XCOM 2 to launch in November

[AniThyng]

I will say this much: whatever it's other failings, EU succeeded in making me care about each individual soldier and his appearance, with enough people to make the roster diverse but not so many that I stop caring about them as individual units.

I've been playing massive chalice which tries but haven't really felt any empathy for them yet...

[Vendetta]

Honestly, I'm going to assume that the menace we faced in the first XCOM was just a scouting group of benevolent aliens by comparison and that the actual invasion force came after the events of XCOM.

The XCom 2 website openly says "the world surrendered after 8 months". That's the starting point, X-Com lost.

Why is it that people are having a hard time with that idea and coming up with ways for it to not be true literally minutes after the game is announced? Some kind of fatnerd pride? Who knew people took the narrative of X-Com so seriously?

Not really sure why the reset button had to be so extreme.

Because an X-Com which failed to fight off any alien invasions at all will have less public support than one that looked like it might win once, and so the version where the aliens swept in and the world surrendered makes a tougher environment for X-Com to continue as a resistance force, because they start without the faith of the public from that initial victory.

[Grumman]

The problem I have with what looks to be the official timeline is that the aliens' actions during the war make such an occupation blatantly unacceptable. The aliens were bombing cities, kidnapping civilians to experiment on them and using shock troops that kill people to use as incubators for their young. Better in my mind to skip the war altogether, and set this game in a timeline where the aliens came in peace offering a beneficial alliance, then silently mind controlled whatever leaders they met with and turned them into puppet governments. Five years later, the aliens have been subtly working against humanity's interests and XCOM - a secret military organisation created to fight a war that never happened - takes it upon themselves to overthrow the aliens.

[AniThyng]

From what I gather, the timeline presupposes XCOM performing as if a n00b was playing it for the first time on ironman hard difficulty and never got past laser rifle research...

[bilateralrope]

I've got two problems with the EU aliens invading. First, like Grumman says, the forces of the Uber Ethereal were not invading Earth. They were terrorizing humanity to get humanity to react in the way they wanted. I get the feeling that everything was proceeding according to the Uber Ethereals plan until you started killing Ethereals on the bridge of the Temple Ship. Take a read of what he says during the final mission and take note that the Uber Ethereal is praising the humans until an Ethereal dies.

The second is that none of the aliens in the trailer look like any of the EU aliens.

Now if it was a different set of aliens invading after the EU aliens, or we are in a different timeline where the EU aliens never attacked, then I wouldn't have a problem. And I haven't seen anything to say that XCOM 2 is in the same universe as EU.

Even if it is the EU aliens invading, that still wouldn't be as stupid as the ending to the Bureau. For those who haven't played it: Spoiler

Middle of the cold war. Aliens invade, humans drive them off. XCOM is operated only by the US government. One side mission involves taking a Russian spy who had infiltrated XCOM before the invasion out to convince him that the aliens had actually invaded. He then becomes one of the soldiers working for you. When you're back at base, lots of NPCs talk about how the alien technology would be useful both in winning the cold war and in helping civilians.

Near the end the big screen showing alien hotspots is showing alien attacks all over the world. You capture an alien mothership which is bombarding cities from orbit. While you have destroyed the portal the aliens were using to get to Earth and the systems that were mind controlling all of them, they still live on their homeworld. A dying world. An energy being with mind control capability that was helping them decides to vanish.

So, given all that, what does the US government decide to do ?

Cover the whole thing up. The mothership is either destroyed or given to the aliens left on Earth who then leave. Any alien tech that can't be hidden is destroyed. Anyone who knows anything is convinced to stay silent somehow (no mention of what happens to those who refuse). Any cities that are so badly overrun with alien construction that they can't be cleaned up get nuked so there is a reason to keep people away from them.

I've seen some people claim, but not produce anything to prove, that this ending is there to allow EU and the Bureau to take place in the same universe.

[Grumman]

The new sectoid looks like it might be engineered from the previous sectoids with human DNA, but the viper is clearly a new species.

Also, a quick tip: you need to put an equals sign after "spoiler" in the first tag to make the spoiler tags work.

[bilateralrope]

Oops. Could a mod please fix that ?

Next time I'll just use the button to automatically add the tags.

