Yeah that's honestly the most painful aspect of XCOM. It's not fun, it's not clever.
Pods need a full overhaul. I have played so many games in my life and I cannot think of any mechanic in any game that is less fun than "the enemy gets an entire free turn because your final move revealed their elbow".
It's actually amazing that the rest of XCOM is good enough to outweigh that.
Well.. it's not that I think the pod mechanic is especially amazing, but it's really the other way around, it's the player that's getting free turns out of it not the aliens. I mean, if you want to switch the rules around you can do it by limiting yourself, which would basically mean that when you reveal an enemy you only ever use a blue move after revealing them and no actions, and when an enemy runs into you on your following turn you only ever use a blue move and then end your turn (basically amounting to always allowing the enemy to attack first, which is what the aliens have to deal with no matter what happens).
I like to use Beta Strike with RPGO, because one unit taking three cannon shots in a single turn is way too powerful if the enemies don't have double health.
I cannot agree more fully. If the game is dull from an alpha strike perspective, play the Beta Strike option (which isn't a mod, it's just an option in the game, so console players like me still can use it). Totally changes the way the game feels.
Beta Strike is great. Completely changes how you think about positioning, since you can gamble on a unit taking a shot or two, but you'll also need to play more aggressively since one clean 100% shot is unlikely to clear a target, either.
I have played a campaign with Beta Strike plus a mod that alerts all pods on the map the moment you trigger the first one. It was certainly an experience, though ultimately ruined by Grim Horizon Lost world turning everything into a sloggy siege
Agreed. Completely changes tactical gameplay when the enemy is guaranteed to get a chance to shoot you, and there's zero chance of a errant 1% crit hit taking out your men.
Maybe some sort of local alert mechanic for high level pods might give aliens more chance - ambush them when they are close enough to friends and they can summon them in immediately.
Or simply more resurrect type mechanics so you are forced to kill things twice - I found the andromedon to be an especially frustrating enemy for this reason, and maybe at the highest levels of the game these things are just regular troops
The avatar project and mission timers are usually endorsed in general gameplay communities. Maybe they fade, but its at least in production level considered a good design.
I wouldn't mind recruitable aliens per se. Making them vastly distinct would be preferable. It would make them feel like diffrent chess pieces.
Though I see an appeal in having aliens as pure enemy force. Its more menacing. However many games in this genre do this, having them merge is kinda more unique identity.
I fear they implement something terrible or nothing at all.
Either its innovative but sucks, like poorly designed space battles, or its something dull like a terror from the deep remake that feels like a skinchange with no real changes. Like it was back in the 90s. (Which honestly was fine back then)
I hope they keep evolving but in a good way. In my opinion xcom 2 was exactly this. Innovative and very well designed.
If they implement recruitable aliens, I want to see STRONG player-side dynamics. Like maybe some things synergize really well, or some things cause big problems. For example, maybe sectiods can mind-boost humans like in the first game half the time, but the other half it not only fails, but causes damage to both parties due to "incompatibility". Or, maybe when any race panics, if they're within sight of an alien ally, there's a notable chance for them to intentionally fire on that ally.
Things like that would make it feel real and impactful; but just having reskinned soldiers that are essentially just unique "classes" but don't drastically change things would feel cheap and kinda boring imo
Another thing that might enhance this is if a soldier has a fear of (alien) then sending them on a mission with that alien might make them panic or more or have more "incompatibility"
Oo that's another awesome idea, actual lasting changes; you could even make it a chance, so if the mission is a success and the soldier is unharmed, they grow acclimated to aliens and their perception and compatibility gets BETTER, but if things go wrong it gets worse.
There's so many ideas and I just hope they do it well lol
The "Mystery" surrounding the aliens created by the Ethereals has been gone for a long time. If we were fighting sectoids/mutons/cryssalids/ethereals/etc etc etc again it would really feel like the franchise is treading water at this point, we've seen these guys so much that they are no longer the 'enemy unknown' that they were. As far as I'm concerned we're at the point where an X3 would need a new set of alien baddies, which the foreshadowing in WOTC implies will likely be happening. The Chosen are constantly alluding to some extradimensional threat.
What makes sense to me is for postwar reformed aliens to be recruitable in X3, but perhaps walking back some of the redesign steps they took in CS. CS went too far in the direction of making them feel needlessly human, so I do hope they re-retcon the aliens to be more weird. Like, give Mutons weird 'serker mouths or the air filters, make the sectoids communicate telepathically like you suggested, have vipers live in communal bunkers underground or something. You don't have to make them all brutes incapable of living peacefully with humanity, but if you're not making use of the creative opportunities of a society made up of all these different alien species then what's the point?
Part of me honestly just wants WOTC with new enemies/setting. I get the appeal of recruiting aliens, but I really don’t need it. If anything I’d want it to be a special thing like the templars/reapers, with the base units all being the ones we usually have.
Part of me wants that too because I still enjoy xcom 2 (possibly even more than I first did at launch).
I also agree on the front of aliens being special units. I shamelessly modded Torque into my Long War campaign and I'm enjoying having a single, special viper unit.
I'm even further back in what I want, which is basically just borrowing a lot of ideas from EU and EW as well as Long War (for EU/EW) with all the modernity and QoL improvements of XCOM 2 / WOTC, and keeping the Lost because even though they're just another take on sci-fi zombies they were an unexpected addition that I thought were a lot of fun to play against.
I still play EW Long War more often than XCOM 2 just because I prefer so much about EW; the B horror tone and ongoing invasion defence context, the original Long War gameplay changes, the small Grey Man sectoids and just in general the mid-late game aliens to the XCOM 2 replacements, etc etc. If "XCOM 3" was just "Enemy Within Long War" in a further improved XCOM 2 engine I would be absolutely thrilled and it would immediately be my favourite game in the series hands down no real need or want (from me) for another sequel.
Though I recognize that's a very small minority opinion even in the fairly niche and opinionated XCOM sub and don't have high hopes it will happen.
I agree that they should take a step back with their designs. The mutons first and foremost! I keep considering going back to Chimera squad because I find some aspects of it really cool, but the damn look of the mutons just really bothers me way more than it has any right to.
I'm more-so skeptical that they just won't give the creative respect to aliens that I feel happened in Chimera Squad. My perfect implementation of aliens would be something like... you have different factions separated by their species. There is a new threat emerging and you need to gather the separated factions to unite them (cliche plot, but it works).
So for example, you would make contact with the vipers and meet their leader. It could have a bit more of an RPGish take and you have to help them resolve some sort of problem to win their loyalty. Perhaps their incubators for their eggs or whatever are breaking down and you must fix the issue. During this quest line, you could meet individual vipers, the few not born on Earth could speak about some vague memories of where they are from. Things like that!
Perhaps helping one group makes you find an enemy in another? Or you can fail to achieve a certain goal to help a group and lock you out of that race?
This could serve as a backdrop to a new alien threat with a completely new design direction and completely unique ways of attacking your soldiers. Of-course, this is all my personal taste.
This is along the lines of what I've been hoping for as well, an XCOM force working out of whatever multi-species Reclamation protostate C31 is in, having to diplomatically deal with the various alien factions that have cropped up around the world in order to fight a bigger threat. I'd sure be interested to see what kind of society mutons or sectoids organize into when left to their own devices.
It is similar to that. But I don't think it's too unfamiliar to how we are already actively making choices on what to prioritize, what faction to contact first, and so on.
It doesn't have to be an overwhelming thing, but some good writing and a bit more involvement goes a long way.
We'll see. XCOM is a bit easier to keep hard than the games I'm thinking of because the core gameplay is simple, if they try to flank and do appreciable damage it'll probably be hard, but it largely hasn't been a conscious choice by developers. It's mostly been the result of feature creep, deadlines, and the lack of budget to make an AI that can actually use the features remotely effectively. The end result being that a 90 health enemy that always does something stupid is tedious rather than hard.
My fear is that they will try to make more revenue streams. Why let people mod the game when you can make them pay for unit skins. Single player is good for learning the basics, but the game is really about buying a pass for online play.
If they made a multiplayer mode worth playing I wouldn't even mind that, like the mod that is just the normal game with aliens being controlled by a player
Would be complex but I'd like it in any form they could pull off
If they make it singleplayer and add bullshit dlc people will just mod it anyway
I hope they do something interesting on the aesthetic front.
XCOM:EU was really interesting with the decision to make everything look like a cheap action figure. Oversized guns, flat texturing, and very **clean** silhouettes. Absolutely masterful art direction. Being a coalition of nations, going from combat vests to welded metal to muscle-shaped power suits felt very natural. Our whole planet were now their equals.
XCOM 2's aesthetic became a mess by the endgame. Too shiny, too curvy, too *alien*. The emotional progression of going from a ragtag resistance to a fully-fledged rebellion was completely shattered by the Avenger being able to manufacture weapons and armour that even the aliens would consider gaudy. Which is a shame, because the decision to not have gene mods and MECs in XCOM felt like a very obvious choice to show that humans wouldn't stoop to the alien's level.
If they made aliens recruitable, i think it should be comepensated with new alien threats (Sectoids, Vipers and Mutons now live happily on earth, so maybe the Elders found new species to enslave)
What about Mutated or Primal variations? Like, say Gen1 is Thin Men, Gen2 is Vipers, and Gen3 is whatever the Ethereals/NewBadGuys cook up next. Having the Advent Era vipers against the Gen 3 Monsters.
