How Firaxis saved XCOM from complete disaster - Here's A Thing
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- čas přidán 19. 08. 2024
- Okay, Chris had to make this episode at some point. In this week's Here's A Thing, he tells the remarkable (often troubled) story of XCOM: Enemy Unknown's success.
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XCOM-2 was real game of the year of 2016.Well done Firaxis.
Indeed. Much better than _(slap forehead now)_ Uncharted 4.
XCOM 2 was good and all but it can't win game of the year with the amount of bugs and unoptimization in it. Even now a year and a half later it's still really buggy.
Honestly, the older X-com games were wildly hit or miss, most of which were fairly bad. UFO Defence was alright though. And actually, Terror From The Deep is kind of okey as well. X-com Apocalypse was perhaps too different for most people to really itch their X-com needs, but even that third game was pretty darn good. Problem is, just about all of these games suffered from very wonky user interfaces and balance issues or flaws in overall game design. For what it's worth, the two latest in the series have a very significant snowballing problem. Once things get out of control, it is very difficult to turn the tide. I would consider that a significant design flaw. Then there's the BS of the XCOM:EU game not showing which enemies you could see and shoot from a new location, heavy reliance on overwatch mechanic to counter a fairly dumb AI and so on. XCOM 2 is fun to play, arguably more fun than XCOM:EU, but it still offers the same lame AI. They also made the mistake of now forcing players to rush through the levels faster to counter the whole lets turtle through the levels with overwatch set each turn. There is PLENTY wrong with XCOM:EU and XCOM2. So don't be too surprised if one of the older X-com games is actually considered better, in context of it's time.
Guys, it's cool, just calm down. There's a clear explanation for all this, Tuareg Akavir is obviously from a different dimension where UFO Defense wasn't as great as TFTD. Don't start a dimensional war over a video game please ;)
No wonder they are talking trash to you, you can't even take a light-hearted comment for what it is, have to go all rage monster and trash talk some more. Grow up child.
The first Xcom got me into computer games when I was 13. This game got me back into it at 33.
The creator of the original X-Com is making a new game, Phoenix Point.
Notice how the early days of development, they had the wheel that Phoenix Point is creating :D Great minds DO think alike ;)
Can't wait for alpha!
Like I'd commented on the video I first learned of that baby: 'So, let me get this straight, this is the Terror from the Deep we didn't get? Count me in' =D
There is actually some angled cover on a couple of the crashed ufos. It's not entirely out of the game, but it's really rare.
Also Aiming Angles.
"Missing 60% shots" LOL. How about missing 90% shots, which lets that alien kill a squad member, which causes another to panic and shoot a third. My friends and I sum up these scenarios "Because XCOM." I bloody love these games.
I XCOM taught me one thing it's the fact that if it's not 100% it'll eventually miss at some point.
The lessons in X-Com were kinda opposed. First you thought, cover is great and makes for some awesome fire fights, than that only a dead alien is a good alien and can not hurt you. But after that, like you said, 90% misses punish you even harder. It was a mess sometimes and big cover just a fucking joke. My runs on the highest difficulty on ironman (with tones of mods) ended so often just out of the blue. Ofc i was never a mastermind who knew everything like the range of sight and stuff. Though i only relied on some decent tactic that ofc was prone to lucky hits. I must admit i would enjoy a game that let you lose a fight and soldiers even more. They always stated something like this with the new X-Com but it never felt that way. If your Alpha-Team got wasted it was extremely hard, or better put, random to come back from that. Nevertheless X-Com is one of the greatest if not the greatest game series there is.
Long war is the mod you are looking for tbh, it's more complicated and unforgiving, but it has a much larger roster so losses can be absorbed.
My favourite XCOM 2 moment was recently, with the Alien Hunters DLC installed. It was our first meeting with the Berserker Queen. Five soldiers missed 70% + shots... and then my Squadsight sniper, with an Advanced Repeater strapped to her Plasma Lance that had never gone off before... EXECUTED HER! From aghast to overjoyed in one minute.
sounds familiar, but in my case the dude shot the VIP that I had to escort....
