the next 10 years trying to think of reasons why 'it's not really a proper XCom game so we can pretend it never happened'. We just got over that with Enforcer, we're not ready to do it again.

See I did say that

 

BUT...

 

It's undeniably an XCom game, if not a rather poor attempt at one... It features bosses that are totally at odds with the rest of the Enemy Unknown timeline but mostly these are simply much larger variants on the normal aliens. IIRC there is a giant reaper, giant chryssalid and giant ethereal at times...

 

Now while that's ridiculous as they simply don't exist in EU it can still be easily justified and as a true fan of the whole franchise (irrelevant of their quality) that's what I do. So here's how they all fit together in the grand scheme of things!!!

 

We'll start at the very beginning and co chronologically I think...

 

BE WARNED YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ALL OF THIS AS I KIND OF ENDED UP WITH A FULL TIMELINE

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED, CLICK THE LINK IF YOU WANT TO SEE WH YTHE XCOM GAMES WORK TOGETHER

 

XCom Timeline

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

Oh my God my bloody back is killing me!!!!

 

You realise of course I wanted to write a little about the how's why's and when's of the various games and then have a little rant about how and why this new game will suck as it doesn't fit into that timeline even vaguely right?

 

Well now I don't want to spend another second on this bloody computer all day as I literally have not moved since I started writing this!!! I reckon it deserves it's own post so I'm going to set it up as a timeline in the XCom series forums for any more debate. Meanwhile I think we should try and rerail this topic to be about the new XCOM and stop discussing irrelevancies here

 

So that's my 2million cents, and now I'm out

[WhiteSparrow]

I'd guess the worst part is that the only real connection it has to the original x-com is the name.

Change that and it would be just another "squad-based tactical shooter" with some funky story and enemies amongst the others.

 

Majority of the complaints would go away if they just changed the name to something else. As then it wouldn't be connected to the original in any way.