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[Shadowlord]

I wonder how they're doing the combat interface. If the third person squad stuff is pausable realtime like - well, bioware RPGs - then it could still go either way (good or bad). There didn't seem to be a whole lot of management of teammates in the Mass Effect series (at least I rarely needed to use it and it was only a matter of a couple button presses when I did), but Dragon Age: Origins required constantly pausing to issue orders unless you relied on the companion AI, and that companion combat management was apparently only easy on the PC.

[Flying Dice]

From the sound of things it's likely to be something like that, though probably not with order-during-pause, as one of the character's abilities is slowing time while issuing orders. Hopefully they'll go for a non-moronic AI balance, maybe with different default behaviors to select per-character, where all you really need to order is for focusing fire, waiting at a specific point, etc. and the combat will handle itself.

[Enzo]

The people working on this game are 2K Marin, who have nothing to do with Firaxis apart from being owned by 2K.

Just clarifying, I didn't mean "they" as in "this studio", rather "those owning the XCOM license*". Basically, there's already an apparently ongoing series of new XCOM games which stay pretty close to the original formula and appeal to the core fanbase of the franchise. If they (*) are producing another XCOM game at the same time, it would be kind of silly for them to make the same game twice.

Aside from that, the AI is going to have to be bulletproof to make real-time squad management (with permadeath!) not frustrating. And that's not an easy thing to do. That, or they give up on making soldiers squishy and you just have to pump bullets into each other until someone wins, which seems unfortunately likely.

[Virtz]

Just clarifying, I didn't mean "they" as in "this studio", rather "those owning the XCOM license*". Basically, there's already an apparently ongoing series of new XCOM games which stay pretty close to the original formula and appeal to the core fanbase of the franchise. If they (*) are producing another XCOM game at the same time, it would be kind of silly for them to make the same game twice.

I wouldn't mind different, but within the bounds of the series' story. There already being a "proper" successor does not justify one that's completely detached from the series' setting. Like I'd be somewhat happier if Van Buren was released alongside Fallout 3, but I'd still consider FO3 a boring piece of level-scaled, poorly written garbage.

And seriously, what's this game got to do with XCOM? If you renamed this game, there would likely be no trace left of anything related to any other X-Com/XCOM game. Not even in the new XCOM: EU does anyone ever refer to this, nor is there any equipment from that time. That's not how good prequels work, this is a shoddy retcon.

Who ever asked for this "origin" story? The origin story of the organization is "Aliens here and now. Alliance of nations creates organization to battle aliens.". Nobody asked for a "true" origin, cause the origin was already there. Like from the 60s you may as well go further back and justify the lack of any trace by making Amish people the protagonists of the game or whatever, and say "That's the true origin of XCOM! Isn't that what you always wanted to know?". There's no purpose to this crap, other than possibly for 2K Marin to cash in on art assets left over from Bioshock 2 (or maybe even a cancelled Bioshock 3).