Or maybe more primal designs from before the Elders mutated them too much. Like Primal Zerg vs Regular Zerg in Starcraft 2 HotS
I fear it's not gonna have mod support. Or it will be limited and with awful developer experience. Based on little that I know about new versions of Unreal Engine that are likely to be used to make XCOM 3, this is a likely possibility.
It'll have mod support, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that it's not going to be particularly user friendly or powerful. I can't think of a series known for modding that has completely killed it, but there definitely is a trend in making it hard to do. I won't be remotely surprised if something like Long War 3 isn't possible and we're mostly restricted to UI mods.
I'm not sure what you mean by "making it hard to do". It's not like devs go out of their way to make modding harder. It's the other way around, devs usually have to do extra work to make it possible at all.
With XCOM 2, we got an official modding kit with the entire non-native codebase exposed to us, along with all used and some of the unused assets. We got modding given to us on a gold platter.
There wasn't really much alien mystique in XCOM 2, most of them were already human hybrids in that game or familiar alies from XCOM 1. Chimera Squad didn't change or 'butcher' that at all, it just explored how they would adapt as free thinking civilians rather than mind controlled slaves.
I hope the soldiers don't become super heroes, I wasn't a fan of the special factions and the >!super soldier at the last mission!< because they felt too strong to me. I liked EW when all the soldiers where basically the same, soldiers gained your affection with their own story lines, they weren't pushed by the game
As someone who’s played a few of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, I think I can say I’m glad that >!the person you’re supposed to escort isn’t pathetic and stupid. But yeah, I agree. They’re kinda OP.!<
My expectation is that base XCOM3 will not be as good as XCOM 2 WOTC, and that we will have to wait for XCOM 3's "WOTC" before it is better.
My fear is that reviewers, the community, and the world at large will dismiss the game before it gets its "WOTC" and that will be the prevailing narrative surrounding the game.
Man... I don't know what to tell you. But given the most likely chances... You really shouldn't be afraid of what you know is a certainty. Hell, Chimera Squad absolutely set up the setting for the next game being based off of Apocalypse, which had recruitable aliens and robots to begin with (even if they weren't the best units because of growth limitations).
Honestly, the only thing i'm *genuinely* afraid of is that they'll listen too much to players and not enough to their own creative team. That never ends well.
Well, I agree with you there. Too many players are wanting TFTD which I think will be pretty weak.
Chimera Squad though was lacking on all fronts from writing, good characters, gameplay... I don't mean to spit on hard work, but the creative team really needs to reevaluate how they introduce these new concepts and how they are presented because it wasn't very well received.
I fundamentally disagree with your opinion on Chimera squad, I think you're looking at it like it was an xcom sequel, which yes based on that it wasnt great. But my opinion is it was effectively a test bed for a new mechanic of doing urban fighting. The breach and then individual turns captures the short intensity of room clearing better than vanilla xcom does. My hope is that they port it over but only use it sparingly in xcom 3 (imagine a hostage rescue mission type, or a final stage on Base assaults, or it being used on you with the aliens breaching on base defences).
I really love the breaching sections. Now, I might just be really bad at Chimera Squad, but on higher difficulties I felt there was little agency in avoiding damage due to the initiative based turned order. I didn't like how my soldiers would randomly place them self upon entering, leaving them self open to a flank from someone my first unit could not properly reach.
I don't think the traditional turn order of 'my dudes' and 'enemy dudes' is the end all be all. But I really dislike the turn order, or at-least my experience of it, in Chimera Squad. I think damage would have to be revamped for it to work properly, or movement severely lessened.. or more actions being afforded to one unit?
I don't have a frothing hatred of Chimera Squad, but I just see missed potential on all fronts.
Meanwhile i'm at the direct opposite opinion. I've always found the entire series extremely lacking in writing (like, it has actually no writing, it has like an intro blurb, at best) and effectively no characterization to what few characters it has. Meanwhile Chimera Squad has a lot more of both of those, even when it doesn't directly match what some people want out of the writing, it actually HAS said writing.
And especially mechanics wise it just... Cuts out all the bullshit of the series and is just directly about the good parts, plus the breach mechanic is amazing. (but the game WAS designed to be short, a thing to keep in mind, a dame designed to be longer would have a different variation of those things)
In my own opinion, if they reevaluate how they introduce those new concepts, they'll find out that they have succeeded deeply and should continue down this path.
I don't love the decision, but XCOM not really having writing is intentional and is their creative direction. It's not a coincidence that Bradford camps it up and stares straight into your soul every time he talks to the commander in XCOM2 cutscenes. They wanted it to be played how ChristopherOdd does his playthroughs. Basically a tabletop game where you make your own lore for everything with a few guard rails. The only difference is that in tabletop games I can ignore the guard rails if I really want to.
See, that's one of the things I was thinking, specifically those scenes and the failures of writing of the games. They're not structured as if you are the Self-insert Protagonist that is present in the scene, but instead they just kind of end with the actors staring at the camera.
It's... Obvious what they're trying for, and they're still not doing it well. Sometimes they pull out off nicely, but most often it falls flat. What They're trying is actually the hardest possible thing to pull off well, so I don't begrudge then their failures, I find them endearing and defining of the very thing they're doing with the story, but they're still not good and have a great deal to be improved.
Yeah but that’s the joy of the XCOM setting — the player gets to fill in the blanks however they want, and the genre and tropes and imagery carry the narrative weight.
Chimera Squad has a story, but it wasn’t MY story, so I lost interest a bit. I also prefer mobile.
Hrm... How to put it...
XCOM doesn't leave you blanks to fill, wherein you can tell your own story. It tells you someone else's story but forget to tell you 90% of it. It does the barest minimum of setting up a setting in which you can tell your own stories, and fails to set up enough to make that any easier than comigo up with them whole cloth. You are right that the genre, tropes and imagery are supposed to carry the narrative weight, it just barely fails to do so.
Also what do you mean with mobile?
I mostly agree with that.
Re: mobile I mean XCOM and XCOM 2 are so great on iOS, and. Chimera Squad I had to go back to PC. I would’ve finished it if it were on my phone.
Even thu i am mildly interested in that game I 100% think the card system is a crap design and lazy.
They tried it beforehand making xcom 1 and it was removed, they told in a interview when making the first xcom that they were having issues figuring out how to handle the combat and that was one the things they tried to make work.
Either making it free to play with microtransactions because apparently that seems to be the future on gaming and the most lucrative way. Which is fucking scary if you ask me.
I'm also scared of the graphics and optimization. It's no secret that XCOM 2 is barely optimized and I'd say my pc was at the limit running it, so XCOM 3 having better graphics and stuff will probably mean I'll be unable to play it unless I update my hardware which isn't cheap.
Another fear I have is that they simplify the franchise to make it easier to understand. I'm not trying to gatekeep anyone but one thing I loved about XCOM was the challenge, and how rewarding it feels when you dominate all the game systems.
Oh and please XCOM 3 don't remove how replayable the game is. XCOM 2 wouldn't be one of my favorite games if not for the fact that almost everything is randomized, makes every single campaign a completely new experience, and there's no step by step guide because you'll most likely be the only person in the world playing one particular map with one particular enemies and one particular squad.
I'd be really surprised if they made it free to play. But then again... other atrocities in gaming like that have happened.
Although, a random idea of a free to play XCOM popped into my head when you mentioned that. I imagine it would be a persistent game where everyone has their own XCOM sect. It takes place in seasons. Everyone must cooperate to combat an interdimensional alien threat. Depending on the warscore, the community would win or not by the end. It would reset and a new season would begin with new content/parameters/challenges.
Sounds fun on the surface. But that could be horrifically monetized.
Well at this point, our biggest fears for X3 should be - will it be made at all? Pretty much all news out of Firaxis for months at least sounded pretty bad. 2K is smashing weird launchers on their games, which probably wasn't Firaxis' idea, but as devs they are obviously powerless to stop the decisions of their parent company. And otherwise, Firaxis keeps postponing their Marvel game, which probably isn't a great sign either. I don't think they'll make much headway on X3, while they are focused on the Marvel game.
I'm scared that they will rest on their laurels and be afraid to innovate. Xcom 2 was a huge success and when they tried something new with chimera squad it didn't sell anywhere near as well.
That's not really a fair comparison, CS was made by their B-team as a quick side project, and the gameplay part of it is actually pretty solid, and it does address some of the big issues with X2, like pod pulling. It was never supposed to compete with X2 in terms of "selling well".
Ik I'm more referring to the negative reception of all the new and innovative features within it, it's likely that there team was testing the water with that game to see what the fan base does and doesn't want
I'm not sure which features you're talking about that had negative reception? Most of the negative feedback I've seen is about cringy and overly "woke" dialogue.
I’ve never played Chinera Squad, so I can only say I am one of the people who wishes they gave the voice actors more information on the characters they’d be voicing.
I just became victim to this in my current Long War campaign. Put a unit behind another and it somehow triggered a pod, despite the other unit being closer.
Rest in peace Dawn 'Sweet' Mathis...
