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[Tilla]

It's sad really. It's using the good name of X-com to sell an FPS and probably not a lot more from the sounds of it. The Storytelling is not the best part of the series and a linear narrative should never be the goal, but that seems to be what 2KMarin has in mind from their press release. The game doesn't even try to hide that it's just going to be Generic FPS 2010 - there isn't even an XCOM in it, since you play as a freaking FBI agent.

[Firgof Umbra]

We know enough to make dangerous assumptions.

gripping narrative ride

suspenseful storytelling, and with XCOM they will re-imagine and expand the rich lore

players [...] will take on the role of an FBI agent in charge of identifying and eliminating a deadly threat posed by "an unknown and faceless enemy that is violent probing and plotting its way into our world." The game will maintain the "strategic core" of the original X-Com games, combining it with the natural intensity of a first-person experience.

PC and Xbox 360

The story will explore XCOM's first-person gameplay and "mysterious adventure elements"

Strong story focus, if not outright story-driven; if the game isn't a linear action title they're certainly dropping the wrong hints and they've picked the wrong developer.  Expect BioCOM with a linear, tiered, Research system (perhaps between missions, or if they're lazy you get to research only what you 'pick up' during missions and those are breadcrumbed throughout your 'adventure'?) and Planning reminiscent of Rainbow Six is what I'd say given the studio's proven dispositions in game design.  Expect to walk around your base office, maybe direct your scientists through conversation menus, and embark on missions (ala Mass Effect 2) that are either given to you or that you have a choice between options.  I doubt the aliens will randomly invade places because they're going to want to go for cinematic polish and to do that you have to know where your levels are taking place and have 'set piece encounters'.

You're not the leader of X-Com.  You're an FBI Agent.  Exactly what bases do you think an FBI Agent is going to establish?  Is he going to become a Five-Star General all of a sudden?  He's not even the Director of the FBI.  Not even 'a star agent of the FBI'.  Just some really kick-ass gumshoe who goes all Mulder I bet.

But potentially the most damning of all, Levine himself said:

[I am] probably the world's biggest X-Com [fan]. I won't say I'm working on an X-Com game.

Frankly, I'm trying to keep myself at a distance from it so I, like all the other fans out there, can play it fresh when it's done.

Basically, expect Area 51 with some Science and Development mixed with (maybe)Rainbow Six and the X-Files.

UFO:Afterlight takes place on Mars, for instance, and levels at least seem randomly set up, from time to time.

That's not what I'm talking about.  Each game only ever takes place on one planet with at most a combat sequence on another planet which you can't explore/expand on et cetera.  That could be approached.

And I'm talking about modular level generation.  You have a McDonald's Building Template.  There's an empty 4x4 space on the map that hasn't been filled yet and the area the battle is taking place is 'City, Affluent, Western', so the game decides it's okay to put McDonald's down and make the space a bit more crowded.  Rinse, wash, repeat.  Also: Add sewer lines between all the buildings and underneath the roads.  Aftermath -sort of- does modular level generation but it doesn't really try to draw attention to itself there because normally there's nothing too interesting going on in the map other than cliffs.

UFO:Aftermath had modular weapons (in the "stick a silencer onto a gun" sense).

Silencers are nice, sure, but I'm talking more about adding scopes, adding grenade launchers, swapping out the chamber to a larger caliber, tripods for sniper rifles, larger magazine modifications, grip modifications, et cetera.  Every gun in X-Com feels the same as every other gun in X-Com except when they're from a different category of weapon.  We have the OICW.  Why can't we use it?  Why can't I purpose my guns; why can't I put investment into making sure my soldiers don't always have to drop what they're holding and pull out a shotty? (and why don't shotties have different kinds of rounds anyway?)
There are other kinds of grenades other than HE, WP, and AP.  You could load up slugs into your grenade launcher, modify your rifles to fire alien grenades or Stun Bombs.  You could set up your grenades to explode at a certain time or at a certain point along its trajectory.  Et cetera.

Proximity Grenades full of gas.  Modified Stun Bombs which are Proxy.  Remote Detonators for high explosives.

Weapons are very static and one-purpose in the vanilla.  Why must they be?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Minor nitpick there: "Slugs in the grenade launcher" are AP rounds. AP means Armor-Piercing.

Otherwise, yeah, some customization on a grander scale could be useful. Also, the levels in the original X-Com gave the impression of being generated in exactly the way you mention. At least I never noticed levels being exactly the same...

[Firgof Umbra]

If you open up your directory you'll see that all the maps are static.  There are a lot of them and they are picked relative to the environment you're in but nonetheless they don't "alter" themselves.

(By AP I meant Frag; apologies)

[Ampersand]

I never knew it was possible to rape intellectual property.

[Soulwynd]

W̨͂͐̓́͗̋̊͛͒̉͗ͯ̾͒͊̚͏̹̰̪̺͈̭ͅ
̵̑̌̌͂ͥ͆̽ͦ͂̌ͣͬͮ̑̊̇̾͢͝͏̝͚͙͇͓͎̼̼̜̰̩̼̟̹͜T̢̼͖̺͚̔̏͐ͤ͆͌̓̍̓ͨ̃̇̿ͣ̀̽̆ͧ͘͟͠
̷̸̡̟̼͚̩̲̯̞̝̖͉̩̠̖̳͇ͥ̓̿̓̈́̏͑̈ͨ͠F̷̶̸͉̳͖̰̅͗̒̊͛͐̊̈́̓͛͋ͅ


Someone who lives closer than me, please kill those bastards.

