E3: XCOM First Impressions

During E3 this year, we had a chance to stop by the 2K Games booth and check out a demo of XCOM. Currently in development by 2K Marin, XCOM is the reboot of the franchise which was started back in 1994 by MicroProse. When 2K Marin found out they were going to make an XCOM game, they were pretty excited and went on a discovery to find out what made XCOM so successful and critically acclaimed. After playing the original game over and over again, the developers identified three key things which they believe are crucial to making a great XCOM game: 1) Good mix of tactical and strategic gameplay. 2) No “Rambo’s”, you are part of a team of the best and brightest, commanding them to success. 3) You’re fighting an unknown alien enemy and you must figure out what makes them “tick” and use that against them. You’re not just bringing bullets to the fight, but your brain as well.

In their reboot of XCOM, 2K Marin takes a Batman Begins/Battlestar Galactica approach and tells a brand new origin story; it’s sort of having all of the previous elements of the XCOM universe repackaged in a brand new shell. The story goes back to 1962 and you play as Agent William Carter, a field intelligence officer recently assigned to XCOM. As the demo begins, we find ourselves in Carter’s office reviewing the evidence of a potential alien incursion.

Starting with a cutscene, we are shown what appears to be a compilation of home footage which slowly turns gruesome as we begin to witness strange alien events taking place. This just gives you a quick view of nature of the alien threat which you are fighting. In XCOM the war is much more personal and intimate. The aliens are invading our schools, our hospitals, our churches, and our neighborhoods.

As the game starts, we find ourselves in the XCOM HQ, the central hub of the war on the alien threat. The first person we meet is Agent Leon Barnes. He will help you manage your pool and roster of agents, which you can then outfit and select as you head out into the field of battle. We pick 2 guys for this mission and continue on to meet Angela, the brains behind XCOM operations, who will proceed to tells us a bit about our primary mission. Behind her we see a map of the continental United States, which acts as the strategic campaign map for your game. The game campaign is a non-linear one; you have primary, secondary and tertiary missions to select from which will become available based on the decisions you make throughout the game. Our first mission is to find Dr. Weir, who’s expertise are needed at the XCOM HQ.

At the start the mission, we are placed in a helicopter with the rest of our team whom we chose earlier. As we proceeded to fly over the neighborhoods on our way to our drop off point, I couldn’t help but feel that we were back in the 60’s. The team did a good job at translating the time period into the visuals of the game. Speaking of the visuals however, I couldn’t help but notice how simple some of the graphics are. While the game still provides a vibrant atmosphere, don’t expect a high level of detail we have come to know from some of the other titles out there. I don’t want to judge just yet, we’ll see how the final version looks and feels.

Back to our demo… as we land near a military checkpoint, we discover that it is completely deserted. “What in hell happened here?” says one of your team mates. As we continue to venture around, we come across a lonely soldier who proceeds to attack us because he is not human at all. This is our first experience with the alien enemy, who are collectively called “The Outsiders”. In this specific instance, we just witnessed the “infiltrator” class-type alien who is able to take on many different disguises and look exactly like one of us.

Now that the aliens are aware of our presence, we continue making our way through the streets, taking out enemies one by one. As I mentioned before, XCOM is not all just about shooting, tactical combat is at the core of the game. And we are now shown the tactical view which slows everything down in a cool slow-mo effect and allows you to assess the tactical situation and figure out the best plan of attack. You can command your party members through the agent order menus, telling them where to take cover, provide suppressing fire or to come back to you and more.

Time to demonstrate your tactical abilities. The aliens have put up a shield which allows them to shoot right through but stops your bullets without a problem. As we try to move around and flank them, they correctly identify the player as the primary threat and reposition the shield in our direction yet again. This is now the perfect time to go into tactical view and use the diversion ability in order to get attention away from yourself and onto your team mates. This will force the aliens to reposition their shield in the direction of your team, giving you a perfect opportunity to take them out.

Another tactical aspect of the game will allow you to capture alien technology in order to bring it back to XCOM HQ for research or re-use it in the field, if you so choose. Re-using the technology is pretty self explanatory, but your other choice of bringing it back to the HQ will allow researchers to discover and unlock new powers, new weapons and new strategic choices for your arsenal. What you decide to do is completely up to you. In our demo we were shown how to capture an enemy turret and thus we were able to re-deploy it when we were overwhelmed, to help us even the odds in the fight.

Our demo wrapped up with us being attacked by the “Titan”, a kind-of an alien “B-52”. This weapon is too valuable to destroy, and we end up capturing it for ourselves. Every enemy in XCOM is an opportunity and the developers want you thinking about what weapons you can use, do you want to risk loosing out on your ammo, do you want to capture for research or use it in the field, etc. From what we saw, XCOM is coming along quite nicely and with the release date scheduled for next year, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of it over the next few months.