I know that I'm setting myself up for a "white knight" pile-on, but I don't care. I'm worried. I love X-COM, all the way from the old 4.5" floppy original to the last Firaxis reboot. Because I love the series I sincerely get scared when I imagine the possibility that they might screw up on X-COM2.
Don't laugh - Firaxis is good, heck they're one of the best companies out there... but they're not perfect. Civilization 5 was a masterpiece, but then Beyond Earth came out and completely bombed. That's why I'm worried, because X-COM was a masterpiece, too, and I really don't want to see this franchise get bombed the same way that Civilization was.
So here are a few of my concerns about how things could very well end up going horribly, horribly wrong (and hopefully they'll resolve this before launch day):
1) Shen 2's drone. A neat little novelty, to be sure, but after watching the YouTube demos just twice I was already sick of looking at the thing. Which is a concern because it looks like they're going to shove that thing in our faces every chance they get. It's a good gimmick, yes, but it is still just a gimmick.
With SHIVs (and their counterparts over the years) we have seen that having robotic units on our side has always been useful, but attaching them to a particular operator points towards a shift in the mechanic of making the drone itself nearly unkillable - a situation of having to wipe the operator to stop the drone. I don't like that idea. Mechanical units were minitanks, and tanking was their job. They were there to be obvious, scout around and take hits for you. The SHIV motto was "So that others may live." So when you've got a drone operator instead, with a little flying gizmo that is untouchable... see what I mean? It's not longer a tank, it's no longer really a mechanical unit. You've just become a Pet Class Character ripped from every generic MMORPG out there. I don't want WoW in my X-COM, okay?
2) Dr.Vahlen goes Kerrigan on us. Oh come on, Firaxis, you think we didn't sniff this crap coming from ten miles away? Dr.Vahlen, the scientist who studied the aliens, mysteriously goes missing before the start of the game. Gosh, we wonder what could have happened to her? Guys, we know this story. It's old. Really old. Old as Starcraft, in fact. And if you go through with this then we, all of us, are all going to roll our eyes so far back into our heads we'll be able to see our own brains.
3) Swoooooooooords! You know the saying "I didn't know I wanted it until you gave it to me?" This is kind of the exact opposite of that. Ever since original X-COM, yeah, I was sitting there going "Man, if only I had a sword! I'd show those Chryssalids what's what then, oh yeah!" Of course I did, because I was, like, 15 years old at the time and swords were cool. Now, as X-COM2 looms on the horizon, I'm over 40... and I'm over swords.
I'm looking at swords and getting the same taste in my mouth when Lucas introduced Jar-Jar Binks. I knew what he was trying to do - repackage an old product for a younger generation and sell more toys. I get that, really I do. I'm sure your younger audience will love them to the same degree that the older audience are rolling their eyes. I can't speak for the kids but us old farts get our kicks these days from using Squadsight to *****-blap a Sectopod from the other side of the map.
What it comes down to this: XCOM is a tactics game. It's not a FPS, it's not Ninja Scroll. Yeah, I suppose having some hand-to-hand options have been overdue. I freely admit to slapping Kinetic Fist onto all my MECs because punching a Sectoid through a wall is kind of awesome. But it's a thin line between "just enough" and "too much." XCOM ninja-gaiden, I fear, crosses that line.
4) "Filthy casual!". Carrying wounded soldier off the field by hand, yes, this is something I missed. Glad to see it back. Still kind of worried, however, as they've freely admitted that the new paradigm will be to ambush Advent so hard & fast that they'll never get a shot off in return. Now this isn't really Firaxis' fault per se, but it's like this: Most of us have been killing the last year or so of waiting by playing Long War. Lots & lots of Long War.
I never considered myself to be one of those lame, e-peen waving douchebags that makes up unbelievable stories about beating "Ironman Impossible" and that kind of crap. But let's be honest: If you can make it to, say, month three of Long War, then you can curb stomp anything basic XCOM can throw at you. I'm not saying I'm great at Long War, heck I still haven't even beat one whole campaign of it (despite literal months on end of playing... sheesh). But so what? Even if you lose a fight to Mike Tyson the point still stands that, holy crap, you got in the ring with Mike Tyson. The mere "participation" trophy from Long War is enough to make a person say "Filthy casual!" to the vanilla game.