[Vendetta]

I've got two problems with the EU aliens invading. First, like Grumman says, the forces of the Uber Ethereal were not invading Earth. They were terrorizing humanity to get humanity to react in the way they wanted.

The fail state of the first game is still "world surrenders to aliens". Which we know from the final mission is so that they can incorporate humans into their empire like they did all the other species with the hope that they'll finally make their perfect new lifeform out of us.

The problem I have with what looks to be the official timeline is that the aliens' actions during the war make such an occupation blatantly unacceptable. The aliens were bombing cities, kidnapping civilians to experiment on them and using shock troops that kill people to use as incubators for their young.

You realise those are literally all things humans have done to each other in occupied territories in war and yet still expected surrender. (Well, except the last one, militia forces like Boko Haram leave their captive incubators of child soldiers alive).

The aliens in the "canon" used by XCom 2 presented an insurmountable challenge for Earth, and the world council surrenders. Which is the fail condition of the original game.

[Coaan]

The XCom 2 website openly says "the world surrendered after 8 months". That's the starting point, X-Com lost.

Why is it that people are having a hard time with that idea and coming up with ways for it to not be true literally minutes after the game is announced? Some kind of fatnerd pride? Who knew people took the narrative of X-Com so seriously?

Maybe because I play games like XCOM to enjoy the narrative and it makes no sense to assume the player was a bumbling putz, compared with the "Second wave" option I was hoping for, which actually does make sense?

Who knew people enjoy games with story?! that's just out there, man.

Games are all the more enjoyable when they can get the player invested in the storyline. Xcom managed to do that, for alot of people on this board apparantly.

[Irbis]

The second is that none of the aliens in the trailer look like any of the EU aliens.

None? Ok, snake men are new, but we see ethereal (statue/hologram), black troopers can be thin men or Exalt-like humans, and in the end we see upgraded sectoid. That's 2-3 old aliens out of 4...

The aliens in the "canon" used by XCom 2 presented an insurmountable challenge for Earth, and the world council surrenders. Which is the fail condition of the original game.

Not really. X-Com in X2 intro has toys far in advance of what they had in EU. It's equally possible aliens were pissed off by humans destroying temple ship and invaded in force, instead of doing diversionary attacks. I wonder, will the fate of the volunteer trooper be continued in second game? IIRC one of the developers said he/she didn't die in X1, so that's a potential plot thread that led to full scale invasion.

The problem I have with what looks to be the official timeline is that the aliens' actions during the war make such an occupation blatantly unacceptable. The aliens were bombing cities, kidnapping civilians to experiment on them and using shock troops that kill people to use as incubators for their young.

Uh, not only, as was pointed out, USA does this (more or less) on daily basis, yet 1/3 of the planet willingly plays boot-lick to their hegemony, USA also decided crimes of 1945 Germany and Japan (that were if anything even worse) should be dismissed as commie lies and nearly managed to erase them to make both countries allies. If not for Jewish diaspora doing everything to reverse it Holocaust would be almost forgotten by 1990s, like other genocides committed concurrently with it.

Really, all it would take is pro-Alien government dismissing matter as misunderstanding, playing up propaganda and paying token damages to loudest victims and 10 years later there would be no traces of the war.

[Vendetta]

Maybe because I play games like XCOM to enjoy the narrative and it makes no sense to assume the player was a bumbling putz, compared with the "Second wave" option I was hoping for, which actually does make sense?

XCom has literally never been about narrative other than your emergent experience with your game. That's why everyone hated the geoscape layer of the new one, because it wasn't dynamic and didn't lead to interesting personal experiences. The "narrative" of UFO when it's done right is made up of "this time I was attacking a UFO and there were like fifteen chryssalids in one room" and "the aliens snuck a base in under my radar and now the USA has dropped out of the fight and I am boned for cash", not the designer's script.

And guess what? The sequel literally doesn't affect those personal stories at all, because they all still happened and will continue to happen if you play the game again. Because there just isn't a strong narrative thread to Xcom as a universe and never has been.

Also, your "second wave" option makes even less sense, because if there was a more powerful second invasion then that is the sequel. It's also depressingly predictable "oh look the bad guy's big brother turned up except this time he's blue not green!"

