First Screens and Details of XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[BandofGypsies]

I don't think it makes a difference, you start the game only dealing with a tiny ufos anyway so you don't need a giant army of a response team.

Thanks for the link...

I agree to a point... Early on, yes, the amount of enemies is limited, but I've had some horror missions with scout ships where well placed sectoids can mow down several troops on the first mission.... 4 soldiers does not leave much room for error... unless the difficulty is set to 'cakewalk'..

It also depends on the size of the maps.. on a standard X-COM map, 4 guys means a hell of a lot of leg work.
Anyone see a comment on how big are these going to be?

[MEdwards]

Thanks for the link...

I agree to a point... Early on, yes, the amount of enemies is limited, but I've had some horror missions with scout ships where well placed sectoids can mow down several troops on the first mission.... 4 soldiers does not leave much room for error... unless the difficulty is set to 'cakewalk'..

It also depends on the size of the maps.. on a standard X-COM map, 4 guys means a hell of a lot of leg work.
Anyone see a comment on how big are these going to be?

No we haven't. However, it was mentioned that maps would be random and pregenerated except for a few story driven ones. Very well could be this first mission with four soldiers is one of them then you expand from there.

[OldManBrian]

No we haven't. However, it was mentioned that maps would be random and pregenerated except for a few story driven ones.

They didn't say they were pregenerated, they said they were procedurally generated. BIG difference.

[BandofGypsies]

Nothing comes from nothing.. they will probably use much the same method as the original.. have a series of terrain templates.. mix and match... hopefully this leads to a nice variety of tilesets...

I remember having the occasional bizzare map in X-COM where the whole map was nothing but those farm house barns..
Plenty of 'door opening /closing' sounds... Good times.

I'm still yet to see anything about terrain elevation...This is a pretty important factor in the game.

[MEdwards]

They didn't say they were pregenerated, they said they were procedurally generated. BIG difference.

Sorry, typo. Yes, maps will be random except for a few pregenerated ones.

[Aegeri]

Thus far all I am concerned about is the base being fixed in the US (really really hope not) and that the game isn't too limited in the number of soliders you can have per battle (I've read you start with only 4! With the ability to get more as you get better aircraft etc).

[Cpl_Facehugger]

I don't think it makes a difference, you start the game only dealing with a tiny ufos anyway so you don't need a giant army of a response team.

Clearly you've never lost five guys taking a landed large scout.

More seriously, an initial squad of four is hands down the most concerning thing I've seen about the game so far. Forget one big base or consolitis, this is the new fear. A squad of four has no strategic depth - even one casualty is a 25% reduction in combat capacity at a minimum. And what is X-Com without casualties? I don't understand, because the devs even went out of their way to talk about how important casualties were to the X-Com feel. Heck, one of the devs even lost four guys right in his first mission!

If it's a four man squad for the tutorial or something with the first research project being bumping the skyranger to carry 10 guys and a tank/14 guys, that's one thing. But that seems rather unlikely.

[meanmanturbo]

Clearly you've never lost five guys taking a landed large scout.

More seriously, an initial squad of four is hands down the most concerning thing I've seen about the game so far. Forget one big base or consolitis, this is the new fear. A squad of four has no strategic depth - even one casualty is a 25% reduction in combat capacity at a minimum. And what is X-Com without casualties? I don't understand, because the devs even went out of their way to talk about how important casualties were to the X-Com feel. Heck, one of the devs even lost four guys right in his first mission!

If it's a four man squad for the tutorial or something with the first research project being bumping the skyranger to carry 10 guys and a tank/14 guys, that's one thing. But that seems rather unlikely.

You know, I was thinking about tutorial missions, they are naturally going to be there in some way, thats just the way things are now days. And the tutorial will have to deal with all the aspects of the game, interception, recovery, research. What you described was baisically just how I Imagined it. Though I'm thinking that this game will use less dudes over all. I also think that the game will be paced more with a slowly escalating conflict. So in the beginning you would get more of th equivalent of the tiny scout which I almost never saw in the original.

[ShanDaMan]

I almost never saw one - intact, at least. They were so fragile that almost always they were destroyed in the air. I fought plenty of damaged small scouts, though.

[shadowxavier]

X-com without causalties are.. unthinkable.
Then its not xcom, and not a game I would bother to buy.

My biggest concern is in the streamlining. Civ V "took an arrow to the knee" and got streamlined into another world. Gone was the complex ways of Civilization, and rebirthed was a better strategic game, with a non-working multiplayer part. Since its proclaimed that our small annoying cousins, the consoles will have their share, I do fear for how streamlined (read: dumbed down) this game will be. Civ V took quite the hit, and with ammo removal, and one main base only, they have already removed features that needs to be there.

Reading the discussion here, I also fear that inventories are gone, since picking around is hopeless time consuming with a console pad. And seeing that you both can see the enemies health and see how many HP a gun will do, further removes some of the complexity that at least X-Com Apocalypse had.

