Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

[phongn]

The sort of people they are marketing a lot of their buzz to would have been outraged they cut the 'dismount skyranger' element, for crying out loud. That's why you need to placate them with stupid bullshit like 'we tortured all our staff with a fucking awful game' while you go out of your way to design a different and actually new game. Branding paradox!

As you have taken many smarmy pains to point out, gamers hate new things. The developer interviews all but said "many of the old mechanics were terrible and we can do a lot better" and still people whine about things like TUs.

Phongn, I assumed it was just a crippled full game.

The advance reviewers' copy is 13GB and the full game is 20GB. I have no idea what they're doing with all that space.

[Stark]

DETAIL TEXTURES. :v

[weemadando]

That demo is pretty good. The ui they've made is remarkable. Immediate access to information, needless functions removed & controls nice and straightforward

[Stark]

Who knew UI design was important?

I'm just stunned its six gig of scripted tutorial. Couldn't they have done that in a fucking video and let people o straight to actually playing the game?

[White Haven]

While Stark's suggestion is, as usual, that of an asshole, what irritated me about the tutorial mission was that it totally neglected Overwatch. Three squad members on overwatch while one guy went up to have a closer look at the German guy would have resulted in a lot of dead sectoids, a lot of alive X-COM operatives, and taught better habits for actual gameplay.

Also, point of order, only the very first bits of the second demo mission are tutorial, in fact, something like three moves.

[Stark]

Less QQ more pew pew, please. Everyone knows the laziest way to make a demo is to can the tutorial, and this appears to be a specifically crafted non interactive tutorial

I just hope the game isn't as heavily scripted as the demo suggests. Interest in thrilling story remains zero.

[Lord Woodlouse]

They should have made the first scripted part completely stoppable, and more importantly (for me) allowed you to change the difficulty from easy without having to fiddle around with the files.

Game is MUCH more entertaining when you play it on higher difficulty. I'm sure I suck terribly but on impossible I squeaked by with one injured sniper by the end.

[weemadando]

Everyone with actual copies of the game has been saying that bundling the scripted demos was the worst possible section to use - after those missions you don't get the constant interruptions, locked actions and [allegedly] super-linear maps anymore.

[Vendetta]

Using the tutorial as the demo has always been a terrible idea. It might teach you how to play a game, but it doesn't give you a good idea of what the game will actually be like.

[phongn]

That demo is pretty good. The ui they've made is remarkable. Immediate access to information, needless functions removed & controls nice and straightforward

I've found some minor annoyances - keybinding for actions changes depending on the unit (Overwatch is either 2 or 3, for example). But in general it's pretty good indeed.

[Stark]

Your problem starts and ends with the word 'keys'. . I just hope the console version doesn't have the distracting and ugly 'hollow box highlighting selected square because we made everyone finish that horrible game from 1895'. Steering the view instead of a pointer should make it unnecessary.

[phongn]

Your problem starts and ends with the word 'keys'. .

Right, but similarly actions will map onto controller buttons too, I assume? It'd suck if they shift around a bit.

I just hope the console version doesn't have the distracting and ugly 'hollow box highlighting selected square because we made everyone finish that horrible game from 1895'. Steering the view instead of a pointer should make it unnecessary.

I think the grid can be turned on and off to avoid that.

[Stark]

I think the problem is the row of actions you have; it's like a quickbar rather than x button for y action. I'll plug in a controller sarvo and see if it fixes it somehow.

[CaptHawkeye]

So I watched some youtubes of this game and I like it. This coming from someone who knows nothing about X-Com's "history". Frankly when a game has backlog of titles from the 90s that worries me since they're usually followed by legions of sycophantic dorks who want the developers to make them a game from 1995 with better specular mapping because change is for normal people.

I'll try out the demo. The last game I played in this one's vein was Valkyria Chronicles, which was shit. So i'm waiting to find out what a good turn-based tactics game is like.

EDIT: I'll be fair, VC's play didn't really suck. But it's gameplay was heavily tied to its narrative, which did suck. So my memories of the game are not flattering.

[Stark]

As much as they're required to fellate fatties in interviews and public statements, they've forcibly ejected whole swathes of awfulness from the formula and recognised that pace and decisions are more important than counting bullshit and fucking with stupid inventories.

[CaptHawkeye]

I like these guys they sound extremely pragmatic. Most fanhards will be satisfied with anything developers say in televised journals and shit even if it's along the lines of "the sky is green". Telling old X-Com fans what they want to hear and then not actually doing that is awesome.

I'm not familiar with the old problems with the gameplay but I don't think I need to be. They conspicuously remind me of a bunch of conservative nerds who obsess over another franchise I know better. It's name starts with "B" and rhymes with "attletech".

[Nephtys]

The entire key is to make better, newer mechanics. While keeping the SPIRIT of what people found was fun.

