Interesting article on the Verge covering the art style of the game, for those into that sort of thing.
The same things ran through my head during that conversation.
So there is a trade off here. On the one hand, I see your point that limiting free aim makes the free-aim weapons more tactically important (especially because they’re usually single-use per mission). But I also like the idea of shooting out the back wall of a UFO to surprise the enemy, and I just don’t see that happening very often in the current system.
I was just agreeing with Jake’s point that if you allow too many weapons to destroy cover in free aim, then the “optimal” way to play becomes sitting behind cover and destroying everything. I think we’ll still be able to breach walls a sufficient amount in the new game.
The other casualty of the cover system is everyone’s favorite discussion topic: random maps. Jake said they playtested hand-designed maps endlessly and found all sorts of sections that sucked. I can see how random maps might be pretty poor in a cover based game. It wasn’t so bad in the original game when you had enough troops to send out screeners.
Both the original and remake have their issues, but most of the secondary design decisions seem to follow logically from the fundamentals at least.
SlyFrog
1743
I think that what they were clumsily trying to get at is that the original game seemed to have more spacious maps than I have seen with respect to the new game. Therefore, you didn’t always have the option of staying in cover. Because when there is a building you have to clear, but you need to spend a few turns going through a field to get to the building, you don’t really have the option of dashing from cover to cover. You have to go into the open in order to proceed.
The footage I have seen from the new game, however, makes it appear as if the maps are tighter. It seems fairly rare that you have situations where you can’t dash from cover to cover.
I agree with you - that has little to do with a “cover system” and more to do with the size of the maps and the amount of cover that is made available.
Savillo
1744
Good point about Firaxis’ decision to go with hand-designed maps instead of a random generator. That could be it.
I don’t know if anyone around here remembers Chaos Concepts’ little-known (and poorly titled) UFO: Extraterrestrials, but they did the same thing. They claimed to have 200+ unique maps and that you’d likely never see the same one twice in a single campaign. Well, that turned out to be bullshit.
In the TMA podcast, Solomon says that they have 80 hand-designed maps, which makes me worry. In the preview build, I see the same maps all the time. I’ve even developed optimal starting strategies for some of them.
Savillo
1745
That makes more sense. Thanks, SlyFrog.
The maps are definitely tighter. When I wrote that they were more “sparse,” I meant that they are not just smaller by comparison but that they also have fewer distinctive elements. So in a typical Enemy Unknown map, you might have just one or two buildings to explore, and that’ll take up the majority of the map’s footprint. But in UFO Defense, you might have two, three, even four multilevel buildings in addition to fenced fields or smaller building clusters or little forests walled in by hedges.
Which could get pretty fucking tedious after awhile. Yay for more contained skirmishes in Enemy Unknown.
If that’s tedious… well, it seems you didn’t like the tactical battles in first place!
No, no, I love tactical battles, but some of those bug hunts were VERY low valley (so to speak) vs. the high valley of a tight, scary map. Spending four or five turns moving 20+ soldiers one at a time (so meticulous, if you were playing smart) and not running into the last alien on a quarter mile sized map really WASN’T a lot of fun, at least not for me.
Besides, some of the EU maps seem vast that I’ve watched videos of, especially the (now deleted) OXM video that had a map so freaking vast it made me want to play on Normal instead of Classic when I saw the onslaught of enemies the player was facing!
But we won’t have 20+ soldiers anymore :P
Tom_Mc
1750
Tactical battles are indeed a good thing and front and center of any Xcom game. It’s the pacing issue that’s being addressed. If you think campers were bad in counter strike they had nothing on that last sectoid waiting in the closet of a building in the far corner of the map. And the fact that this was after the big battle at the UFO and you’re coming off the suspense if that room to room fight hoping that the power cores aren’t hit and you can recover that precious E115.
In my crotchety old age I am all for getting to the good parts sooner and keeping the decisions weighty and interesting. From what I have seen I think this is going to be a good, for me at least, reboot. I am concerned about map variety. The large random maps of Xcom were a blessing and a curse as they contributed to that aforementioned pacing problem. And, while the maps as a whole were random the squares were not and I would soon develop micro strategies for each one. Granted you do still worry about how they fit together but the buildings do get samey anyway.
Tom M
Savillo
1751
Sometimes, sure. Most often on the terror mission maps. Not always, though.
Terror from the Deep, on the other hand… Yikes. Tripling (or was it quadrupling?) the map size was a terrible idea. Not to mention those damned cruise ship missions with all those single-square compartments!
I listened to the podcast and while I did preorder this, I do have problems with open areas being completely no man’s land. I assume from gameplay videos and the quasi-interactive demo, that your soldiers will die when not in cover. I definitely value the importance of cover mechanics as they make perfect sense in tactical games that try to parallel real life tactical situations; however I will miss those tense moments of running soldiers across open fields (of fire) when trying to flank enemies or getting to cover but not having the AP to make it all the way in one turn.