Games are all the more enjoyable when they can get the player invested in the storyline. Xcom managed to do that, for alot of people on this board apparantly.

And Xcom doesn't do that. The bits where the designers attempt to insert their own narrative are the bits people don't like, overwhelmingly the things people complain about about Xcom are the most scripted elements, the way the war won't progress if you don't research certain things or do certain missions, the way the game throws up artificial pick one missions, the dumb DLC mission chain, the world council request missions, etc. The things where it tries to be a "story" and not an emergent personal experience like the original UFO was.

Not really. X-Com in X2 intro has toys far in advance of what they had in EU.

The game is set after 20 years of alien occupation and XCom is based on a captured alien supply ship. They have obviously been stealing things since they lost the war.

[Irbis]

The game is set after 20 years of alien occupation and XCom is based on a captured alien supply ship. They have obviously been stealing things since they lost the war.

I don't recall EU Xcom being able to capture intact supply ship. Much less if it was ineptly led like some here suggested from timeline. Moreover, they really needed to do it before aliens took over as both ship and the shuttle strike team used are far too human in appearance to be alien craft yet look very much alike to Xcom conventional ships in EU. I don't buy underground Xcom would be able to manufacture that, having it hidden from war is more likely.

Oh, by the way, I read a few interviews and the team in trailer isn't generic sniper/heavy/support/assault from EU like I assumed at first. All are new classes themed on guerilla special forces, not regular military like in EU. Oh, and the snake-woman is just what thin men look without infiltration adaptations, so it's 4/4 old aliens, actually. All in all, I liked what I saw, especially promise of massive mod tool package on launch, which was apparently big reason from making X2 PC-only.

[Vendetta]

I don't recall EU Xcom being able to capture intact supply ship. Much less if it was ineptly led like some here suggested from timeline. Moreover, they really needed to do it before aliens took over as both ship and the shuttle strike team used are far too human in appearance to be alien craft yet look very much alike to Xcom conventional ships in EU. I don't buy underground Xcom would be able to manufacture that, having it hidden from war is more likely.

XCom's base in XCom 2 is a captured alien supply ship. That's right there on the website. Whether they captured it during the war or afterwards doesn't matter, it's theirs now.

[Grumman]

The game is set after 20 years of alien occupation and XCom is based on a captured alien supply ship. They have obviously been stealing things since they lost the war.

I don't recall EU Xcom being able to capture intact supply ship.

We did it regularly. Every time you did a "Landed UFO" mission and won, you were capturing an intact Small Scout, Medium Scout, Abductor or Supply Barge. You even capture a Battleship in the Gangplank mission.

[Coaan]

Blah Blah Blah

I hate to spoil your rant, but no shit sherlock. You will note I never said that the personal experiences didn't make up a lot of the enjoyment of XCOM. Nurturing, guiding and developing your troopers over the course of a campaign is part of the experience

But you know what? the story elements they tried to add into XCOM were ALSO part of the experience that I enjoyed. You can pull generalizations out of your ass all you like, but the experience I enjoyed also included all of those cutscenes and moments they tried to add that helped frame the narrative they were shooting for

Could they have done a better job? absolutely. I won't argue that point.

[Irbis]

XCom's base in XCom 2 is a captured alien supply ship. That's right there on the website. Whether they captured it during the war or afterwards doesn't matter, it's theirs now.

Um, that's exactly my point? I was saying the capture doesn't fit inept 'bad end' some were suggesting, they successfully took over, modified and operated alien ship which says Xcom was very successful. Even more so than in canon, which points at second wave thing.

We did it regularly. Every time you did a "Landed UFO" mission and won, you were capturing an intact Small Scout, Medium Scout, Abductor or Supply Barge. You even capture a Battleship in the Gangplank mission.

No. You captured chunk of metal that was then torn apart for alien stuffs. Had flying it been possible, you wouldn't need Firestorms, or dreadfully slow Skyrangers.

And guess what? The sequel literally doesn't affect those personal stories at all, because they all still happened and will continue to happen if you play the game again. Because there just isn't a strong narrative thread to Xcom as a universe and never has been.

Yeah, it's not like there were, like, 5 or 6 games with common storyline, right?

Also, your "second wave" option makes even less sense, because if there was a more powerful second invasion then that is the sequel. It's also depressingly predictable "oh look the bad guy's big brother turned up except this time he's blue not green!"

