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[Neonivek]

What is the point of remaking a game if you aren't going to remake it Chiefwaffles?

Otherwise why don't you just make your own game and say it is inspired by the original?.. Such as Supreme Commander.

A lot of these "small features" you talk about... sure are a small thing in the grand scheme of a game's gameplay... such as the base defense missions in Xcom. But are huge in the overall feel of the game.

And yes I also agree that a true Xcom remake that really captures the original while adding new content would be incredibly unpopular today.

[Descan]

I think there's two types of remakes, and UFO Defence and it's remakes/whatever of XCOM, Xenonauts pretty much encapsulate them.

There's the Xenonauts route where it's basically "Remake EVERYTHING almost exactly, fix the glitches, update the graphics, but keep it almost exactly the core game." At this point, I can think of only two things different from the original (both pretty hefty in their own right, but still): You can't make money by building items and selling them, it costs more to build than you get from selling, so all your money comes from doing missions and keeping nations happy/funding, and

Spoiler: An Actual Spoiler (click to show/hide)

no psychic humans, it's a dead-end in the research tree last I saw

On the other hand, you have the XCOM style, where it's better to call it a reimagining than anything else. The... Idea of the original game, i.e. "Defending the Earth from Aliens, with Psychic Soldiers and a Hidden Base" is there, but so much is different that you can't really say it's the same game any-more, remade.

They can both work as long as the resulting product is good on it's own merit, and is a fun game, but they're very different design standpoints.

Edit: I dunno, Xenonauts seems fairly popular with the people who know about it, notwithstanding gripes about those two semi-major changes.
(The first one at least makes sense, you're playing a world-defense game, not an arms-dealer/manufactoring game*, so it makes sense to make your major resource depending on your... defense of the world. No comment on the second change)

It's not like it's reviled or has torn the fandom

*That said, I would totally play that game.

[sambojin]

It's strange that one of the most loved things about SMAC/SMAX was the tech-blurbs and wonder voice-overs. It added a huge amount of narrative and personality to each faction, but *didn't actually have anything to do with the current game you were playing*. At all. That being said, it did it well. It didn't force it down your throat. It provided a good backdrop and story to the game. I had plenty of games where Chairman Yang never got close to eating a single re-constituted member of the Hive. But it's still there, and it's beautiful. It gave what would have been an otherwise bizarre and incomprehensible tech path, strange governmental systems, as well as subtle gameplay changes due to faction differences and philosophies, flavour and meaning (yummy human flavour in most cases). It turned what could have been a very sterile and bland play experience into something richly textured and amazing, all with some simple (good) writing and voice-over work.

I hope they don't lose that simple "less is more" style of outlook for this next game. As detached from the actual gameplay that the tech-blurbs were in SMAC, they painted a picture beyond the ability of any graphics artists or 3D engine.

FYI: SMAX was planned to have a highly stupid (ie: good) amount of flavour texts for techs and wonders, with a two or three for each advance, often portraying different views on technology by the different factions and its uses (with accompanying voice-overs). It got scaled back and budget-cut back to what we got, leaving the expansion races feeling less fleshed-out and "non-canon". And only options for modding in tech descriptions for humans or aliens (it was going to be faction specific, with 2-3 descriptions an advance, randomized at research completion). It would have made an awesome backdrop even better. Now Firaxis has a budget and no time constraints, I hope they don't cop-out on the new game's lore (or release dodgy expansions).

[Neonivek]

I actually get the impression that this game might be going in a completely different direction then that sambojin

I wouldn't be surprised if you flat out don't pick a faction at all.

[Neonivek]

Also I do love that this is the recent remake/spiritual successor

That feels like they just inputted classes for the same of having classes.

First we got Xcom, then we got Age of Wonders, and now we got this.

