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[Christian Knudsen]

PC only. Guess I need to get a gaming PC. I'm not made of money, Firaxis!

[Alevice]

I really loved XCOM and will probably drop so many hours on the sequel.

That said, I am not sure the premise makes sense from a story standpoint. ****spoilerss**** The invasion was supposed to be a test to find a suitable species to work as a heir/transplant to the ethereals. As far as the other subjugated species show, they brutally reegineered them to the point of near unrecognizability to make them their battle thralls. I dont think humanity would live colonized as it is seem to be shown here.

[Christian Knudsen]

The Advent website is all about people mysteriously disappearing, so I guess the Unification and Advent are a front and the aliens are experimenting on the populace in secret?

[Alec S.]

Really excited for the sequel.  Really glad to see the team is confident enough (and deservedly so) to make a sequel that significantly changes the overarching structure rather than just making more of the same.  

[Nillo]

Multi-platform usually means bad interfaces so I'm actually pretty happy that it will only be on the PC tbh.

Really like the idea of having a more offensive role and trying to take the planet back from the aliens. But yeah from a story standpoint it seems odd. Is everything that happened in Enemy Unknown/Within retconned now?

[Christian Knudsen]

Looks like they're just going with the bad ending? Or some more shit went down in the intervening 20 years? The Ethereals did talk about them wanting to prepare mankind for the real threat, so beating the Ethereals may have doomed us?

[TheLastBanana]

Oh man, my hype levels are off the charts right now.

[s0]

Multi-platform usually means bad interfaces so I'm actually pretty happy that it will only be on the PC tbh.

i thought the EU interface was pretty good actually, tho admittedly the xcom2 UI looks better. EU had a few problems with unnecessarily hidden info (like i said) and aiming grenades was wonky. but other than that it was good.

[DJFloppyFish]

I hope the snake lady means there's a bunch of experimenting with the human genome we might be able to take part in to defeat our alien overlords.

[s0]

otoh firaxis had kindof a bad run lately with civ beyond earth and sid meiers starships. lets hope they break it with this game.

[TheLastBanana]

Yeah, that's a good point.

Beyond Earth was okay, it just paled in comparison to Civ V because it wasn't all that different. I think most people would have considered it a decent 4X strategy game if it hadn't been trying to live up to Civ V and both its expansions.

Starships sounds like it was a mess. Haven't played it myself, but I get the sense it was originally supposed to be a lighter mobile/tablet game. Then they brought it to PC and made it sound like a full strategy game and people were understandably disappointed.

The fact that XCOM 2 is coming as a PC exclusive and that they're focusing on modding is a good sign to me though. It sounds like they know their audience and they know exactly what they (as developers) want from the game, which is more than I can say for Starships. The fact that the screenshots they've released are showing some different types of gameplay to EU also suggests to me that it won't be suffering from the problem of stagnation as Beyond Earth. My only concern is that they deviate too much from what made EU great and end up with a totally different game.

But for the time being, I'm still pretty hyped for this.

[Dragonmaw]

Details on how XCOM 2 will use procgen.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/04/xcom-2s-procedurally-generated-maps-ign-first

[Armageddon]

I really wished they'd go back to

after they satisfied the die hard fans with the last game. Still some of the best VFX I've seen in any game. Everyone called it a Fallout ripoff when they demoed it in 2011, now Fallout 4 looks to be following a similar art style.

[Alevice]

Mechanically it seems like a fps version of the bureau, which in turn felt like a poor mans mass effect 3

[s0]

who are "they", its not even the same developer.

[Christian Knudsen]

Hmm...

[s0]

whats wrong with it? looks good to me.

[Christian Knudsen]

It's mostly the presentation I'm not a big fan of...

I don't really like the look of the city. Looks so clean and minimalistic and overly stylized to the point of lacking detail that it to me almost looks placeholder or unfinished. I also remember Jake Solomon talking about how he didn't want to remake Terror from the Deep, because to him one of the key components of XCOM was fighting aliens in everyday environments (as opposed to deep in the sea). So placing it in this futuristic city seems odd. Hopefully only some of the missions take place in this city.

And I really didn't like the music. XCOM 1 had music with a distinct style and personality. This felt like generic placeholder heroic music.

It probably didn't help with my opinion of the video either that the first enemies were generic-looking soldiers/robots in generic armor.

Gameplay-wise I liked some of the new stuff shown. Being able to pick up fallen comrades and bring them back to base. Choosing the evac spot. Seemed neat. I sure hope that wasn't a hacking minigame, though.

I think I probably just have to get used to the new look of the game...

[s0]

i do actually like the new sleek look. i mean it's set in The Future(tm) and x-com was always pulp and b-movie inspired so it only makes sense that the new game would be set in a shiny *technopolis*. you do fight aliens in everyday environments, just that it's now the everyday environments Of The Corny B-Movie Future.

[TheLastBanana]

They've also said there are a lot of different environments this time around, so the sterile cities won't be the only place you visit.