After spending about an hour with it I pretty much agree with the main points of this article, in particular the point in the title, I think this will prove to be most interesting where it goes its own way from the new xcoms.
Delayed till June 2019.
Totally ok with this.
Yup no problem here. A great game developer. Should take all the time he needs.
Yep, I got no problem with this either, I think it’ll be interesting to track development in playing the builds as they come out between now and next year this time.
Uhh. I heard it was pretty inspired in the modern Xcoms, but that’s a bit more than just ‘inspired’.
edit: of course, I came late to the party, I see this has been discussed already, even meme’d:
However the meme misses an important point: the UI is so similar because the core game mechanics are so similar! I’m talking of pip system, relationship between move and shoot actions, average movement range, cover system, etc. Except the free aiming/body location, that seems the only change.
Hasn’t that meme died yet? If not, it should.
Not doubting you, but curious, are your observations from playing it, or reading about it?
Reading/watching.
Move and shoot is not the same as nuxcom. PP is more flexible. I’m also curious about what they do with the strategic layer. We haven’t even seen that yet. A year is a long time for the game to still evolve so I’ll wait and see what it all looks like next spring. I do trust that Gollop will get it pretty much right. He’s a good game designer.
The lack of order flexibility of Xcom irks me so that’s good news, I guess.
There’s also gear and inventory, unlike XCOM. I think the strategy layer, factions and mutating creatures will also be key differences.
I posted that nearly four weeks ago when the meme was in its prime! In its prime I tell you! I haven’t seen it much since then so I’m guessing it’s already dead.
Sometimes I am struck by the notion that you are a deeply unserious person.
You cannot claim to have read / watched (although you might not have watched a video where someone was doing a job showing things off, the reading part is the killer) the game and failed to notice all the differences. But I’ll repeat some anyway.
They do look similar. PP uses a very similar UI. But they are not.
- Movement is in fact a sort of hybrid of “move/act” and turn units. This is clearly indicated when a unit changes it’s weapon. The amount you can move and fire differs between e.g. the Heavie’s rocket launcher and his Minigun.
Incidentally, the “eq wheel” is a sort of quick action thing. Going to anything in your inventory will actually cost something. I don’t think they’ve definitively said but probably “moving less” and still being able to fire is my guess. Yes, there’s an inventory. “different types of ammo” have specifically been mentioned.
This is a big change although it’s felt more in other mechanics. We do not know how a character’s available actions are derived yet. But stats have been mentioned IIRC. Don’t know if it will be as detailed as X-com, or more abstract. The inventory will not be as abstract as Xcoms, it seems. But exact details are forthcoming I believe.
- In line with that, there are no pods. And as soon as you spot an enemy you stop moving (a la X-com). You can finish your move from that point as well.
This is a radical change from XCom. Enemies are expected to be out doing things. Wandering/patrolling/etc.
- The game allows for free aim and is fully destructable except for porbably the actual Earth/possibly some other “ground floors”. Free aim doesn’t just mean “I can aim at any body part”. It means you can shoot through a wall to hit a guy you can’t see but know is there because a squaddie has LOS, a la the original X-com. (but impossible in Xcom with direct fire) Or shoot the platform of a tower out from under somebody. Or just bring the entire tower down, because you feel like it.
This is a radical change from Xcom.
- Yes, both games possess a cover system. There’s no real comparison between them. Xcom’s is entirely abstract. You have partial/full cover or you don’t, and this is pretty much a binary state that only changes once a specific LOS threshold has been crossed. Like the originals, PP is modeling bullet paths and whatnot. So what is effective cover can be reduced or nullified due to angle and elevation. The dev video shows a squaddie being sent up a tower to completely negate an alien’s cover (this doesn’t happen in Xcom). Or, you can just blow it to kingdom come with explosives/shooting it with lots of stuff/etc, if that floats your boat.
This is a radical change from Xcom.
I was going to go on but I got bored. If you want to watch a good video, watch the one the devs did. They highlight and talk about all the known differences (and talk about a number of things not in the demo, like ammo types and the inventory). There’s been a bunch of previews that have talked about this stuff (in fact, I’m behind on reading them all). All of this stuff has been talked about in the thread. PP is clearly a game that has more going on in terms of mechanics. More simulationist, someone might argue.
Coming in and saying “this looks exactly like Xcom lol” looks super trolley. As it is, you read about the game/watched it played but apparently weren’t paying attention.
Also, lifting things is a wonderful grand tradition for all video games to engage in and we should be happy when it happens. Not, like, “my child has been born oh frabjuous day” happy. But as happy as, say, “I just got a good final report card and my parents handed me twenty bucks and sent me off to the local arcade”.
I would like this if I could. Sh1t.
I dunno, I still find that particular meme highly amusing.
Also this game looks great.
Sh1tBon3rz!