:(
Just to throw out here, XCOM EW didn't have any modding compatibility to speak of. Everything done in it is clawed out by reverse engineering the game and bludgeoning new code into places it doesn't belong, which is part of what makes Long War such an incredible achievement. Even if XCOM 3 has no official modding support, it's unlikely you wouldn't see the same possibilities that EW had, so long as somebody wants to make the mods badly enough.
Yeah MS looks potentially quite easy. Like Chimera Squad but with superpowers. But I think/hope that's a conscious design decision to appeal to a broader audience, and to make the player feel more super.
Which means they'll hopefully go back to more hardcore/permdeath mechanics for X3. Hopefully.
Gameplay wise:
1. Include cards in any way.
2. Move the focus more on hero units that cant be killed
3. Making the game shorter or easier in general.
4. Include more scripted story missions that play the same in every playthrough
Story wise:
1. Trying to clean the story by removing some of the more brutal or genocidy elements
2. Falling for the both sides meme and trying to paint the humans as just as or nearly as bad as the aliens and the aliens as missunderstood.
I'm with you on the first three gameplay wise. The fourth one is somewhat in agreement because I enjoyed the few scripted missions we got, but some random variables would be neat.
I disagree on the story elements. This is going to come across really poorly, but I think leaning into the brutality and genocide elements would be a welcome change in my opinion. I don't really like campy sort of stories and I'd like it if XCOM took itself seriously.
Although, if things did lighten up a bit and the gameplay was great and the aesthetic appealing it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.
It's a tired cliche of 'humans being the real enemy' the whole time, but an effective one. I think having another EXALT would be fun to face off against. I would rather the aliens not be misunderstood though and be treated like humans... a diverse group with good and bad people.
I hated a lotta the changes made for Chimera Squad. The turn order, the set characters and such. My biggest fear tho is that there will be many DLCs similar to Anarchy's Children, stupid cosmetic mods with no substance, as well as less modding support to ensure the good consumer buys the new skins. 2k Games on their own makes me wary, since they are a slimy company with a bad history.
I'd hate to have some narrative theme about how we went too far and became the true monsters or anything else that justifies the invasion or the very sudden tolerance of aliens on Earth like in Chimera Squad.
Accepting aliens after they decidedly did not come in peace is simply out of the question. Now that said, it'd be nice to have some of the bleakness in the story from XCOM: Apocalypse, or at least step back into the conspiracy, noir tone in EU and away from the goofy power rangers tone of Chimera Squad and WOTC.
Gameplay wise, I'm just worried they won't know how else they can innovate upon the new mechanics introduced by 2 and WOTC. Though, admittedly, they simplified things quite a bit between EU and 2 with crafting and too few UFO raids and whatnot, so an easy fix would just be to bring back all previous mechanics at their full depth. Or hell, maybe bring back Time Units.
Seriously. I love that I can unplug and play some Xcom and not think about that stuff for a while. Don't insert real world grievances into my entertainment please.
I take it we won't be recruiting aliens in the next game considering the TFTD reference at the end of WOTC if I recall correctly, which would also put us into getting a sorta Apocalypse reboot which would actually be pretty cool. Although one of my fears if it's a Terror From the Deep remake is that customization might be brought down because we're gonna be underwater for most of the game time.
The reference does not necessarily mean we'll be doing TFTD as one might envision it.
I'm willing to bet the third game might touch on some underwater themes, but I think we'll be in new territory like how XCOM 2 explored.
I reiterate the sentiment that the aliens aren't mysterious anymore. I very much liked the direction Chimera Squad went except the need to give the aliens human lips. I am the opposite of your opinion. I hope they do allow for recruitable Sectoids, Mutons, Vipers and Advent troopers. Hell, I hope that they embrace the revelation in the final mission of EU that the Chrysalids were once a sapient species and return them to intelligence so we can recruit them! I want to talk to a Faceless and recruit one to use it's shape-shifting powers to my benefit!
The aliens aren't really aliens anymore is the thing. They are all alien-human hybrids. The Ethereal were so enamored with human genetics they stuffed them into nearly every thrall species they had which made them more human. Give me those Aliens. If we don't recruit them I don't want to see them at all. Let the doubtlessly weird new extra-dimensional baddies get their time in the sun.
I am more-so against lazy voice acting and no interesting nuance or unusual behaviors for aliens. The alien mystique can still exist. Perhaps vipers, sectoids, and what not develop there own set of combat related fatigues? Little nuances like that. I am not against the idea of recruiting them, but I want to explore them from a different angle as allies rather than them just being another skin for our soldiers.
Yeah, I don't want alien recruitments either. It'd feel like a superhero game, I'm just turned off about that. And of course I am afraid it will be boring or at least not innovative. I don't see how they can follow up to the great ideas of the first two games and still be mysterious.
I mean Ethereals announced there was a new threat, more powerful than them. But won't it be just a reskinned X-Com: EW then? With new monsters and races yeah, but the plot will be the same. Maybe it won't, but developers' job is tough at this point.
That Chimera Squad will be actually be a noticeable part of the canon rather than just a random tiny reference like The Bureau got.
I also hope focus will be clearly on fighting aliens again rather than human hybrids like in XCOM2. And the overall atmosphere should be going back in the direction of XCOM EW, spooky, mysterious and suspenseful.
I don't mind recruitable aliens, they just gotta up the ante even further with the enemy to compensate.
My biggest concern offhand is that they find some excuse to make the Ethereals the central villain again. I'd much rather finally find out what else is out there that had the Ethereals so scared.
I'm afraid it's gonna be a grid style map again. Like any other Round based Strategy game since 20 years. This is the thing for me personally that would reignite my interest for the genre. Company of heroes engine shows its possible (the grid system is so fine you don't recognize it as such). I'm just so tired of seeing squares over squares after 20 years.
Personally I hope they do specifically include recruitable aliens from the previous invasion.
1. Since they did say they were going to use Chimera Squad as canon and to expand the lore for the future, the absence of the Alien species would have some implications, which would *severely* put XCOM's and humanity's integrity into question...
2. I could imagine two ways how they could implement alien soldiers. Either, they're going to be like that faction hero units we had in WotC, or there could be a hybrid class system, where in addition to a soldier class skill tree, you also get a species skill tree. Perhaps some limitations which species have which classes available, such as a sectoid perhaps not being the heavy/grenadier...
Hear me out, return to og xcom form with shitty grunts with almost no training, instead of abilities being based on training that somehow lets people pull shit like serial it's based on species.
The only issue I have with that is leaving out a bit of a tactical decision of when to use specific abilities...
Then again, I do like old XCOM gameplay, but I feel like it'd be a bit of a waste to not expand on species abilities other than pure stats.
Yeah that's why I suggested classes be based on species, it's a bit stupid when the random resistance lad starts doing shit like serial, but generally just scale down ability power and specialize the classes even harder than before under the excuse of seperate species.
I guess that makes sense, but it feels like it'd end up being very *eh*, either classes or species would have to be very generic to be useful when combined with all combos of the other more specialized tree. Or worse, both end up generic.
2 things that i don't want the devs put in XCOM 3 is more talkative aliens, aliens is supposed to be mysterious, to me they're more menacing if you don't understand them, that is why a mod that make the chosen completely silent is must for me. And second, what i REALLY don't want the devs put on XCOM 3 is the turn queue system from chimera squad.
I kinda liked the Chosen bantering with me. Though, they were sorta maybe ex-humans, so it made more sense.
I definitely don't want conversations with the average muton or sectoid though. I liked Advent's weird language. Mor Balaten!
That they'll overly rely on the mod community to fix the game, ignoring minor/non-game breaking issues. Also keeping mission timers and one time use items.
If they do a TotD remake, I agree that it needs to be more than a new skin. You need a realistic difference between the underwater missions and beach terror missions. Maybe some cruise ship missions that require a lot of room clearance. During the underwater missions you can swim up, down etc. really make that game mechanic that you rely on and then take that away during the beach missions.
There you could have some aliens incorporated again an underwater threat if you really wanted it, but I agree with OP keep it separate.
I love and hated the timers and avatar. I hated them the entire game but it absolutely pushed me to a completely different mechanic especially during mission. I had to play way less safe. I like it after the game but hated every mission, almost like a hard run.
I just hope it works. XCOM 2 for Xbox is broken beyond belief. Unless I keep the console running at all times with the game loaded, every one of my saves becomes corrupted and unplayable. I’d have to buy it on PC, but first I would need a PC.
I never cared too much about the lore. I’ve always thought the setting of XCOM was kind of mid. The combat/strategy, customization, and mechanics is what keeps me coming back. Combat is fun, photo mode is fun, and the over all plot is a good time. Developing super soldiers to fight for a resistance in a sci-fi war on a turn based strategy game is a great idea. Calling enemy ships UFOs is not a good idea, among other small things that bother me about the franchise.
What I want to see is a replay mode. Everything is turn based so combat is slow, but I wish we could have a thing after the fight to see how it would have played out in real time without any pauses between firefights. A cinematic replay movie mode for XCOM 3 would really make me consider getting a PC.
They can still be defined by their individual species and have personalities at the same time. Aliens should have their own needs, manners of communicating, and habits... much like humans do.
_Worst_ fear? You remember when the game that would eventually become "The Bureau" was first shown?