I'm a simple man, I see XCOM in the title, I press like.
I saw XCOM in your comment, I pressed like.
Edit : also saw it in mine, had to like my own comment...
+Han Onyme if you can't like your own comment, why should anyone else.. That's my motto
Good job again. It's so weird to think anyone could believe that having lines to every enemy known (that's a reference) to the player at once was a good idea, but it's true that you can't see these things when you're in the middle of a project. I could see angled cover working though, but only in a very simplified way, such as the half and full cover the game has now. A little exclamation mark above a player could alert you to their cover being compromised by any line of sight.
There's this mod in XCOM 2 that does that. It turns the little red crosshair (the one next to the alien's HP when you have a shot) to yellow if it is a flanking shot. It has other improvements like the aforementioned, but that is definitely the most useful one.
So yes, angled cover would be interesting to see.
XCOM 2 War of the Chosen added a feature where holding "Alt" shows all visible enemies and whether they're flanked. So excited to use this feature when War of the Chosen comes out, because the guess work was always annoying.
Bit
There's an option in the settings menu which shows that information permanently on the screen without you having to hold the button pressed.
+TheEmperorSRB Cool!
I would mock you for being a massive fanboy, Chris, but I do love this game (as well as the sequel), so I can't really do it.
Great video, as always!
Fanboy, yet he still calls the game X-Com: UFO Defense when we all well know it was called UFO: Enemy Unknown? :-)
d2factotum It was UFO: EU in Europe and X-COM: UD in USA. I am European, so I prefer UFO: Enemy Unknown as well :-)
UFO Defense was the title of the original game
Not when it was originally released in Europe, it wasn''t. It was called UFO: Enemy Unknown then, and only got renamed to X-Com: UFO Defense for the later American release.
Well I'm completely honest when I call the Firaxis Xcom's my favorite games of all time. And I have been gaming since Super Mario bros. I like it even more than the original UFO (I respect it greatly and I played it for 57 hours on Steam, but I will never beat it because of all the bugs). The new Xcom's always have me sweating in the best way possible, no matter when I play them.
Never played xcom, I should really give it a go.
If it looks like something you're gonna like, then you're gonna like it. I'd jump straight into XCOM2 if I were you, as it has literally all you could ask for in a "Tactical Squad-Based Alien-Killing Game".
Not to mention that at least on PC, XCOM 2 has all the mods you can use to completely customize your game, from cosmetic options to gameplay tweaks.
I agree with other guys. XCOM: EU had identity crisis, it was trying too much to be the original "X-COM: UFO DEFENSE", while it was complitly different game. XCOM 2 on the other hand, is a game that "knows" what it is. You should skip XCOM: EU and go straight for XCOM 2, and only come back to the first one if you can't get enough of the XCOM 2.
Please do. It is an awesome game. And the second one is even better, mate.
I'm a weirdo, I still prefer XCOM EW to anything XCOM 2 had to offer. Put Long War on top of it, and you have the perfect XCOM game for me.
XCOM 2 is just too timer-y for me.
XCOM:EU was a masterpiece, and you can see now how it became such. The team like you said were not to arrogant to question their own decisions but were constantly out to look for flaws and improvements. That's the mindset of a true talent and winner that is not afraid of criticism and is confident in himself and his abilities. Anybody with half a capacity for talent that has worked in a company understands the value of this, and also how horrible it is to be working with or under people that are the opposite to that type of character.
Jake Solomens story could honestly be made into a pretty good movie. The guy grew up playing xcom then developed a strategy game of the year for it when he got older.
"We made it too complicated"
Damn,Idk if thats a bad thing if it just sounds like old xcom with more layers
*after seeing the ui in the test and the 3 red line aiming shit"
OH FUCK,I GOT A ANYUERISM!!!! NEVER MIND,YOU WERE RIGHT,JAKE!
Definitely a good lesson. In theory everyone knows this, but it can be easy to forget while there are timetables to consider and pipelines to optimize.
