We also didn't get to see any of the mission preparation, some of where XCOM's larger RPG elements come in to play - but even with those facts noted, it was hard not to be impressed by XCOM's E3 demo. What I see is a scripted mission - one that I'm later told is part of the more major story beats of the game and thus more defined than the randomly-generated missions that'll make up much of XCOM 2's bread-and-butter. Soldiers can still of course be instantly killed on the battlefield - so it still pays to be careful. The last act of the demo is also new - the ability to pick up and carry a wounded team mate to safety - another way to hold on to more of your soldiers and keep them off the dreaded memorial wall. Gone is the iconic sprawling underground base, replaced instead with a more ragtag operation - the Aliens are 'benevolent' dictators over humanity, and XCOM has tasked themselves with ending their reign through any and all necessary guerilla tactics.Ī range of aliens both familiar and all-new now live on Earth as an oppressive occupying force.Īs hefty new Alien heavies arrive alongside their human helpers in a fresh wave of reinforcements, the few surviving XCOM members beat a hasty retreat. On the true, harder difficulties most players failed, a Firaxis Games representative later tells me - and so their sequel canon fits right with that. The story is a complete tonal flip on the XCOM people know and love - this time the alien-fighting organization is on the back foot having been defeated in the last game. XCOM now isn't just battling aliens - they also must fight the humans propping up their regime.įaster, more dramatic and more immediately involving than its predecessor, our XCOM 2 demo kicks off with a solid amount of cinematic flair, the story so far delivered through snippets from news bulletins that eventually pulls out to a shadowy briefing room and then back in to the mission at hand once more. What a time to start coverage, too - XCOM 2 looks more than a little brilliant.
It only took a few minutes from XCOM 2's announcment before somebody uttered the fateful words in the RPG Site staff channels: "Should we cover it?" For me, the answer was immediately yes - I always felt our decision to skip coverage of the original XCOM reboot was a mistake - and now we can right that.īut why? Well - when you actually look at it, XCOM's turn-based, grid-driven gameplay featuring permanent death, statistics, hidden dice rolls and skill trees at the forefront isn't that dissimilar to the greats of the Strategy RPG genre - and so here we are.
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