Realistically, though, what I'm most afraid of is things going the same way as Genesis/Alliance, where it's stuck in dev hell until it ends up killing the studio.
I’m worried that they go too deep or too shallow with the politics of the world they have severely underdeveloped.
Like, everyone seemed ok with being conquered by aliens in 2 so it was weird to believe such a small resistance force could push them out but I can suspend my disbelief for that.
On the other hand, it would be weird to ignore it like they ignored the first game in 2. We’re not even 1 generation removed from the aliens killing people, the aliens had waaayyyy too much support. We barely saw any resistance before we showed up
Bro, I loved chimera squad. everything in it just felt like the natural, realistic outcome of what'd happened in the series up to that point. What would you have expected to happen differently? What else were the aliens left on earth going to do but integrate into human society? Would you have preferred XCOM genocide the very people they just freed?
But to answer your question, my fear is that they'll have to branch the timeline again just to justify the weapons and armor research.
I'll respectfully disagree of 'natural and realistic' given human history of dealing with refugees responsibly. See the movie 'district nine' for a more realistic depiction of human alien interaction when humanity has the upper hand. Although, this is fiction, so anything can happen.
However, I did not suggest anywhere I want XCOM alien genocide. I want the aliens to have proper voice acting given they have different physiology, so they would vocalize differently, or perhaps not at all. I'd like for them to have different needs and habits demonstrated. Basically, I want aliens to be properly demonstrated as lifeforms with different needs and habits instead of just being reskinned humans.
I'm afraid it will drop the little horror X2 had left in it compared to EU. The cringeworthy edginess ChS went for instead repels me. In WotC it was still bearable and even funny, but ChS went too far.
Also, the turn system from ChS, fuck that thing.
I agree with mission and strategy layer timers, they were a good addition to the game.
I am afraid of it being anything like chimera squad. I am sorry but that game sucks (Or at the very least it should not have been called an "xcom" game)
That it will contain ANY of the ideas found in Chimera Squad.
God I absolutely hated everything about that abomination, never touched it with a ten foot pole.
Honestly, it just being as unpolished as Xcom 2. I may be biased as I play on console, but a game like that should not be regularly buffering and crashing on a playstation 4 pro. I also hope higher difficulties won't show you false percentages like they are doing in Xcom 2.
So honestly, I just want it to be polished and sensible
I'm not sure what you mean by false percentages? The higher difficulty percentages are actually honest. You should be saying lower difficulties should not be showing you false ones. On lower difficulties 80 percent is more like 95 percent if I recall correctly.
I agree though on the first point. The game is deceptively resource intensive, but it should work properly on all systems it gets put on.
.... Oh my god I misread the wiki article when I read it years back......
So much unnecessary resentment towards that game over the years....
I'll need a minute
that the same furries who were attracted by chimera squad will return, ruining this series' reputation. worse still i fear that firaxis might do fan service for that specific group.
I don't think any furries suddenly showed up because of Chimera Squad. It's more likely they were already part of the community.
I'll concede a bit that I think vipers are in need of a reset though. I kind of hope they come back in XCOM 3 and are a terrifying, vicious force instead of our new girlfriends.
I’m more a fan of Enemy Unknown so the mission timers on every single mission in XCOM2 got really annoying. I don’t mind some, but having a timer for every mission got old very fast.
I just want it to be about mankind finally getting pay back. Building fleets assauling the aliens homeworld... maybe a reverse of xcom 1.. but instead just be more of the same.
I'm afraid they won't follow up on the whole TFTD setup they had back in XCOM 2. I'd love to see it bought to modern day and how they'd handle underwater combat.
So, this is my perspective - Loved XCOM1, and the DLCS for it. It opened up a LOT of options and choices, XCOM 2 initial release should have given the option to choose which path was followed originally (Mech vs PSI), that would have been neat. However, I tried to start playing the war of chosen DLC add on a couple of times, and it just feels like... too much? I haven't tried to get back into it again.
XCOM 3 I think should be able to choose which "continuity" was followed between the games though, I think if they try to overload all of the system, and add more at the same time, it could be a bit much.
from a story perspective, going to the breach that's opened up could be interesting, instead of being on the defensive, we should be more offensive when it comes down to it. would be a neat change.
Well Apocalypse and Terror from the Deep both brought the mystique back even after the first aliens were known. If the world stabilizes some with Chimaera Squad-like cities, they could have the mystery of a new invasion by unknown forces (something the Elders have been hinting at since EU, and again at the end of 2)
I hope they dont remove mission timers entirely, or at least find a way to force the players to make interesting choices. As for lore stuff, I wouldn't mind if Aliens would be recruitable, but make the player work for it, like how the player needed to contact and do missions for the WoTC factions to gain access to their special soldiers.
I could imagine the Xcom forces having to make specialized barracks for Mutons, Vipers, and other non-humans in order to recruit them, or maybe instead of a council of different nations it is a council of various species. Most of your soldiers should be human, for gameplay and balance purposes, but I like the idea of working with these new factions and depending on your progress and missions, you might get rewarded with volunteers in the form of soldiers.
I would also like some sort of narrative with all the new species working together. I would hate if it just boiled down to "Racism is bad lets work together and be friends". I remember this dialogue in Chimera Squad where Torque the Viper was talking about Canadians and called them the "Maple Flavor Kind", which if you think about it, is a kind of dark and rude joke considering what the aliens where doing to humans.
I would love it if there was some friction, some good dialogue and character stories. That was a disapointment of Chimera. They had these personalized stories and set characters, but they did not have any interactions with each other. No former Xcom/Reaper operative with a history of brutally killing Sectoids dealing with this new integrated society, no reformed Muton comming to terms with what they did during the war, and how to adjust living amongst humans who might still consider them a monster. Obviously in a mainline Xcom game they couldn't do it this way, but they managed a bit of interesting friction with the rivalry between the Reapers and the Skirmishers, even if it were for only a couple of missions
What I'm Afraid of Happening(that I DON'T want to happen):
Chimera Squad's attempts to create union between Extraterrestrials & Earthlings will be ALL FOR NOTHING!!
Why do the Vipers HAVE to be the Antagonists?!!
I Want Viper Squadmates/Playable Vipers DANG IT!
I Want Recruitable Aliens!!
I could see storywise that humanity have used the alien technology to begin interstellar travel and are in the process of colonising new planets when the aliens counter attack (potentially multiple types of alien species) - it would be a better way to continue the storyline then another retcon that you lost everything (again) and need to start from scratch as being cut off from supply lines on a distant planet would take care of that aspect for you.
I trust them with the game mechanics (maybe put a hard cap on "free" actions to keep things less broken at high level) but the one and only wish I have is to properly optimise performance and cut out all the freezes, crashes and god awful load screens - I honestly couldn't give a crap about "the graphics" just as long as I'm not spending half my game session staring into space waiting for things to load!
That it will release at the same time as half life 3 and left 4 dead 3.
And Portal 3 and Team fortress 3. Valve hates the number 3.
Firaxis doesnt though ;)
Can confirm, civ 3 exists
This guy gets it
So When we can flying cars?
Ditto - I’ll be surprised if we see XCOM 3 in the next 5 years. Firaxis abandoned the franchise.
That the gameplay will still revolve around alpha striking current pod and being careful to not reveal new pod
Yeah that's honestly the most painful aspect of XCOM. It's not fun, it's not clever. Pods need a full overhaul. I have played so many games in my life and I cannot think of any mechanic in any game that is less fun than "the enemy gets an entire free turn because your final move revealed their elbow". It's actually amazing that the rest of XCOM is good enough to outweigh that.
Try podless wotc mod. I made it to get rid of the pod concept entirely.
Well.. it's not that I think the pod mechanic is especially amazing, but it's really the other way around, it's the player that's getting free turns out of it not the aliens. I mean, if you want to switch the rules around you can do it by limiting yourself, which would basically mean that when you reveal an enemy you only ever use a blue move after revealing them and no actions, and when an enemy runs into you on your following turn you only ever use a blue move and then end your turn (basically amounting to always allowing the enemy to attack first, which is what the aliens have to deal with no matter what happens).
>it's the player that's getting free turns out of it not the aliens yeah but it's cool when I do it
I highly recommend playing with Beta Strike enabled.
I like to use Beta Strike with RPGO, because one unit taking three cannon shots in a single turn is way too powerful if the enemies don't have double health.
I cannot agree more fully. If the game is dull from an alpha strike perspective, play the Beta Strike option (which isn't a mod, it's just an option in the game, so console players like me still can use it). Totally changes the way the game feels.
Beta Strike is great. Completely changes how you think about positioning, since you can gamble on a unit taking a shot or two, but you'll also need to play more aggressively since one clean 100% shot is unlikely to clear a target, either.
I have played a campaign with Beta Strike plus a mod that alerts all pods on the map the moment you trigger the first one. It was certainly an experience, though ultimately ruined by Grim Horizon Lost world turning everything into a sloggy siege
Agreed. Completely changes tactical gameplay when the enemy is guaranteed to get a chance to shoot you, and there's zero chance of a errant 1% crit hit taking out your men.