Can you explain how this makes any sense at all?

Saying 'we turned out to be stronger than aliens expected proving our worth so they sent 10 instead of 1 ship to enslave Earth before it assimilates all that tech' is frankly the most realistic outcome...

And Xcom doesn't do that. The bits where the designers attempt to insert their own narrative are the bits people don't like, overwhelmingly the things people complain about about Xcom are the most scripted elements, the way the war won't progress if you don't research certain things or do certain missions, the way the game throws up artificial pick one missions, the dumb DLC mission chain, the world council request missions, etc. The things where it tries to be a "story" and not an emergent personal experience like the original UFO was.

Wut? If you don't count reckless adding of DLC protagonists to the team, these were the most enjoyable parts of the game. The whale mission in Canada was by far the best, showing a glimpse of Xcom that didn't looked like action movie. Just a chilling example of what even weakest aliens can do given a chance. Even the contrived adding of people to team gave you team members with unique backstory and look/voice - something that let you care for them. Sure, trooper Generik #634 that killed three chryssalids 5 missions ago was nice, but if he dies you have five more waiting in the wings.

Big news flash - your "emergent experience" was a chore, interesting first 2-3 times but once you got to 20th battleship all you can do is praying you find these last three ^#$&*#$*&%$ aliens faster. People would skip it entirely if not for stick (council being angry) and carrot (game tokens exchangeable for new stuff). As it was, small minority of players even built fusion lance as on that stage it was just skipskipskip, let me finish already. Unique missions dodge that as you genuinely didn't knew what to expect and were kept on your toes.

[orbitingpluto]

The concept has grown on me. Leading La Resistance against alien-lead governments of Earth is something different, but it's a refreshing sort of different. Enough that I'm actually interested in this game, though I still doubt I'll buy a copy.

[Coaan]

Wut? If you don't count reckless adding of DLC protagonists to the team, these were the most enjoyable parts of the game. The whale mission in Canada was by far the best, showing a glimpse of Xcom that didn't looked like action movie. Just a chilling example of what even weakest aliens can do given a chance. Even the contrived adding of people to team gave you team members with unique backstory and look/voice - something that let you care for them. Sure, trooper Generik #634 that killed three chryssalids 5 missions ago was nice, but if he dies you have five more waiting in the wings.

I'm hoping they keep the idea of having unique troopers from the likes of DLC and extend that to the main game. It'd add a nice personal touch if your troops in the next one come from your actions rather than just generic trooper #573. I'd love to say, have extra recruits coming from the fact that a civilian witnessed you gunning down an alien out in the open and decided to take a stand themselves and join up.

If you're doing more damage to the civilian population than the aliens/government are? you should either get less recruits or you should get recruits that might have negative personality traits.

Something like that would only add to the atmosphere/dynamic aspect of the game

[Irbis]

The concept has grown on me. Leading La Resistance against alien-lead governments of Earth is something different, but it's a refreshing sort of different. Enough that I'm actually interested in this game, though I still doubt I'll buy a copy.

Though, developers might be skirting it bit close with that hood design - I half expect people to take note and first thing made in that mod suite to be video of ranger class soldier cutting off sectoid head with his sword in ISIS parody

I'm hoping they keep the idea of having unique troopers from the likes of DLC and extend that to the main game. It'd add a nice personal touch if your troops in the next one come from your actions rather than just generic trooper #573. I'd love to say, have extra recruits coming from the fact that a civilian witnessed you gunning down an alien out in the open and decided to take a stand themselves and join up.

If you're doing more damage to the civilian population than the aliens/government are? you should either get less recruits or you should get recruits that might have negative personality traits.

Something like that would only add to the atmosphere/dynamic aspect of the game

That was one thing X1 did well - giving real choices and making troopers feel less like chess pieces doing repeatedly same mission on game board. In EU, by offering high level soldiers as mission rewards, and when that didn't work (as they were equally faceless as standard troopers and all difference was quickly lost) going to DLC/EW model of giving troops face and story. Hopefully they will expand on that in X2, maybe Silent Storm style, and include group with developed differences.