Which means that until someone writes a "Long War" version of XCOM2, we're going to find ourselves whining that we beat the campaign in, like, two hours flat. Because this is what Long War has done to us. It has turned us into monsters. Twisted, tactical planning obsessed monsters that wake up nights in a cold sweat screaming "How did I miss on 100%?!"
5) We need to discuss Timing, Firaxis. You know why Americans loved Star Wars? Because of the Revolutionary War. We love the rebels, we love the underdog, because once upon a time that was us - the scrappy young mavericks bucking the system and taking on the evil empire in the name of liberating our country from a hostile foreign power. That's why the Imperials all had British accents.
Firaxis, do watch the news at all? In case you haven't been paying attention, we're the evil empire now. Those plucky young rebels are now called "insurgents" and we're the hostile foreign power that every guerilla fighter on the planet is trying to kill. Also, our drone operators haven't made us very popular either (see above). Not to be a downer, but... this isn't exactly the right decade to be pitching a game about being armed insurgents trying to overthrow the government... at least in the US. Don't blame me when a bunch of guys in black suits & dark sunglasses come by your office, later.
6)Random Events (and why we will hate them). So now they're adding random events, to make sure that every campaign is a little different. Sounds nice, but here's the thing. Every XCOM veteran knows the name of the one, supreme, ultimate true enemy that has been our nemesis since this series first launched. No, not the Chryssalids. No, no the Etherials. The true bane of XCOM has always gone by just one name (dare I speak it?) and that name is...
Random Number Generator!
*screaming*
*lightning in background*
The real enemy that we've all faced (and hated) more than any other has always been the RNG. And this is important because it shows something about the real, underlying dynamic of all our tactical machinations: We're not trying to beat the aliens. We are trying to beat the RNG. We're not visualizing a war movie - we're looking at numbers. This position modifies enemy to hit by this penalty, this position increases my odds by that value, this weapon should produce an average damage of etc, etc. We're playing weaponized math (see "SquadSight," above) against the laws of probability... or rather, whatever demonic presence occupies the RNG in place of logic and reason. Gawd, I hate that thing. And so do you.
What it comes down to is us trying to defeat randomness. We are trying to establish order, to cleanse the chaos from our game for that is the path to true victory. Making a shot at 25% to-hit is luck. Making a shot at 95% to-hit is skill, because getting that number took some serious planning and execution.
See where this is leading? The problem with random events is that they are random, and moreso, the worst kind of random: The kind of random that we have no control over. Think about just how frustrating and aggravating that is going to be to XCOM junkies? A RNG that is completely unchained, untamable, able to do whatever it wants to you whenever it wants. The very idea is an anathema to our XCOM conditioned minds.
Random maps, though... that's cool. Hey, don't look at me like that. Original XCOM had it and we liked it. Maps we can deal with. Maps can be controlled (provided you brought enough explosives).
7) Stealth Zepplin?. Suspension of disbelief fails on the mothership, sorry. Look, I was able to spot fighter sized UFOs with standard, non-upgrade Earth-issue radar on a daily basis. Now we're supposed to believe that the aliens, with all their superior technology, can't scope out a flying football stadium that they built themselves? As I recall from an old interview with one of the pilots of the F117 when it first came out: "It's still completely vulnerable to the Mark I Eyeball."
"Maybe the humans upgraded it?" If humanity had that kind of technology they wouldn't have lost the war in the first place. I understand the need for mobility, and I like the idea of having team mobility in gameplace mechanics. I also know that there has to be a better, more believable way to do this. Make it submersible, at least. Because something like that is simply too big to hide and the second it touches down it's going to be visible to every spy satellite there is.
Firaxis themselves said that this time the aliens will be doing what XCOM used to do. Well, XCOM used to blow alien transports out of the sky on a regular basis and that was with plain old Earth jets and plain old Earth sensors. "Fake transponder?" If the aliens were dumb enough to fall for that then they never would won the war.