[sambojin]

I still don't think that necessarily removes the ability of flavour texts and voice-overs for different ideologies. It just makes it harder to personalize them. Even "fake-quoting" would work (and allow for all kinds of stuff to be said, not necessarily portraying your leader's viewpoint, just that of the ideology/advance. Philosphers, politicians, soldiers and scientists rarely get quoted for towing the party line, unless it's bombastically done. The quote itself doesn't necessarily matter. It can be completely wrong. "Mission Accomplished" anyone? The earth is the centre of creation, for how else would God make it? No-one will ever need more than "x" amount of RAM? Ever!).

[Descan]

From what I can tell, you pick starting nations and then some modifiers? Like "Brasilia" is one that was mentioned. Not sure what modifiers beyond some starting bonus though, if any.

[sambojin]

I hope they don't go too far with them though. The connetations revealed in the various flavour-text-blurbs in SMAC were subtle, horrifying, and delicious. No one said outright exactly the outcome of the advance. But every member of the Hive that dies still serves it through the recycling tanks (and possibly your own faction, but maybe your recycling tanks are different from Yang's). Everyone can use mindworms, but Dierdre's actually for it, philosophically speaking.

If they "Hollywood-ize" those sorts of things, then meh. They may well have not have bothered. It's hard to personalize a grey slate while still adding subtle nuances and thought to it. Bombastic? Yes. But shades of grey, everywhere.

[Rez]

From what I can tell, you pick starting nations and then some modifiers? Like "Brasilia" is one that was mentioned. Not sure what modifiers beyond some starting bonus though, if any.

It would be a pretty huge fail if they based it on modern nations.  A pretty common idea is that traditional nations are becoming less important while cultural and economic movements are gaining significance.  Hell, SMAC was basically "idealists form nations and have a literal battlefield of ideas" and that was 15 years ago.  SMAC wasn't a reskin of civ2.  I'm not sure we're going to be able to say the same thing about this game and civ5.

The civ games are pretty bad about very stupid glossing over of cultural, religious, and state development, though, so it wouldn't surprise me too much.  Though every nation you can pick is based on a culture, you play as a god running that nation from prehistory, when most humans were probably nomads and the city-state was just becoming common.  There aren't ever any other nations or states of your cultural group or civilization type, ie various germanic nations or italian republics.  You pick a nation with specific traits to play, despite those traits being a result of history, not producing history.  The EU series understands this a little bit and acknowledges through their ideal system that history defines a nation, not the other way around.

edit: we'll see.  I've stopped basing my opinions of games on advertisements and developer promises; the only way to judge it is to play it.

[sambojin]

I never did play the re-skin of Civ4: Colonization. Did it change the mechanics and outlook enough to be close to the original? (which was just a different flavour of civ1. But very different in its playstyle).

[10ebbor10]

More screenies and stuff and thingies and words and more stuff...

One thing that stands out is that they want to go for a more optimistic future view. I really hope they don't exaggerate that. The ethical conundrums of AC were what made it great, amongst others.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't think it's really fair to say that optimism equals a lack of ethical questioning. We already see a fairly large example of it in the three tech philosophies. Purity, Harmony, and Supremacy are all completely legitimate and mutually exclusive ways to advance the human race. I see them as more saying that they're going to be less about the "we're the last few thousand people alive practicing our hand at an unknowable future, cast off from Earth, which is now a slowly burning ruin wrought by our own hands" and more on the "we are tasked with being the salvation of the human race, to take the first difficult steps into the void and possibly find a way to save our old home".

[Descan]

I never did play the re-skin of Civ4: Colonization. Did it change the mechanics and outlook enough to be close to the original? (which was just a different flavour of civ1. But very different in its playstyle).

It was an okay base-game. The mod "Religion and Revolution" makes it shine though.

I never played the original though.

[Puzzlemaker]

I purchased Alpha Centauri, but I haven't finished a game... the GUI has not aged well, and a lot of the gameplay mechanics are annoying.  However, I loved the sci-fi setting and if you overlooked a lot of the issues it was a pretty awesome game.

I can't wait for beyond earth, it looks like it would be awesome.

[Ibid Straydrink]

Hopefully this title proves itself worthy of the mantle "spiritual successor" in depth of gameplay and philosophic content, unlike that dumbed-down, plagiaristic piece of crap called Pandora.