I live in the hope that their promises this time will be kept, and that they hail the PC with its own uniqe UI. Having to share the same UI with X-boxes and playstations is like when you go bowling with your 8 year old little brother. When the parents drag up those little rails so reality wont ruin the fun of the 8 year old, you stand there with a feeling that bowling itself is fun, but the rails just destroy the elements that we valued before the little brother arrived!

[Cpl_Facehugger]

You know, I was thinking about tutorial missions, they are naturally going to be there in some way, thats just the way things are now days. And the tutorial will have to deal with all the aspects of the game, interception, recovery, research. What you described was baisically just how I Imagined it. Though I'm thinking that this game will use less dudes over all. I also think that the game will be paced more with a slowly escalating conflict. So in the beginning you would get more of th equivalent of the tiny scout which I almost never saw in the original.

The trouble with less dudes overall is that it means less room for casualties. In X-Com 1, your starting transport could carry 14 guys. That's 7 two man teams. Consequently, you could afford to lose upwards of ten of those guys if the strategic payoff was high enough (sectoid leader at first terror site, for example).

But if the basic transport only has four guys, that sets a pretty disturbing precedent.

It'd be okay if it's only for the very early phase and you fight infiltrators and weaksauce aliens with weaksauce weapons, but once the game picks up, you *need* large numbers of rookies on every mission to throw into the alien meatgrinder.

[SectoidSquisher]

Nothing comes from nothing.. they will probably use much the same method as the original.. have a series of terrain templates.. mix and match... hopefully this leads to a nice variety of tilesets...

I remember having the occasional bizzare map in X-COM where the whole map was nothing but those farm house barns..
Plenty of 'door opening /closing' sounds... Good times.

I'm still yet to see anything about terrain elevation...This is a pretty important factor in the game.

Hearing those doors open and close was scary!! 'Open/Close - BLAAAAAMM!' Half your squad wiped out by some evil sod with a Blaster.

[tristezo2k]

I can't agree more with you. That pavlovlian condition is awfully true. Almost any new game I see has been castreated of any dificulty or emotion and turned into a cinematic parade of explosions or images.
I would really like better XCOM, where you as person can develop the game in different ways, with different solutions/combinations/strategies.

[Ruivoml]

I can't agree more with you. That pavlovlian condition is awfully true. Almost any new game I see has been castreated of any dificulty or emotion and turned into a cinematic parade of explosions or images.
I would really like better XCOM, where you as person can develop the game in different ways, with different solutions/combinations/strategies.

A little off-topic, but what's a "pavelovian condition?" Something to do with Pavel Chekov?

[Codex]

Nope, I think he means Pavlov, who was a Russian biologist who used bells to teach dogs to salivate on cue. Though... how that relates to XCOM:EU I am unsure

[Cpl_Facehugger]

A little off-topic, but what's a "pavelovian condition?" Something to do with Pavel Chekov?

Boris Pavlov, the guy with the dogs. Basically, he was a Russian scientist who ran an experiment with dogs. Pretty gruesome in reality, but when most people refer to Pavlovian conditioning, they're referring to how he rang a bell and then gave the dogs food (so he could watch their digestive processes through a hole he'd cut in their stomachs and covered with sterilized glass). The dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell with food, such that every time he rang the bell, the dogs' mouths would begin watering, even if he didn't give them food.

It's relevant to this game because for most of us, when we hear the word "streamline" in context of PC games, we've been conditioned to react extremely negatively. It's relevant to the original X-Com because they're talking about how the game conditioned us to tense up when we heard doors opening and closing during the "hidden movement" phase.

[Ruivoml]

Ah then there are plenty of examples.. But honestly though, i'd get tensed up when i heard no sounds for turns on end. Because then i knew i'd have to go around and scout the whole map looking for that final camping sob.

[Ruivoml]

new screenshot!

[Usul]

new screenshot!

Hehe, is this official or fan made? Because it looks like a nice parody on some of the hairstyles of the original X-COM:
http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/ap...g?t=1302140381

[Brian Damage]

I think it actually comes from either 4-Chan or the Penny Arcade forums.

[tormentedAdiabat]

Yeah, that's definitely Guile from SF4. His music goes with anything. Actually I bet interceptor flights would sound amazing if his theme came on during the battles.

[Brian Damage]

I tell you, first mod to the game is going to be altered models with crazy hair :P

[tormentedAdiabat]

I always theorized that's how the aliens are so accurate at the beginning and how you can never seem to hide. They can always see that hair coming.

[Ruivoml]

As someone else on the Strategy Core forums said, the aliens aren't too hot on human phisiology so they might mistake the big hair for the most vital part on the human body, and aim at it =). I HOPE they don't streamline the HAIR. Streamlining the HAIR is a BLASPHEMY.

[Ruivoml]

In the Art Direction video it showed varying sizes of the Skyranger in the concept art. It's entirely plausible that you begin the game with a lower capacity ship and through progression you can upgrade to one that can carry more soldiers.

I hope that isn't the case. Skyranger might be iconic, but Avenger is the mother-of-all-personell-carriers. If the new X-Com has no avenger, im going to go Postal with my Blaster Launcher!