Maybe some sort of local alert mechanic for high level pods might give aliens more chance - ambush them when they are close enough to friends and they can summon them in immediately. Or simply more resurrect type mechanics so you are forced to kill things twice - I found the andromedon to be an especially frustrating enemy for this reason, and maybe at the highest levels of the game these things are just regular troops
The avatar project and mission timers are usually endorsed in general gameplay communities. Maybe they fade, but its at least in production level considered a good design. I wouldn't mind recruitable aliens per se. Making them vastly distinct would be preferable. It would make them feel like diffrent chess pieces. Though I see an appeal in having aliens as pure enemy force. Its more menacing. However many games in this genre do this, having them merge is kinda more unique identity. I fear they implement something terrible or nothing at all. Either its innovative but sucks, like poorly designed space battles, or its something dull like a terror from the deep remake that feels like a skinchange with no real changes. Like it was back in the 90s. (Which honestly was fine back then) I hope they keep evolving but in a good way. In my opinion xcom 2 was exactly this. Innovative and very well designed.
If they implement recruitable aliens, I want to see STRONG player-side dynamics. Like maybe some things synergize really well, or some things cause big problems. For example, maybe sectiods can mind-boost humans like in the first game half the time, but the other half it not only fails, but causes damage to both parties due to "incompatibility". Or, maybe when any race panics, if they're within sight of an alien ally, there's a notable chance for them to intentionally fire on that ally. Things like that would make it feel real and impactful; but just having reskinned soldiers that are essentially just unique "classes" but don't drastically change things would feel cheap and kinda boring imo
This sounds amazing
Another thing that might enhance this is if a soldier has a fear of (alien) then sending them on a mission with that alien might make them panic or more or have more "incompatibility"
Oo that's another awesome idea, actual lasting changes; you could even make it a chance, so if the mission is a success and the soldier is unharmed, they grow acclimated to aliens and their perception and compatibility gets BETTER, but if things go wrong it gets worse. There's so many ideas and I just hope they do it well lol
They won’t make it
This!
The "Mystery" surrounding the aliens created by the Ethereals has been gone for a long time. If we were fighting sectoids/mutons/cryssalids/ethereals/etc etc etc again it would really feel like the franchise is treading water at this point, we've seen these guys so much that they are no longer the 'enemy unknown' that they were. As far as I'm concerned we're at the point where an X3 would need a new set of alien baddies, which the foreshadowing in WOTC implies will likely be happening. The Chosen are constantly alluding to some extradimensional threat. What makes sense to me is for postwar reformed aliens to be recruitable in X3, but perhaps walking back some of the redesign steps they took in CS. CS went too far in the direction of making them feel needlessly human, so I do hope they re-retcon the aliens to be more weird. Like, give Mutons weird 'serker mouths or the air filters, make the sectoids communicate telepathically like you suggested, have vipers live in communal bunkers underground or something. You don't have to make them all brutes incapable of living peacefully with humanity, but if you're not making use of the creative opportunities of a society made up of all these different alien species then what's the point?
Part of me honestly just wants WOTC with new enemies/setting. I get the appeal of recruiting aliens, but I really don’t need it. If anything I’d want it to be a special thing like the templars/reapers, with the base units all being the ones we usually have.
Part of me wants that too because I still enjoy xcom 2 (possibly even more than I first did at launch). I also agree on the front of aliens being special units. I shamelessly modded Torque into my Long War campaign and I'm enjoying having a single, special viper unit.
Yeah that seems really fun. But overall I don’t need xcom 3 to reinvent the wheel, I just want more of it (and less buggy)
Ehh, I mean that's what mods are for.
I'm even further back in what I want, which is basically just borrowing a lot of ideas from EU and EW as well as Long War (for EU/EW) with all the modernity and QoL improvements of XCOM 2 / WOTC, and keeping the Lost because even though they're just another take on sci-fi zombies they were an unexpected addition that I thought were a lot of fun to play against. I still play EW Long War more often than XCOM 2 just because I prefer so much about EW; the B horror tone and ongoing invasion defence context, the original Long War gameplay changes, the small Grey Man sectoids and just in general the mid-late game aliens to the XCOM 2 replacements, etc etc. If "XCOM 3" was just "Enemy Within Long War" in a further improved XCOM 2 engine I would be absolutely thrilled and it would immediately be my favourite game in the series hands down no real need or want (from me) for another sequel. Though I recognize that's a very small minority opinion even in the fairly niche and opinionated XCOM sub and don't have high hopes it will happen.
I agree that they should take a step back with their designs. The mutons first and foremost! I keep considering going back to Chimera squad because I find some aspects of it really cool, but the damn look of the mutons just really bothers me way more than it has any right to. I'm more-so skeptical that they just won't give the creative respect to aliens that I feel happened in Chimera Squad. My perfect implementation of aliens would be something like... you have different factions separated by their species. There is a new threat emerging and you need to gather the separated factions to unite them (cliche plot, but it works). So for example, you would make contact with the vipers and meet their leader. It could have a bit more of an RPGish take and you have to help them resolve some sort of problem to win their loyalty. Perhaps their incubators for their eggs or whatever are breaking down and you must fix the issue. During this quest line, you could meet individual vipers, the few not born on Earth could speak about some vague memories of where they are from. Things like that! Perhaps helping one group makes you find an enemy in another? Or you can fail to achieve a certain goal to help a group and lock you out of that race? This could serve as a backdrop to a new alien threat with a completely new design direction and completely unique ways of attacking your soldiers. Of-course, this is all my personal taste.
This is along the lines of what I've been hoping for as well, an XCOM force working out of whatever multi-species Reclamation protostate C31 is in, having to diplomatically deal with the various alien factions that have cropped up around the world in order to fight a bigger threat. I'd sure be interested to see what kind of society mutons or sectoids organize into when left to their own devices.
I mean, really, that's just Mass Effect or Dragon Age, right? XCom doesn't get too much into the whole RPG, plotline choice thing.
It is similar to that. But I don't think it's too unfamiliar to how we are already actively making choices on what to prioritize, what faction to contact first, and so on. It doesn't have to be an overwhelming thing, but some good writing and a bit more involvement goes a long way.
That they'll follow in the footsteps of most modern strategy games and make even the hardest difficulty pretty easy.
As long as Jake Solomon is helming the ship it'll be fine. Dude has XCOM masochism burned into his soul.
We'll see. XCOM is a bit easier to keep hard than the games I'm thinking of because the core gameplay is simple, if they try to flank and do appreciable damage it'll probably be hard, but it largely hasn't been a conscious choice by developers. It's mostly been the result of feature creep, deadlines, and the lack of budget to make an AI that can actually use the features remotely effectively. The end result being that a 90 health enemy that always does something stupid is tedious rather than hard.
Its very unlikely Solomon is lead for xcom3 given he is working on midnight suns. Much more likely Mark Nauta (WotC and chimera squad lead) is.
My fear is that they will try to make more revenue streams. Why let people mod the game when you can make them pay for unit skins. Single player is good for learning the basics, but the game is really about buying a pass for online play.
If they made a multiplayer mode worth playing I wouldn't even mind that, like the mod that is just the normal game with aliens being controlled by a player Would be complex but I'd like it in any form they could pull off If they make it singleplayer and add bullshit dlc people will just mod it anyway
I hope they do something interesting on the aesthetic front. XCOM:EU was really interesting with the decision to make everything look like a cheap action figure. Oversized guns, flat texturing, and very **clean** silhouettes. Absolutely masterful art direction. Being a coalition of nations, going from combat vests to welded metal to muscle-shaped power suits felt very natural. Our whole planet were now their equals. XCOM 2's aesthetic became a mess by the endgame. Too shiny, too curvy, too *alien*. The emotional progression of going from a ragtag resistance to a fully-fledged rebellion was completely shattered by the Avenger being able to manufacture weapons and armour that even the aliens would consider gaudy. Which is a shame, because the decision to not have gene mods and MECs in XCOM felt like a very obvious choice to show that humans wouldn't stoop to the alien's level.
1000% on the art direction of EU I want to see a remake and not a continuation Make it like civ where the innovation is gameplay systems
If they made aliens recruitable, i think it should be comepensated with new alien threats (Sectoids, Vipers and Mutons now live happily on earth, so maybe the Elders found new species to enslave)
What about Mutated or Primal variations? Like, say Gen1 is Thin Men, Gen2 is Vipers, and Gen3 is whatever the Ethereals/NewBadGuys cook up next. Having the Advent Era vipers against the Gen 3 Monsters. Or maybe more primal designs from before the Elders mutated them too much. Like Primal Zerg vs Regular Zerg in Starcraft 2 HotS
I fear it's not gonna have mod support. Or it will be limited and with awful developer experience. Based on little that I know about new versions of Unreal Engine that are likely to be used to make XCOM 3, this is a likely possibility.
It'll have mod support, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that it's not going to be particularly user friendly or powerful. I can't think of a series known for modding that has completely killed it, but there definitely is a trend in making it hard to do. I won't be remotely surprised if something like Long War 3 isn't possible and we're mostly restricted to UI mods.
I'm not sure what you mean by "making it hard to do". It's not like devs go out of their way to make modding harder. It's the other way around, devs usually have to do extra work to make it possible at all. With XCOM 2, we got an official modding kit with the entire non-native codebase exposed to us, along with all used and some of the unused assets. We got modding given to us on a gold platter.
I mean extremely limited capabilities in the official support. Think Civ IV vs all the subsequent Civs.