8) The Visitors are our Friends!. Please let the plot be deeper than a bad 1980s TV series. Don't assume that we're all too young to have seen that show. Because the second I see a snake woman eating a mouse I'm to cry, because that can only mean that bell-bottoms are just around the corner.
Don't laugh - Firaxis is good, heck they're one of the best companies out there... but they're not perfect. Civilization 5 was a masterpiece, but then Beyond Earth came out and completely bombed. That's why I'm worried, because X-COM was a masterpiece, too, and I really don't want to see this franchise get bombed the same way that Civilization was.
So here are a few of my concerns about how things could very well end up going horribly, horribly wrong (and hopefully they'll resolve this before launch day):
1) Shen 2's drone. A neat little novelty, to be sure, but after watching the YouTube demos just twice I was already sick of looking at the thing. Which is a concern because it looks like they're going to shove that thing in our faces every chance they get. It's a good gimmick, yes, but it is still just a gimmick.
With SHIVs (and their counterparts over the years) we have seen that having robotic units on our side has always been useful, but attaching them to a particular operator points towards a shift in the mechanic of making the drone itself nearly unkillable - a situation of having to wipe the operator to stop the drone. I don't like that idea. Mechanical units were minitanks, and tanking was their job. They were there to be obvious, scout around and take hits for you. The SHIV motto was "So that others may live." So when you've got a drone operator instead, with a little flying gizmo that is untouchable... see what I mean? It's not longer a tank, it's no longer really a mechanical unit. You've just become a Pet Class Character ripped from every generic MMORPG out there. I don't want WoW in my X-COM, okay?
2) Dr.Vahlen goes Kerrigan on us. Oh come on, Firaxis, you think we didn't sniff this crap coming from ten miles away? Dr.Vahlen, the scientist who studied the aliens, mysteriously goes missing before the start of the game. Gosh, we wonder what could have happened to her? Guys, we know this story. It's old. Really old. Old as Starcraft, in fact. And if you go through with this then we, all of us, are all going to roll our eyes so far back into our heads we'll be able to see our own brains.
3) Swoooooooooords! You know the saying "I didn't know I wanted it until you gave it to me?" This is kind of the exact opposite of that. Ever since original X-COM, yeah, I was sitting there going "Man, if only I had a sword! I'd show those Chryssalids what's what then, oh yeah!" Of course I did, because I was, like, 15 years old at the time and swords were cool. Now, as X-COM2 looms on the horizon, I'm over 40... and I'm over swords.
I'm looking at swords and getting the same taste in my mouth when Lucas introduced Jar-Jar Binks. I knew what he was trying to do - repackage an old product for a younger generation and sell more toys. I get that, really I do. I'm sure your younger audience will love them to the same degree that the older audience are rolling their eyes. I can't speak for the kids but us old farts get our kicks these days from using Squadsight to *****-blap a Sectopod from the other side of the map.
What it comes down to this: XCOM is a tactics game. It's not a FPS, it's not Ninja Scroll. Yeah, I suppose having some hand-to-hand options have been overdue. I freely admit to slapping Kinetic Fist onto all my MECs because punching a Sectoid through a wall is kind of awesome. But it's a thin line between "just enough" and "too much." XCOM ninja-gaiden, I fear, crosses that line.
4) "Filthy casual!". Carrying wounded soldier off the field by hand, yes, this is something I missed. Glad to see it back. Still kind of worried, however, as they've freely admitted that the new paradigm will be to ambush Advent so hard & fast that they'll never get a shot off in return. Now this isn't really Firaxis' fault per se, but it's like this: Most of us have been killing the last year or so of waiting by playing Long War. Lots & lots of Long War.
I never considered myself to be one of those lame, e-peen waving douchebags that makes up unbelievable stories about beating "Ironman Impossible" and that kind of crap. But let's be honest: If you can make it to, say, month three of Long War, then you can curb stomp anything basic XCOM can throw at you. I'm not saying I'm great at Long War, heck I still haven't even beat one whole campaign of it (despite literal months on end of playing... sheesh). But so what? Even if you lose a fight to Mike Tyson the point still stands that, holy crap, you got in the ring with Mike Tyson. The mere "participation" trophy from Long War is enough to make a person say "Filthy casual!" to the vanilla game.