I feel like the inclusion of Overwatch and Suppression should have allowed for more open terrain. I also feel like them trying to appeal to the consoleers may have caused most of the problems that PC/Xcom fans may feel a bit cheated over - I am sure this is how most multiplatform games are received, but this is Xcom, a perennial classic for the PC.
From what I’ve seen and the demo, this game really feels like a video game version of an actual skirmish-level miniatures-tabletop game based on Xcom universe rather than Xcom remake.
I am still disappointed there seems to be blanket voices instead of based on nationality. I am not a developer, but seems like that could have been a fairly inexpensive endeavor for such generic conversation in game.
On a positive note, it already looks better, more polished, and will have more support than JA: Back In Action.
Well, yeah, but I was just talking about the original game and why I felt that got tedious after awhile, to defend against your comment that indicated people who didn’t like that weren’t maybe ‘hardcore’ strategy fans. :)
I’m actually really glad the new game has (on average?) smaller, tighter maps that get to the action a bit faster and smaller scope in terms of unit count. Six units (which will happen pretty fast on Normal difficulty, sounds like) vs. 8-12 aliens on a medium sized map with a 20-40 minute combat sounds sort of awesome to me.
And being able to get back to the geoscope to do more awesome research and things quickly is another thing I like over the original - I recall many times being so obsessed with a new piece of research I was waiting on (or manufacturing) that I would skip terror missions and the like just because I didn’t want to play through yet another two hour mission before finally getting to outfit my troops with the new shiny thing. That was less of a problem on later play throughs once I’d seen everything a few times of course, but I still remember feeling guilty about letting the aliens have their way with us while I waited to find out what a “Blaster Launcher” might be.
Tom_Mc
1754
Underwater Xcom awesome! Ability to recreate a ship deck plan also awesome. Don’t ever combine them ;)
Tom M
Thrag
1755
Finding the last few aliens in the large randomly generated maps of the original x-com could indeed be tedious. Especially in TFTD where it seemed all too often there was one last sectoid hiding in a closet at the far end of a ship. This wasn’t exactly an uncommon complaint about the game.
Someone stating the simple fact that x-com could generate maps that were tedious to clear out doesn’t mean they don’t like tactical games. That’s a silly response.
Let’s not kid ourselves. X-Com had plenty of flaws. As someone who played the original before it got patched I remember well how crashtastic it was.
Tom_Mc
1756
I try to take everything with a degree of levity. We all know you don’t play real strategy or war games unless you spend days shoving thousands of cardboard chits around maps covering an entire dinning table. Even if you do that you’re still considered a poser unless you have period costume and riding crop.
Tom M
Dan at Gamespy had one of many awkward situations with Jake in these preview videos. Dan said straight up he had seen this map before and Jake didn’t seem to know how to respond. He said most campaigns will be about 30 missions (more on that in a second) with 80 maps, plus all the variations of starting positions and alien types. I always assumed the engine would be smart enough to keep you from playing the same map twice in one campaign, but on the next campaign you’re statistically likely to play a few maps over again.
I’m relieved that each campaign takes roughly 30 missions. That seems like a good limit. In many combined tactical/strategic games like the original XCOM and Total War series, the endgame can feel like countless tactical battles because you have so much ground to cover. The benefit of the arbitrary/boardgamey mutually exclusive missions in the strategic layer is that you don’t feel compelled to do all the missions for optimal play. In fact, you’re unable to. That ought to relieve some late game grind.
rezaf
1758
Well, I never really had the tedium aspect in X-Com, except in the cruise ship missions - those things were HUGE. And while the last alien hardly ever REALLY hid in that one-tile compartment, having to check them to be sure wasn’t all that enjoyable.
In the other maps … I think I never actually brought 20 soldiers to the field, except possibly in Cydonia. And unless it was a very large UFO I had cornered on it’s landing (as opposed to crash) site, I’d usually only use two or three groups of two or three soldiers each to scour the map. From high above. In flying armor. It was usually pretty trivial finding the aliens this way.
The new game had no height levels, right? Only “on ground” and “flying”.
No destructible terrain and rare destructible environment (i.e., blowing holes in walls). No random levels. Overall smaller maps where the position of the aliens is usually more or less clear from the start.
These, to me, are clearly cases of bad steamlining.
rezaf
The TMA podcast was the first time I heard how multiplayer works. For anyone going in blind, it’s a tabletop point buy system. You choose whether to take a couple powerful units or a bunch of weak ones. That sounds good.
It’s frustrating how game previews are all moving to videos and podcasts now. It takes forever to absorb basic information like this. I guess I count on RPS to put it in text for me.
Tom_Mc
1760
There is definitely an attempt to expand “accessibility”, however you quantify that, as evidenced by the smaller scale and console friendly control scheme. The ratio of patient die hard gamers to casuals has lost ground in the decades since Xcom. So if you are looking for a more serious game in the Xcom legacy this is probably not it. Xenonauts is being touted as a more traditional successor. That may be worth a look.
Tom M