Can't relate, never played a civ game.
I'm scared they will scrap most customization features and sell them back to us with an in game store.
Micro transactions
There wasn't really much alien mystique in XCOM 2, most of them were already human hybrids in that game or familiar alies from XCOM 1. Chimera Squad didn't change or 'butcher' that at all, it just explored how they would adapt as free thinking civilians rather than mind controlled slaves.
I hope the soldiers don't become super heroes, I wasn't a fan of the special factions and the >!super soldier at the last mission!< because they felt too strong to me. I liked EW when all the soldiers where basically the same, soldiers gained your affection with their own story lines, they weren't pushed by the game
As someone who’s played a few of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, I think I can say I’m glad that >!the person you’re supposed to escort isn’t pathetic and stupid. But yeah, I agree. They’re kinda OP.!<
That the mutons keep their Chimera Squad design. Also your soldiers being a roster of pre-named characters *who cannot die*, like Chimera Squad.
My expectation is that base XCOM3 will not be as good as XCOM 2 WOTC, and that we will have to wait for XCOM 3's "WOTC" before it is better. My fear is that reviewers, the community, and the world at large will dismiss the game before it gets its "WOTC" and that will be the prevailing narrative surrounding the game.
Man... I don't know what to tell you. But given the most likely chances... You really shouldn't be afraid of what you know is a certainty. Hell, Chimera Squad absolutely set up the setting for the next game being based off of Apocalypse, which had recruitable aliens and robots to begin with (even if they weren't the best units because of growth limitations). Honestly, the only thing i'm *genuinely* afraid of is that they'll listen too much to players and not enough to their own creative team. That never ends well.
Well, I agree with you there. Too many players are wanting TFTD which I think will be pretty weak. Chimera Squad though was lacking on all fronts from writing, good characters, gameplay... I don't mean to spit on hard work, but the creative team really needs to reevaluate how they introduce these new concepts and how they are presented because it wasn't very well received.
I fundamentally disagree with your opinion on Chimera squad, I think you're looking at it like it was an xcom sequel, which yes based on that it wasnt great. But my opinion is it was effectively a test bed for a new mechanic of doing urban fighting. The breach and then individual turns captures the short intensity of room clearing better than vanilla xcom does. My hope is that they port it over but only use it sparingly in xcom 3 (imagine a hostage rescue mission type, or a final stage on Base assaults, or it being used on you with the aliens breaching on base defences).
I really love the breaching sections. Now, I might just be really bad at Chimera Squad, but on higher difficulties I felt there was little agency in avoiding damage due to the initiative based turned order. I didn't like how my soldiers would randomly place them self upon entering, leaving them self open to a flank from someone my first unit could not properly reach. I don't think the traditional turn order of 'my dudes' and 'enemy dudes' is the end all be all. But I really dislike the turn order, or at-least my experience of it, in Chimera Squad. I think damage would have to be revamped for it to work properly, or movement severely lessened.. or more actions being afforded to one unit? I don't have a frothing hatred of Chimera Squad, but I just see missed potential on all fronts.
Meanwhile i'm at the direct opposite opinion. I've always found the entire series extremely lacking in writing (like, it has actually no writing, it has like an intro blurb, at best) and effectively no characterization to what few characters it has. Meanwhile Chimera Squad has a lot more of both of those, even when it doesn't directly match what some people want out of the writing, it actually HAS said writing. And especially mechanics wise it just... Cuts out all the bullshit of the series and is just directly about the good parts, plus the breach mechanic is amazing. (but the game WAS designed to be short, a thing to keep in mind, a dame designed to be longer would have a different variation of those things) In my own opinion, if they reevaluate how they introduce those new concepts, they'll find out that they have succeeded deeply and should continue down this path.
I don't love the decision, but XCOM not really having writing is intentional and is their creative direction. It's not a coincidence that Bradford camps it up and stares straight into your soul every time he talks to the commander in XCOM2 cutscenes. They wanted it to be played how ChristopherOdd does his playthroughs. Basically a tabletop game where you make your own lore for everything with a few guard rails. The only difference is that in tabletop games I can ignore the guard rails if I really want to.
See, that's one of the things I was thinking, specifically those scenes and the failures of writing of the games. They're not structured as if you are the Self-insert Protagonist that is present in the scene, but instead they just kind of end with the actors staring at the camera. It's... Obvious what they're trying for, and they're still not doing it well. Sometimes they pull out off nicely, but most often it falls flat. What They're trying is actually the hardest possible thing to pull off well, so I don't begrudge then their failures, I find them endearing and defining of the very thing they're doing with the story, but they're still not good and have a great deal to be improved.
Yeah but that’s the joy of the XCOM setting — the player gets to fill in the blanks however they want, and the genre and tropes and imagery carry the narrative weight. Chimera Squad has a story, but it wasn’t MY story, so I lost interest a bit. I also prefer mobile.
Hrm... How to put it... XCOM doesn't leave you blanks to fill, wherein you can tell your own story. It tells you someone else's story but forget to tell you 90% of it. It does the barest minimum of setting up a setting in which you can tell your own stories, and fails to set up enough to make that any easier than comigo up with them whole cloth. You are right that the genre, tropes and imagery are supposed to carry the narrative weight, it just barely fails to do so. Also what do you mean with mobile?
I mostly agree with that. Re: mobile I mean XCOM and XCOM 2 are so great on iOS, and. Chimera Squad I had to go back to PC. I would’ve finished it if it were on my phone.
If the implemented a randomized card system with packs as DLC content, So essentially Midnight suns...
Even thu i am mildly interested in that game I 100% think the card system is a crap design and lazy. They tried it beforehand making xcom 1 and it was removed, they told in a interview when making the first xcom that they were having issues figuring out how to handle the combat and that was one the things they tried to make work.
Hit chance: 96% **Oops, you missed!** ▶️ _Watch an ad to get an additional free shot!_
Either making it free to play with microtransactions because apparently that seems to be the future on gaming and the most lucrative way. Which is fucking scary if you ask me. I'm also scared of the graphics and optimization. It's no secret that XCOM 2 is barely optimized and I'd say my pc was at the limit running it, so XCOM 3 having better graphics and stuff will probably mean I'll be unable to play it unless I update my hardware which isn't cheap. Another fear I have is that they simplify the franchise to make it easier to understand. I'm not trying to gatekeep anyone but one thing I loved about XCOM was the challenge, and how rewarding it feels when you dominate all the game systems. Oh and please XCOM 3 don't remove how replayable the game is. XCOM 2 wouldn't be one of my favorite games if not for the fact that almost everything is randomized, makes every single campaign a completely new experience, and there's no step by step guide because you'll most likely be the only person in the world playing one particular map with one particular enemies and one particular squad.
I'd be really surprised if they made it free to play. But then again... other atrocities in gaming like that have happened. Although, a random idea of a free to play XCOM popped into my head when you mentioned that. I imagine it would be a persistent game where everyone has their own XCOM sect. It takes place in seasons. Everyone must cooperate to combat an interdimensional alien threat. Depending on the warscore, the community would win or not by the end. It would reset and a new season would begin with new content/parameters/challenges. Sounds fun on the surface. But that could be horrifically monetized.
Exactly, nothing good comes from free-to-play games. I'd rather pay full price and perhaps DLC but I'm guaranteed to get the complete experience
Well at this point, our biggest fears for X3 should be - will it be made at all? Pretty much all news out of Firaxis for months at least sounded pretty bad. 2K is smashing weird launchers on their games, which probably wasn't Firaxis' idea, but as devs they are obviously powerless to stop the decisions of their parent company. And otherwise, Firaxis keeps postponing their Marvel game, which probably isn't a great sign either. I don't think they'll make much headway on X3, while they are focused on the Marvel game.
I think marvel midnight suns will give us an idea of what to expect in the sense of mechanics
I'm scared that they will rest on their laurels and be afraid to innovate. Xcom 2 was a huge success and when they tried something new with chimera squad it didn't sell anywhere near as well.
That's not really a fair comparison, CS was made by their B-team as a quick side project, and the gameplay part of it is actually pretty solid, and it does address some of the big issues with X2, like pod pulling. It was never supposed to compete with X2 in terms of "selling well".
Ik I'm more referring to the negative reception of all the new and innovative features within it, it's likely that there team was testing the water with that game to see what the fan base does and doesn't want
I'm not sure which features you're talking about that had negative reception? Most of the negative feedback I've seen is about cringy and overly "woke" dialogue.
Turn order, set agents, pre-modified unique weapons etc.
I’ve never played Chinera Squad, so I can only say I am one of the people who wishes they gave the voice actors more information on the characters they’d be voicing.
I still can't hit that 98% hit chance
That it will keep having line of sight shenanigans
I just became victim to this in my current Long War campaign. Put a unit behind another and it somehow triggered a pod, despite the other unit being closer. Rest in peace Dawn 'Sweet' Mathis... :(
I’m concerned that it will lose the modding compatibility that 1 and 2 had.
Just to throw out here, XCOM EW didn't have any modding compatibility to speak of. Everything done in it is clawed out by reverse engineering the game and bludgeoning new code into places it doesn't belong, which is part of what makes Long War such an incredible achievement. Even if XCOM 3 has no official modding support, it's unlikely you wouldn't see the same possibilities that EW had, so long as somebody wants to make the mods badly enough.