[warhammer651]

I'm HIGHLY skeptical of this. my main concern is that putting it in first person might actually reduce the tension of this game. Mainly due to the inevitable badass decay. In a standard FPS, you mow down hundreds of mooks at a time. Bigger and tougher enemies tend to require little more strategy than "shoot it until it dies". Now, lets apply this to chrysalids.

In the original game, those were some of the nastiest buggers you could run across. Uber fast movement, one hit kills that turn you own guys against you, zombies that spawn chrysalids at full health when you die, etc. How could they implement this in a FPS without making them wusses, or grossly unfair?

Gamers (at least the ones I know) tend to complain about being outmatched and outgunned. Which is precisley why I found the game fun. It didn't pull any punches and forced you to be careful when you played. I have yet to see any modern game that replicates that feeling.

so, all in all, I hope for the best and pray 2k doesn't screw it up.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I understand that bit, and it's very important, but I have, up until a certain point, looked at movies like the somewhat-recent "War of the Worlds", where a simple human being survives incredible odds, with a little disdain - after all, how probable is it for a single human to survive all this? And then I realised - out of all the people caught up in the events, there will be a few survivors like that. A movie about a guy who dies to a random death-ray blast isn't exactly what you'd like to see, but a movie about one of the survivors will be interesting. It's the same thing in games. For example, Call of Duty (except CoD4, where one of the protagonists dies) - it's not like you're a super-soldier because you kill enemies left right and center, and emerge victorious after dozens of encounters. It just so happens that the game is from the perspective of the survivor. If you die, the game ends for you - just like that uninteresting movie. So, you replay again and again until you survive.

Perhaps it's not exactly in the spirit of X-Com, where losing was an everpresent option, but sometimes, just sometimes, players who are protective over their initial operatives will make them into badass killing machines by the end of the game, suffering no defeat. These operatives would be the ones you would play in an X-Com FPS.

But seriously, we need more information on the thing. All we know right now is the genre, and there's a ridiculous amount of ways to make an X-Com FPS an enjoyable experience. Until we know more details, keep the flamethrowers down and napalm bombs safely tucked away. Skepticism is a go though.

[Megaman]

It aint X-Com. 2K guy "Yeah bu-" STFU ITS NOT X-COM

[Virtz]

I understand that bit, and it's very important, but I have, up until a certain point, looked at movies like the somewhat-recent "War of the Worlds", where a simple human being survives incredible odds, with a little disdain - after all, how probable is it for a single human to survive all this? And then I realised - out of all the people caught up in the events, there will be a few survivors like that. A movie about a guy who dies to a random death-ray blast isn't exactly what you'd like to see, but a movie about one of the survivors will be interesting. It's the same thing in games. For example, Call of Duty (except CoD4, where one of the protagonists dies) - it's not like you're a super-soldier because you kill enemies left right and center, and emerge victorious after dozens of encounters. It just so happens that the game is from the perspective of the survivor. If you die, the game ends for you - just like that uninteresting movie. So, you replay again and again until you survive.

Actually, you're not just a survivor. You're the one who gets the most kills (so many per minute you'd make Zaitsev blush), the most meaningful kills (MGs, snipers, etc.), the one who pushes the frontline forward and even the one who puts the soviet flag on the Reichstag (in CoD5, maybe also in CoD1, but possibly you were just there next to the flag carrier who put it there).

FPSes where you're not the center of the universe are pretty rare, really.

[Ozyton]

Kotaku just made another semi-related post

EDIT: Just read through the article. None of the examples covered any games that went from "TBS/whatever you'd call the planet view and base building" to FPS...

[Stealtharcadia]

no no no no no no

They are doing a bad thing

[Cthulhu]

Guys, we're condemning these people on words and two vague concept art images.  Have some cautious optimism for once.

[Firgof Umbra]

I'm currently going with the studio, what they've made, what their dispositions are in game design, what people close to the project have said, what their released marketing info says (and more importantly what it doesn't say) and the time it took for them to go from owning the rights of the title to deciding to make a game for it ("Okay cool we've got it.  Damn, now what do we do with it?").

I am also looking at the publisher/developer relationship and how much confidence the publisher has in the developer to deliver; also what that entails.

My logic is based off of sound principles.  I am not 'merely bashing them over words and concept art'.  They can still throw a curveball here but when a pitcher always throws fast balls you should probably be prepared to catch a ball coming straight down the line -- it's not in their nature to switch things up.  It's not in this developer's nature to 'switch things up'.  They're much more catered toward cinematic and immersive experiences; not integrating complicated and heavily tweaked things like squad management.  Not many of their staff have ever made an RTS.  So I imagine they'll either attempt to 'streamline' or 'cut down' that section of the game as it gets in the way of what they're good at: Presentation.

I would have cautious optimism if they released any details about what exactly 'core elements' means to them.  It worries me  (and should worry you) that they specifically did not mention that in any press release and do not show it in any concept art.  It should doubly worry you because they would know in advance that the fanbase would react poorly without strategy elements being specifically announced.

Either they want a marketing freeride and get the game some attention through controversy (which is a dirty trick) or they don't have anything that wouldn't anger hardcore fans (which is pretty condemning, if you put that up to what Levine said about the game).  Or they don't understand their fanbase and what they want from an X-Com title enough to know how to market it to both the old vets and new players (which is actually pretty terrifying)

That's my analysis of the situation.

[Ampersand]

The only hope we have is that the go for the more, Rainbow 6, or SWAT 4 feel. Punishingly difficult, demanding tactical thinking and severely punishing run-and-gun style game play. If it ends up playing more like Halo, or Call of Duty, then it cannot be even remotely compared to it's forerunners.