TU counting wasn't fucking fun. So out it goes. Blowing apart a building for fear aliens are inside only to probably kill a civilian? Fun. Let's keep that.

[Stark]

The joke is dealing with obsessive fans who are both extremely vocal and extremely stupid - both servicing their delusions of relevance and insight with wrong answers and lies while simply force-feeding them the correct answers is hilarious as all hell.

Even if it doesn't work as a game, flat-out lying to nerds while creating a game on sound principles that they'd hate if you talked about them is a good precedent.

[Lord Woodlouse]

I do get the feeling that the lead designer was definitely a huge fan of the original and I think he's genuine when he says he's aiming to build a game that feels like the original XCOM did back in the day. By the sound of things he went through a number of iterations, one of which being almost a copy of the original, but it wasn't enjoyable.

I've been on their main forums, and it's funny seeing some of the reactionary posts. A lot of people were really unhappy that you don't buy the ammo and personally place it on the Skyranger, for instance. While now you don't handle that little piece of minutia, but you do have to find time to reload in combat which is actually a factor now that the weapons don't have enormous capacities anymore.

[PeZook]

I've been on their main forums, and it's funny seeing some of the reactionary posts. A lot of people were really unhappy that you don't buy the ammo and personally place it on the Skyranger, for instance. While now you don't handle that little piece of minutia, but you do have to find time to reload in combat which is actually a factor now that the weapons don't have enormous capacities anymore.

The people who think the overall commander of Earth's struggle against incomprehensible invaders from outer space would bother telling each of his elite operatives how many mags to take with them on a mission and where to put them are...well, they elicit a smirk

"Commander McAwesome, private Grunt has his spare magazine in the second to right pocket of his tactical vest! That is unacceptable, tell him to move it to the rightmost pocket immediately!"

It's funny because I don't know a single person who DIDN'T bitch at the pre-mission outfitting screens in original UFO, which were absolutely terrible.

[Zinegata]

EDIT: I'll be fair, VC's play didn't really suck. But it's gameplay was heavily tied to its narrative, which did suck. So my memories of the game are not flattering.

VC's gameplay had promise.

The problem was that performance in that game was tied entirely to just how fast you completed each level; it didn't matter if you lost 8 guys as long as you completed the mission in 1 turn - those 8 guys will essentially be ressurected anyway.

That units can essentially chain an almost unlimited number of attacks also tended to favor "one super unit guns down EVERYTHING" as opposed to a more truly team-based approach like most traditional tactical squad-based strategy games.

====

And yeah, inventory management in the old game sucked. Would still like to be able to sell alien bodies for cash though (and make the consequences of it more meaningful like in X-com 3; where guns you sell can end up in enemy hands). Any word on how they'll handle this?

[Stark]

Resourcing is all about decisions apparently, and not spreadsheet whoring bullshit like the first game. The horribly stupid 'economy' in the first game is a great example if shit morons what to see again because they don't understand it actually sucked and detracted from the actual playing of the game (as distinct from the endlessly repeated crap people claim to have enjoyed). FIraxis clearly understands that the interesting part was always the strategic layer.

[PeZook]

Resourcing is all about decisions apparently, and not spreadsheet whoring bullshit like the first game. The horribly stupid 'economy' in the first game is a great example if shit morons what to see again because they don't understand it actually sucked and detracted from the actual playing of the game (as distinct from the endlessly repeated crap people claim to have enjoyed). FIraxis clearly understands that the interesting part was always the strategic layer.

I love how they consciously decided to limit your resources ("You will NEVER have enough to get everything you want" was the quote); Not only does it keep the game somewhat like the part where 90% of these sorts of games are interesting (IE. the start, where you actually have to make tradeoffs because you have very limited resources), but it means it might actually stay interesting and fresh for a second playthrough!

Fanboy morons hate that concept, of course. Unless you can break the economy in the first three weeks, it's not a real X-Com game.

[Stark]

Yeah, apparently getting something always costs you something, and you aren't selling your huge boring list of shit to sidestep the funding process. I'm particularly interested to see of the starting locations can key into decisions - if you start in America and maintenance is cheap you might not value money so much, but still need staff and other resources etc. I've heard about countries requesting you make them guns or whatever for money, but this ties up your engineers for the duration.

[PeZook]

Yeah, apparently getting something always costs you something, and you aren't selling your huge boring list of shit to sidestep the funding process. I'm particularly interested to see of the starting locations can key into decisions - if you start in America and maintenance is cheap you might not value money so much, but still need staff and other resources etc. I've heard about countries requesting you make them guns or whatever for money, but this ties up your engineers for the duration.

I still haven't seen a lot of information about the whole geopolitical angle, except for bits and pieces (IE. Aliens can attack in multiple places and you might have to choose who to help). It would be pretty cool if you had to plan for the eventuality of fighting soldiers of a nation that allies itself with the aliens, and if you sold them X-COM tech for monies, they might have your awesomesauce stuff and thus become really dangerous.