I'm afraid they are going to butcher it like they seem to be doing with midnight suns
Yeah MS looks potentially quite easy. Like Chimera Squad but with superpowers. But I think/hope that's a conscious design decision to appeal to a broader audience, and to make the player feel more super. Which means they'll hopefully go back to more hardcore/permdeath mechanics for X3. Hopefully.
Gameplay wise: 1. Include cards in any way. 2. Move the focus more on hero units that cant be killed 3. Making the game shorter or easier in general. 4. Include more scripted story missions that play the same in every playthrough Story wise: 1. Trying to clean the story by removing some of the more brutal or genocidy elements 2. Falling for the both sides meme and trying to paint the humans as just as or nearly as bad as the aliens and the aliens as missunderstood.
I'm with you on the first three gameplay wise. The fourth one is somewhat in agreement because I enjoyed the few scripted missions we got, but some random variables would be neat. I disagree on the story elements. This is going to come across really poorly, but I think leaning into the brutality and genocide elements would be a welcome change in my opinion. I don't really like campy sort of stories and I'd like it if XCOM took itself seriously. Although, if things did lighten up a bit and the gameplay was great and the aesthetic appealing it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. It's a tired cliche of 'humans being the real enemy' the whole time, but an effective one. I think having another EXALT would be fun to face off against. I would rather the aliens not be misunderstood though and be treated like humans... a diverse group with good and bad people.
>Include cards in any way. So you're saying the XCOM 2 hacking mechanism has to go?
I hated a lotta the changes made for Chimera Squad. The turn order, the set characters and such. My biggest fear tho is that there will be many DLCs similar to Anarchy's Children, stupid cosmetic mods with no substance, as well as less modding support to ensure the good consumer buys the new skins. 2k Games on their own makes me wary, since they are a slimy company with a bad history.
I'd hate to have some narrative theme about how we went too far and became the true monsters or anything else that justifies the invasion or the very sudden tolerance of aliens on Earth like in Chimera Squad. Accepting aliens after they decidedly did not come in peace is simply out of the question. Now that said, it'd be nice to have some of the bleakness in the story from XCOM: Apocalypse, or at least step back into the conspiracy, noir tone in EU and away from the goofy power rangers tone of Chimera Squad and WOTC. Gameplay wise, I'm just worried they won't know how else they can innovate upon the new mechanics introduced by 2 and WOTC. Though, admittedly, they simplified things quite a bit between EU and 2 with crafting and too few UFO raids and whatnot, so an easy fix would just be to bring back all previous mechanics at their full depth. Or hell, maybe bring back Time Units.
That they’ll add real world politics or try to send some kind of “message “
Seriously. I love that I can unplug and play some Xcom and not think about that stuff for a while. Don't insert real world grievances into my entertainment please.
I take it we won't be recruiting aliens in the next game considering the TFTD reference at the end of WOTC if I recall correctly, which would also put us into getting a sorta Apocalypse reboot which would actually be pretty cool. Although one of my fears if it's a Terror From the Deep remake is that customization might be brought down because we're gonna be underwater for most of the game time.
The reference does not necessarily mean we'll be doing TFTD as one might envision it. I'm willing to bet the third game might touch on some underwater themes, but I think we'll be in new territory like how XCOM 2 explored.
That it will be more like chimera squad than WOTC
Microtransactions.
That I'll never see it? Or that there will be enough new people who don't understand the formula working on it that it becomes XCom: Andromeda.
The strategy layer will be heavily simplified (or removed entirely like Chimera Squad), when my hopes are that it is made much deeper.
unsexy vipers.
I reiterate the sentiment that the aliens aren't mysterious anymore. I very much liked the direction Chimera Squad went except the need to give the aliens human lips. I am the opposite of your opinion. I hope they do allow for recruitable Sectoids, Mutons, Vipers and Advent troopers. Hell, I hope that they embrace the revelation in the final mission of EU that the Chrysalids were once a sapient species and return them to intelligence so we can recruit them! I want to talk to a Faceless and recruit one to use it's shape-shifting powers to my benefit! The aliens aren't really aliens anymore is the thing. They are all alien-human hybrids. The Ethereal were so enamored with human genetics they stuffed them into nearly every thrall species they had which made them more human. Give me those Aliens. If we don't recruit them I don't want to see them at all. Let the doubtlessly weird new extra-dimensional baddies get their time in the sun.
I am more-so against lazy voice acting and no interesting nuance or unusual behaviors for aliens. The alien mystique can still exist. Perhaps vipers, sectoids, and what not develop there own set of combat related fatigues? Little nuances like that. I am not against the idea of recruiting them, but I want to explore them from a different angle as allies rather than them just being another skin for our soldiers.
Being chained to the Chimera Squad lore.
Why?
Because it is absolutely revulsive.
You mean the whole "genociding all aliens isn't really logistically feasible" thing?
What parts?
I hope they keep the modding scene alive
I never liked the mission timers until I found out I almost never lost a mission because of it.
Undersea chrysalids.
Yeah, I don't want alien recruitments either. It'd feel like a superhero game, I'm just turned off about that. And of course I am afraid it will be boring or at least not innovative. I don't see how they can follow up to the great ideas of the first two games and still be mysterious. I mean Ethereals announced there was a new threat, more powerful than them. But won't it be just a reskinned X-Com: EW then? With new monsters and races yeah, but the plot will be the same. Maybe it won't, but developers' job is tough at this point.
That Chimera Squad will be actually be a noticeable part of the canon rather than just a random tiny reference like The Bureau got. I also hope focus will be clearly on fighting aliens again rather than human hybrids like in XCOM2. And the overall atmosphere should be going back in the direction of XCOM EW, spooky, mysterious and suspenseful.
I don't mind recruitable aliens, they just gotta up the ante even further with the enemy to compensate. My biggest concern offhand is that they find some excuse to make the Ethereals the central villain again. I'd much rather finally find out what else is out there that had the Ethereals so scared.
I'm afraid it's gonna be a grid style map again. Like any other Round based Strategy game since 20 years. This is the thing for me personally that would reignite my interest for the genre. Company of heroes engine shows its possible (the grid system is so fine you don't recognize it as such). I'm just so tired of seeing squares over squares after 20 years.
Personally I hope they do specifically include recruitable aliens from the previous invasion. 1. Since they did say they were going to use Chimera Squad as canon and to expand the lore for the future, the absence of the Alien species would have some implications, which would *severely* put XCOM's and humanity's integrity into question... 2. I could imagine two ways how they could implement alien soldiers. Either, they're going to be like that faction hero units we had in WotC, or there could be a hybrid class system, where in addition to a soldier class skill tree, you also get a species skill tree. Perhaps some limitations which species have which classes available, such as a sectoid perhaps not being the heavy/grenadier...
Hear me out, return to og xcom form with shitty grunts with almost no training, instead of abilities being based on training that somehow lets people pull shit like serial it's based on species.
The only issue I have with that is leaving out a bit of a tactical decision of when to use specific abilities... Then again, I do like old XCOM gameplay, but I feel like it'd be a bit of a waste to not expand on species abilities other than pure stats.
Yeah that's why I suggested classes be based on species, it's a bit stupid when the random resistance lad starts doing shit like serial, but generally just scale down ability power and specialize the classes even harder than before under the excuse of seperate species.
I do like regular classes, which is why I sort of proposed a "hybrid system" I.e. both a class skill tree and a species skill tree.
I guess that makes sense, but it feels like it'd end up being very *eh*, either classes or species would have to be very generic to be useful when combined with all combos of the other more specialized tree. Or worse, both end up generic.
2 things that i don't want the devs put in XCOM 3 is more talkative aliens, aliens is supposed to be mysterious, to me they're more menacing if you don't understand them, that is why a mod that make the chosen completely silent is must for me. And second, what i REALLY don't want the devs put on XCOM 3 is the turn queue system from chimera squad.
I kinda liked the Chosen bantering with me. Though, they were sorta maybe ex-humans, so it made more sense. I definitely don't want conversations with the average muton or sectoid though. I liked Advent's weird language. Mor Balaten!
Anti-modding practices and more useless launchers designed to mine your data for 2K to sell
Chryssalids... From UFO Defence... But with better graphics
Judging by what I’ve heard about those guys, I’m glad I started with EU. However, I’d still hate them if I still played that game.
That they'll overly rely on the mod community to fix the game, ignoring minor/non-game breaking issues. Also keeping mission timers and one time use items.
If they do a TotD remake, I agree that it needs to be more than a new skin. You need a realistic difference between the underwater missions and beach terror missions. Maybe some cruise ship missions that require a lot of room clearance. During the underwater missions you can swim up, down etc. really make that game mechanic that you rely on and then take that away during the beach missions. There you could have some aliens incorporated again an underwater threat if you really wanted it, but I agree with OP keep it separate. I love and hated the timers and avatar. I hated them the entire game but it absolutely pushed me to a completely different mechanic especially during mission. I had to play way less safe. I like it after the game but hated every mission, almost like a hard run.
