A deluge of new previews and gameplay info for XCOM 2 convinced us it was time for another round-up newspost on the turn-based strategy title, which is now less than a month away from its PC exclusive release.
First of all, IGN has published a short video that covers the game’s revamped strategy layer. While it doesn’t look like we’re dealing with something hugely complex and the focus is still firmly on the tactical turn-based battles, it does look like the folks at Firaxis worked on improving the anaemic offering of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The folks at IGN also have a video and short write-up on the new Gatekeeper alien.
Shacknews has compiled a very lengthy and comprehensive feature on the title:
The world outside isn’t nearly as ravaged as it was in Enemy Unknown, though, and the missions are set up quite a bit differently. Send your squad out to take down alien facilities, raid UFO supplies, and even complete Guerrilla Ops missions. But be careful. If you make the aliens too angry, they’ll counterattack, and you’ll be forced to defend resistance bases from an onslaught of deadly enemies. XCOM 2 turns Enemy Unknown’s (world savior) concept onto its head. Before it was the aliens threatening the system, but now, you’re the upstart insurgent picking away at the social order. The aliens don’t take kindly to those who like to rock the boat.
Each and every mission map is procedurally generated in order to maximize replayability. This is a huge new addition to the series, and the team at Firaxis haven’t taken its implementation lightly. While many games with procedural maps often find themselves showing the seams, and cluttered beyond recognition. XCOM 2 doesn’t suffer from this failing. Honestly, I’d have never known the maps weren’t handmade if it hadn’t been noted in so much of the promotional material.
The enemies have evolved as well, and they’re even scarier than before. Sectoids have been infused with human DNA, making them an even more formidable threat than they were when the aliens first landed. This isn’t the same war we were fighting in Enemy Unknown, and Firaxis wants to make sure we understand that.
Just thinking about the Faceless, I can’t help but relive the nightmare of my first encounter with them. One of the Resistance bases had been attacked, and I’d sent a squad out to find any survivors, and wipe out any Advent hanging around the area. I’d already saved three of the civilians left behind in the attacks, and as I readied for my next turn, I moved into position to pick up another citizen before a nearby Sectoid could take him out. My swift attack didn’t go as planned, however, as the human before me quickly transformed, turning what I assumed was someone who needed saving, into one of the most dangerous enemies I’d encountered in the game up to that point. It was a moment of adrenaline, as I scurried to pull my forces back together to take out the massive Faceless enemy before it could pulverize my squad leader.
PC Gamer delivers its preview in a “10 things” list form:
Cars and walls blow up, fire spreads and damages buildings
I find myself thinking about positioning and movement very differently in XCOM 2, primarily because now you can blast through walls. Prisoner trapped in a defended building? Don’t use the front door, make your own! Destrustribility has been scaled up to a large degree, and it significantly changes your relationship with the terrain. If you blow up a section of a building it will catch fire, and that fire will slowly spread each turn, destroying pieces of wall and floor along the way. The actions you take have more impact on the world around you, and it can be used as an advantage for both you and your enemies.
GameSpot:
The increased number of possibilities on the humans’ side, however, helped me in my fight. The Specialist class has the ability to hack alien alien networks, augmenting the Resistance soldiers with increased critical hit chance, or increased armor for the mission. The Ranger, the more mobile class, has a blade for close-quarters combat and high-damage kills.
XCOM 2’s newest class, the Psi Operative, however, is also the game’s most unique. While other soldiers level up through combat, the Psi Operative does so through studying. Its abilities also unlock at random–lucky players may even unlock the best of the 14 options right off the bat, granting their operative an energy beam that travels through cover, the ability to remotely detonate enemy explosives, or a stasis shield that renders enemies temporarily helpless.
This new character class is only one of the changes I witnessed during my time with XCOM 2, and led to a variety of emergent scenarios in the squad-based skirmishes.
GameInformer also employs the same formula as PC Gamer’s writer:
Character Pool
Tired of re-creating your friends every time you start a new game just to send them off to slaughter? Don’t worry! There’s help!
The new Character Pool feature allows you to create your friends, family, loved ones, and that one guy who stole your lunch from the work fridge without hassle. Just customize the soldiers once and save them.
As you’re playing, you’ll start to see your creations pop up in your game as recruits. You’ll also be able to share with other players via an import and export feature.
The Aliens Have A Win Condition
In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, players had the opportunity to take their time before defeating the aliens. That changes in XCOM 2. Throughout the game, the aliens will be progressing something called the (Avatar Project.) Should they complete it, it’s game over.
Thankfully, you can slow down their progress on it and other agendas (like hunting XCOM or equipping Advent soldiers with better gear) by taking on some missions. Successful completion sabotages the aliens and gives you a bit of breathing room.
The win condition is a meta-expression of the oppressive clock that exists in tactical missions. There is no time to rest in XCOM 2. But you’ll find that out for yourself on February 5 when it arrives on PC.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
Above all else, XCOM 2 is a game of surprises, which is (ironically?) precisely what I didn’t expect it to be. It builds on the foundation laid by Enemy Unknown but distorts and challenges your expectations and understanding of that game at almost every turn.
The most obvious example of that tendency that I’ve seen occurs during an encounter with something new. That ‘˜something new’ disrupts the battlefield, forcing a rethink regarding the importance and utility of the usual movement from cover to cover. It makes a mockery of the good practice you’ve drilled into your soldiers and that will likely cause you to lose a squad or two as you readjust.
What’s truly brilliant about the execution of these twists in the tale is the way that they’re introduced. Although times have changed and XCOM are now a guerrilla resistance operation striking against an occupying force rather than a sanctioned defense force attempting to repel an invasion, many of the plot beats in XCOM 2 have direct analogues in Enemy Unknown. There’s a familiarity to the research path that initially makes the game seem like it’s going to mirror the original, in the way that Terror From The Deep found its own brand of terror missions and alien containment facilities.
Those analogues do exist but Firaxis make every effort to subvert the structure at every turn. That’s true in the day-to-day operations of XCOM, who are now called on to abduct high-ranking officials rather than to prevent abductions, and it’s true in the turn-by-turn catastrophes on the randomised tactical maps.
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