Which means that until someone writes a "Long War" version of XCOM2, we're going to find ourselves whining that we beat the campaign in, like, two hours flat. Because this is what Long War has done to us. It has turned us into monsters. Twisted, tactical planning obsessed monsters that wake up nights in a cold sweat screaming "How did I miss on 100%?!"
5) We need to discuss Timing, Firaxis. You know why Americans loved Star Wars? Because of the Revolutionary War. We love the rebels, we love the underdog, because once upon a time that was us - the scrappy young mavericks bucking the system and taking on the evil empire in the name of liberating our country from a hostile foreign power. That's why the Imperials all had British accents.
Firaxis, do watch the news at all? In case you haven't been paying attention, we're the evil empire now. Those plucky young rebels are now called "insurgents" and we're the hostile foreign power that every guerilla fighter on the planet is trying to kill. Also, our drone operators haven't made us very popular either (see above). Not to be a downer, but... this isn't exactly the right decade to be pitching a game about being armed insurgents trying to overthrow the government... at least in the US. Don't blame me when a bunch of guys in black suits & dark sunglasses come by your office, later.
6)Random Events (and why we will hate them). So now they're adding random events, to make sure that every campaign is a little different. Sounds nice, but here's the thing. Every XCOM veteran knows the name of the one, supreme, ultimate true enemy that has been our nemesis since this series first launched. No, not the Chryssalids. No, no the Etherials. The true bane of XCOM has always gone by just one name (dare I speak it?) and that name is...
Random Number Generator!
*screaming*
*lightning in background*
The real enemy that we've all faced (and hated) more than any other has always been the RNG. And this is important because it shows something about the real, underlying dynamic of all our tactical machinations: We're not trying to beat the aliens. We are trying to beat the RNG. We're not visualizing a war movie - we're looking at numbers. This position modifies enemy to hit by this penalty, this position increases my odds by that value, this weapon should produce an average damage of etc, etc. We're playing weaponized math (see "SquadSight," above) against the laws of probability... or rather, whatever demonic presence occupies the RNG in place of logic and reason. Gawd, I hate that thing. And so do you.
What it comes down to is us trying to defeat randomness. We are trying to establish order, to cleanse the chaos from our game for that is the path to true victory. Making a shot at 25% to-hit is luck. Making a shot at 95% to-hit is skill, because getting that number took some serious planning and execution.
See where this is leading? The problem with random events is that they are random, and moreso, the worst kind of random: The kind of random that we have no control over. Think about just how frustrating and aggravating that is going to be to XCOM junkies? A RNG that is completely unchained, untamable, able to do whatever it wants to you whenever it wants. The very idea is an anathema to our XCOM conditioned minds.
Random maps, though... that's cool. Hey, don't look at me like that. Original XCOM had it and we liked it. Maps we can deal with. Maps can be controlled (provided you brought enough explosives).
7) Stealth Zepplin?. Suspension of disbelief fails on the mothership, sorry. Look, I was able to spot fighter sized UFOs with standard, non-upgrade Earth-issue radar on a daily basis. Now we're supposed to believe that the aliens, with all their superior technology, can't scope out a flying football stadium that they built themselves? As I recall from an old interview with one of the pilots of the F117 when it first came out: "It's still completely vulnerable to the Mark I Eyeball."
"Maybe the humans upgraded it?" If humanity had that kind of technology they wouldn't have lost the war in the first place. I understand the need for mobility, and I like the idea of having team mobility in gameplace mechanics. I also know that there has to be a better, more believable way to do this. Make it submersible, at least. Because something like that is simply too big to hide and the second it touches down it's going to be visible to every spy satellite there is.
Firaxis themselves said that this time the aliens will be doing what XCOM used to do. Well, XCOM used to blow alien transports out of the sky on a regular basis and that was with plain old Earth jets and plain old Earth sensors. "Fake transponder?" If the aliens were dumb enough to fall for that then they never would won the war.
8) The Visitors are our Friends!. Please let the plot be deeper than a bad 1980s TV series. Don't assume that we're all too young to have seen that show. Because the second I see a snake woman eating a mouse I'm to cry, because that can only mean that bell-bottoms are just around the corner.