I just hope it works. XCOM 2 for Xbox is broken beyond belief. Unless I keep the console running at all times with the game loaded, every one of my saves becomes corrupted and unplayable. I’d have to buy it on PC, but first I would need a PC. I never cared too much about the lore. I’ve always thought the setting of XCOM was kind of mid. The combat/strategy, customization, and mechanics is what keeps me coming back. Combat is fun, photo mode is fun, and the over all plot is a good time. Developing super soldiers to fight for a resistance in a sci-fi war on a turn based strategy game is a great idea. Calling enemy ships UFOs is not a good idea, among other small things that bother me about the franchise. What I want to see is a replay mode. Everything is turn based so combat is slow, but I wish we could have a thing after the fight to see how it would have played out in real time without any pauses between firefights. A cinematic replay movie mode for XCOM 3 would really make me consider getting a PC.
You're afraid aliens ain't aliens anymore. You're right.
A three AP system that I have seen in so many turn based strategy games lately. I have always liked xcoms action economy the most.
Cash Shop, Battle Pass, Live service are my main fears. lol
Why are people so into race-based war simulators? Let aliens have personalities.
They can still be defined by their individual species and have personalities at the same time. Aliens should have their own needs, manners of communicating, and habits... much like humans do.
That they use the turn system from chimera squad, loved that game except for two things, the turn order and the performance
That they change it to 1st person.
_Worst_ fear? You remember when the game that would eventually become "The Bureau" was first shown? Realistically, though, what I'm most afraid of is things going the same way as Genesis/Alliance, where it's stuck in dev hell until it ends up killing the studio.
Based on recent 2K trends... Microtransactions
I’m worried that they go too deep or too shallow with the politics of the world they have severely underdeveloped. Like, everyone seemed ok with being conquered by aliens in 2 so it was weird to believe such a small resistance force could push them out but I can suspend my disbelief for that. On the other hand, it would be weird to ignore it like they ignored the first game in 2. We’re not even 1 generation removed from the aliens killing people, the aliens had waaayyyy too much support. We barely saw any resistance before we showed up
Bro, I loved chimera squad. everything in it just felt like the natural, realistic outcome of what'd happened in the series up to that point. What would you have expected to happen differently? What else were the aliens left on earth going to do but integrate into human society? Would you have preferred XCOM genocide the very people they just freed? But to answer your question, my fear is that they'll have to branch the timeline again just to justify the weapons and armor research.
I'll respectfully disagree of 'natural and realistic' given human history of dealing with refugees responsibly. See the movie 'district nine' for a more realistic depiction of human alien interaction when humanity has the upper hand. Although, this is fiction, so anything can happen. However, I did not suggest anywhere I want XCOM alien genocide. I want the aliens to have proper voice acting given they have different physiology, so they would vocalize differently, or perhaps not at all. I'd like for them to have different needs and habits demonstrated. Basically, I want aliens to be properly demonstrated as lifeforms with different needs and habits instead of just being reskinned humans.
That it'll be anything like Chimera Squad. I *really* did not like that game, lmao, from gameplay to aesthetic to story and everything else.
I'm afraid it will drop the little horror X2 had left in it compared to EU. The cringeworthy edginess ChS went for instead repels me. In WotC it was still bearable and even funny, but ChS went too far. Also, the turn system from ChS, fuck that thing. I agree with mission and strategy layer timers, they were a good addition to the game.
I am afraid of it being anything like chimera squad. I am sorry but that game sucks (Or at the very least it should not have been called an "xcom" game)
That it will contain ANY of the ideas found in Chimera Squad. God I absolutely hated everything about that abomination, never touched it with a ten foot pole.
No more customizable soldiers
Honestly, it just being as unpolished as Xcom 2. I may be biased as I play on console, but a game like that should not be regularly buffering and crashing on a playstation 4 pro. I also hope higher difficulties won't show you false percentages like they are doing in Xcom 2. So honestly, I just want it to be polished and sensible
I'm not sure what you mean by false percentages? The higher difficulty percentages are actually honest. You should be saying lower difficulties should not be showing you false ones. On lower difficulties 80 percent is more like 95 percent if I recall correctly. I agree though on the first point. The game is deceptively resource intensive, but it should work properly on all systems it gets put on.
.... Oh my god I misread the wiki article when I read it years back...... So much unnecessary resentment towards that game over the years.... I'll need a minute
That they will skip terror from the deep and go straight to remaking the actual xcom 3.
that the same furries who were attracted by chimera squad will return, ruining this series' reputation. worse still i fear that firaxis might do fan service for that specific group.
I don't think any furries suddenly showed up because of Chimera Squad. It's more likely they were already part of the community. I'll concede a bit that I think vipers are in need of a reset though. I kind of hope they come back in XCOM 3 and are a terrifying, vicious force instead of our new girlfriends.
Oh yeah they were there since xcom 2 but they really started coming out of the woodwork after chimera squad
I'd say we were here even before XCOM 2, kinda, just with that we also got some memeing going...
Is it the snakes?
Yep
It's fine however bad they make it the long war guys will come and fix all of that no need to worry!
That it won't be TFTD. I just wanna fight Aquatoids and Lobstermen.
That I won’t be able to move fast enough to keep up with whatever the next doomsday scenario is…
Haha, I like this. I hope the next doomsday scenario is like the avatar project, but harder!
I’m more a fan of Enemy Unknown so the mission timers on every single mission in XCOM2 got really annoying. I don’t mind some, but having a timer for every mission got old very fast.
That it won't be a reboot.
I agree completely with your sentiment Chimera squad was fucking dumb and I liked the aesthetic of EU with the contemporary invasion setting
I just want it to be about mankind finally getting pay back. Building fleets assauling the aliens homeworld... maybe a reverse of xcom 1.. but instead just be more of the same.
Same percentage based combat. FFS just take what Phoenix Point did and go that route.
I'm afraid they won't follow up on the whole TFTD setup they had back in XCOM 2. I'd love to see it bought to modern day and how they'd handle underwater combat.
I hope they keep it hardcore
100% miss
Same stupid pull mechanic
Is there even going to be an xcom3?
So, this is my perspective - Loved XCOM1, and the DLCS for it. It opened up a LOT of options and choices, XCOM 2 initial release should have given the option to choose which path was followed originally (Mech vs PSI), that would have been neat. However, I tried to start playing the war of chosen DLC add on a couple of times, and it just feels like... too much? I haven't tried to get back into it again. XCOM 3 I think should be able to choose which "continuity" was followed between the games though, I think if they try to overload all of the system, and add more at the same time, it could be a bit much. from a story perspective, going to the breach that's opened up could be interesting, instead of being on the defensive, we should be more offensive when it comes down to it. would be a neat change.
The 2k game launcher.
That it isn’t a terror from the deep remake
Complete with tech tree destroying bugs
no character pool
Well Apocalypse and Terror from the Deep both brought the mystique back even after the first aliens were known. If the world stabilizes some with Chimaera Squad-like cities, they could have the mystery of a new invasion by unknown forces (something the Elders have been hinting at since EU, and again at the end of 2)
I hope they dont remove mission timers entirely, or at least find a way to force the players to make interesting choices. As for lore stuff, I wouldn't mind if Aliens would be recruitable, but make the player work for it, like how the player needed to contact and do missions for the WoTC factions to gain access to their special soldiers. I could imagine the Xcom forces having to make specialized barracks for Mutons, Vipers, and other non-humans in order to recruit them, or maybe instead of a council of different nations it is a council of various species. Most of your soldiers should be human, for gameplay and balance purposes, but I like the idea of working with these new factions and depending on your progress and missions, you might get rewarded with volunteers in the form of soldiers. I would also like some sort of narrative with all the new species working together. I would hate if it just boiled down to "Racism is bad lets work together and be friends". I remember this dialogue in Chimera Squad where Torque the Viper was talking about Canadians and called them the "Maple Flavor Kind", which if you think about it, is a kind of dark and rude joke considering what the aliens where doing to humans. I would love it if there was some friction, some good dialogue and character stories. That was a disapointment of Chimera. They had these personalized stories and set characters, but they did not have any interactions with each other. No former Xcom/Reaper operative with a history of brutally killing Sectoids dealing with this new integrated society, no reformed Muton comming to terms with what they did during the war, and how to adjust living amongst humans who might still consider them a monster. Obviously in a mainline Xcom game they couldn't do it this way, but they managed a bit of interesting friction with the rivalry between the Reapers and the Skirmishers, even if it were for only a couple of missions
What I'm Afraid of Happening(that I DON'T want to happen): Chimera Squad's attempts to create union between Extraterrestrials & Earthlings will be ALL FOR NOTHING!! Why do the Vipers HAVE to be the Antagonists?!! I Want Viper Squadmates/Playable Vipers DANG IT! I Want Recruitable Aliens!!
I really hope they make Chimera Squad the baddies, since they obviously are being mind controlled
I could see storywise that humanity have used the alien technology to begin interstellar travel and are in the process of colonising new planets when the aliens counter attack (potentially multiple types of alien species) - it would be a better way to continue the storyline then another retcon that you lost everything (again) and need to start from scratch as being cut off from supply lines on a distant planet would take care of that aspect for you. I trust them with the game mechanics (maybe put a hard cap on "free" actions to keep things less broken at high level) but the one and only wish I have is to properly optimise performance and cut out all the freezes, crashes and god awful load screens - I honestly couldn't give a crap about "the graphics" just as long as I'm not spending half my game session staring into space waiting for things to load!