[Flagg]

Umm, I only played EU and EW (just a bit of EW, I moved on when some other game came out) as far as XCOM goes, and I didn't give half a quarter of a fuck times 0 about the plot beyond general setting and anything that would effect my game. It was gameplay that got me started, gameplay that got me hooked into hours of nonstop play, and gameplay that made me play until the end and beat the shit out of the alien motherfuckers twice.

You know why I cared if randomly named, highest possible rank, and best overall sniper in my roster that was from a country I never paid notice of died? GAMEPLAY MUTHAFUCKA!!!

[Grumman]

At the moment, I'm feeling like the game has dropped from "Buy it" to "Buy the GotY edition for cheap at a steam sale". The technical side is sounding good - the maps, the destructible terrain and the modding support - but virtually everything else they've said annoys me. The latest thing is that Sectoids are going to have the power to raise the dead.

Yes, really.

I can give Chryssalids a pass on this since they can only revivify people that were killed by a Chryssalid bite in the first place, so you can handwave it as being some side effect of Chryssalid venom like the debunked theory that tetrodotoxin was used to turn people into zombies. What Sectoids are getting should be left to softer science-fantasy like 40k, not shoved into XCOM where it doesn't belong.

[Lord Revan]

IIRC Cryssalids didn't so much resurrect dead as wear the dead as a disguise for their young IIRC (at least in the orginal 1990s game).

[Grumman]

The more they try to sell this bullshit story, the more it annoys me. They need to stop saying consequences matter if they're going to make an entire game about a world where alien monsters started murdering people en masse and unprovoked and less than a generation later people have forgiven them for it.

IIRC Cryssalids didn't so much resurrect dead as wear the dead as a disguise for their young IIRC (at least in the orginal 1990s game).

I'll take your word for it, but that's rather ridiculous in itself. Eating away at the torso until it hits something that is instantly crippling to the zombie is one thing, but a human-skin suit doesn't make much sense unless you approach the problem like a taxidermist would. The Chryssalid isn't going to be walking on human legs unless it can get its own legs down there past the bones, and it's not getting its mouth down there to make room.

[Irbis]

The latest thing is that Sectoids are going to have the power to raise the dead.

Raise the dead, or just control a corpse for a short time? Because what I have seen is the latter, and I really don't see where the problem is seeing psi can both control nerves and move matter, if anything, staying in cover and fighting using 'puppet' makes perfect sense. Also, if it has mechanisms like mind meld/control in Xcom, namely that killing the controlled is damaging for controller I don't see the problem again.

The more they try to sell this bullshit story, the more it annoys me. They need to stop saying consequences matter if they're going to make an entire game about a world where alien monsters started murdering people en masse and unprovoked and less than a generation later people have forgiven them for it.

Like, say, Germany in the 70s? And they didn't have both total propaganda bonus and were not able to point to all the amazing technology they gave humans. What do you want, some Syria-like dystopia?

[Grumman]

The latest thing is that Sectoids are going to have the power to raise the dead.

Raise the dead, or just control a corpse for a short time? Because what I have seen is the latter, and I really don't see where the problem is seeing psi can both control nerves and move matter...

The problem is that a dead person is a broken system. Unless they were killed by a means specifically designed to keep it intact and not by simply melting their face off with a plasma cannon, it's like trying to hijack a plane with no wings. And if you're simply brute forcing your way past that problem with telekinesis, you don't need the corpse - just telekinetically fly a shotgun around instead.

The more they try to sell this bullshit story, the more it annoys me. They need to stop saying consequences matter if they're going to make an entire game about a world where alien monsters started murdering people en masse and unprovoked and less than a generation later people have forgiven them for it.

Like, say, Germany in the 70s?

Not at all like Germany in the 70s. Nazi Germany reaped what they sowed. They and Imperial Japan were literally trying to take over the world, picked fights with every major nation and flat out murdered over fifteen million prisoners. Their defeat at the hands of the Allies was not by any reasonable standard unprovoked.

What do you want, some Syria-like dystopia?

As I've said before, if they're going to retcon our victory in EU, they might as well retcon the entire war and thereby remove this massive obstacle to creating the world Firaxis wants to use as the backdrop for their game. I want the aliens to have taken the world by guile, without committing the sort of widespread atrocities that would make the relationship they look to have with humans in the new game impossible.