Game News XCOM: Enemy Unknown or what could've been

[Trash]

Tags: Firaxis; Polygo; XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Remember that recent 'good for what it is' XCOM: Enemy Unknown? Well, here's a rather lenghty article on Polygon where we see the troubled history of the making of XCOM. The kicker? Well, apparantly once it played like a real 2000's update on the original. And then disaster struck.

"The design was pretty far off, in terms of the actual mechanics," Solomon says. "Design-wise, in my mind ... Enemy Unknown was going to be almost an exact remake of the original game."

In the pitch video, you can see the beginnings of a train wreck. Solomon's design adheres to the hardest of hardcore strategy components of the original XCOM and then adds more. There are tons of soldiers, shot modes and time units. But perhaps what would eventually cause the most drama and confusion over the next few years was the one thing Solomon wanted in the game more than anything else: random maps.

...

"In our vertical slice, we had eight to 10 soldiers," Solomon says. "We had time units; we had people disembarking from the Skyranger into a procedurally generated level ... it was very much like the original game."

After they recovered from their revelry, the XCOM team showed the vertical slice to the rest of Firaxis. Responses were mixed: People either loved it or hated it.

On the love side were hardcore fans of the original XCOM, who shared Solomon's affinity for the complexities of the game. On the hate side was everyone else, who couldn't understand what they were even looking at. The realization started to sink in that Solomon and his team had wasted more than a year designing a game that, outside of a small, core group of passionate fans, would be a complete failure.

What the fuck is wrong with people? And hey, for rubbing some extra salt into your fresh wounds they've even got footage of that older and pretty neat looking version.

Thanks to CarpenVarra for showing me what could've been and ruin my day.

 

[Ulminati]

So basically what happened was someone wanted to remake xcom, then realized the people thay had to make it for were too dumb to play strategy games.



Oh well. At least there's xenonauts.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

On the hate side was everyone else, who couldn't understand what they were even looking at.

Couldn't Solomon just make some rat-killing tutorial for the likes of them - with huge flashing arrows and achievements for successfully moving their mouse?

 

[Spectacle]

This makes me sad

 

[Infinitron]

Parrots!

 

[Trash]

Yeah, this is the most saddening newspost I made in awhile. I mean, that pitch video really looks like a fun UFO for the 2000's. What we got in the end was a boring Final Fantasy Tactics rpip off with aliens and popamole cover mechanics. To see they actually at one time did work on making a groovy newer version of the classic game really is adding insult to that injury.

Parrots!

Not if you read it the way it's supposed to be read. M:

 

[Ulminati]

M:M:M:M:M:M:M:M:M:M:M:M:

 

[Gondolin]

Now my day is ruined as well. Fuck.

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, this is the most saddening newspost I made in awhile. I mean, that pitch video really looks like a fun UFO for the 2000's. What we got in the end was a boring Final Fantasy Tactics rpip off with aliens and popamole cover mechanics. To see they actually at one time did work on making a groovy newer version of the classic game really is adding insult to that injury.

Parrots!

Not if you read it the way it's supposed to be read. M:

 

[Trash]

What? Seriously, Infinitron? For me it looks like this:

 

[Infinitron]

Serious.

 

[Gragt]

That's why you shouldn't try to please everybody.

 

[catfood]

“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

 

[Ulminati]

And so the popamole consoletards were given a "strategy" game. Not the XCOM they needed, but the XCOM they deserved.

 

[evdk]

And so the popamole consoletards were given a "strategy" game. Not the XCOM they needed, but the XCOM they deserved.

Why do we have to suffer with them would be my question then.

 

[Spectacle]

And so the popamole consoletards were given a "strategy" game. Not the XCOM they needed, but the XCOM they deserved.

Why do we have to suffer with them would be my question then.

We don't. Just forget about this heretical travesty and wait for Xenonauts. Or fire up dosbox to play the original.

 

[Infinitron]

Such a waste. Consoletards didn't really go for the game anyway. They could have made the game more complex and also beefed up its graphics, and gotten more sales on PC.

 

[Ulminati]

 

[Darth Roxor]

Oh, ffs.

You know what kinda angers me even more? When you couple this newspiece with the team's general attitude before neuxcom was released.

'This is a true UFO games guys! Really! We are very passionate and really wanted to bring it to a new audience and it is really what we always wanted UFO to actually be! Like, really! This is actually an upgrade of the original even!'

Fuck all of you, two-faced pricks.

 

[Jashiin]

So half the people they employ to develop strategy games cannot into strategy games. They will never release something worthwhile ever again.

 

[Jaedar]

That slice video actually looks pretty good. Oh well, decliners gonna decline.

 

[Hellraiser]

This is what happens when you hire retards raised on popamole and console trash. A big fuck you to the morons from Firaxis who said the pitch was bad.

 

[Boris]

What the fuck are you faggots complaining about? Impossible was harder in the new XCOM than the old pathetic shit. It actually made you think for a while.
For you, lads, there is always larping in Paradox garbage. Oh, and Xenonauts which will have top notch AI to interweave with those other epic features

 

[Hellraiser]

So what if it was harder? Doesn't change the fact it was a dumbed down POS with nearly 0 replayability because there are no random maps.

 

[spectre]

Would it kill them to "leak" the unfinished alpha build? I have a feeling that it might be a better game than what we had gotten.

Anyways, the article is a painful read.

"It came down to a question of ... If we do this, if we do procedurally generated maps, they said that they were going to look like shit," Solomon says. "It wasn't going to look like any of the other games. I mean, we're not trying look better than every other game out there, but it wouldn't have even looked comparable. We would have looked like fuckin' shit."

For Solomon, it was a heartbreaking moment, and his first inkling that the XCOM he wanted to make might not be possible.

So, in the end we got neither. No fully destructible environs and no randomly generated maps. Top off with an xcom game that is good enough for two playthroughs.