I brought this game and thought man I just wasted my money. But then the next thing I know I'm almost 200 hours in playing this game🤔.
Yeah, high learning curve; but highly addictive, once you get a handle on all the data you have to process in order to play an effective game.
Man, making games is hard!
No... making GOOD games is hard. Lame games are easy, as evidenced by the proliferation of lame games.
Well done Chris. This was bloody great.
6:20 incorrect, angled cover still exists in the game. Its a percentage modifier to hit that occurs when you "almost" flank an enemy, for example just 1 square in front of their cover-side, but far to their side. You'll get a +42% Angle bonus for example.
This whole series of videos is brilliant - it makes me interested in games I've never played and care about things that I'd never even thought about before. Thanks Chris!
"Never grow too proud to question your own work" - great advice.
from one xcom fan to another - i really enjoyed this video , its a classic case of if at first you dont succeed - try try and try again.
I do wish you had added the parts where soloman was a complete stess head and the game was not working and his team added the sound effects from the sound guy and turned it in to a funny paraody and jakes reaction to this - priceless.
You should have added sid miers input because that also i felt changed the overall outlook of the game - all the same well done. :-)
Thank you for this awesome video! Getting this special insight is really amazing - Jake is a really cool guy, and this just shows how cool he is... one could say down to earth and honest!
Keep up the good work, Commander!
To add on how cool Jake is: He has NO problem whatsoever with people modding XCOM... he even outright praised the "XCOM Long War" mod by saying "XCOM EW is a 20-hour tutorial for XCOM Long War"... Now THAT'S a great gamedev!
Could not even begin to guess how many hours I've sunk into these games. So, so good.
I've played Xcom since the first version for the PC. Even though I found the original game to be a bit tedious to play; it had enough cool features that I couldn't put it down.
The remake is fabulous! I only with Sony and Squaresoft would take notes while remaking my other all time favorite game, Final Fantasy 7.
I never knew of the development issues coming from the game.. It seemed so simple as a long time fan.. but wow.
I'm so proud the game (XCOM/XCOM2) became so amazing..
This is one of my favourite series on CZcams - good stuff!
XCOM EU/EW and XCOM 2, is not one of the best games I've ever played....... but THE best games I've ever played. I got hundreds of hours into those games, beating it on Ironman Impossible/Legendary/Ironman, and just love the game. Can't wait for the expansion, War of the Chosen. For anyone who haven't tried this game. It's a must buy imo!!!
*sighs* .... I hope they will lower the price of XCOM2 and WotC ... a bit waaay beyond my budget, there... *cries*
Honestly, I still wouldn't mind those lines as an option, even if just to see what aliens the soldier could see from that tile, like what Phoenix Point is doing.
I agree, I liked the ability to turn on/off tile mode to see how many titles there are for rockets/frags.
I mean they didn't abandon the basic idea completely. In 2 (don't think it was in 1) there's a marker on each enemy's health readout if the current person can attack it from the selected tile
Cyber Goblin Yeah but I often find that too awkward to use, having to zoom right out and have a weirs angle to use it. Also the new thing in WotC only shows how many of what type you see, not who it is.
hmmm funny how in Xcom 2 they polished a lot of stuff, had way better graphics, campaign was phenomenal, new classes, etc. I was done with it in a month.
yet the one game i can't stop playing is Xcom 2012 with the long war mod. and believe me I've tried.
anyway nice vid.
They (the makers of the mod) was NOT lying when they say "LONG War" ... :D
That's what you get for interviewing TEEEAAAAM FIRAXIS.
I've found that the rounded corners of UFOs are fucky and impossible to flank around in EU. I'd chalked it up to superior alien geometry, but maybe it has roots in the development history. Video covers some fascinating stuff.
The UFOs' round corners even got a mention in TV Tropes.
As a long time X-COM fanatic, I have been waiting for a video like this. I was obsessed with UFO defence, TFTD, Apocalypse and Interceptor as a child and was worried they would fuck up XCOM's return when it came back. Not only was it excellent and console friendly to bring in a new audience, but the simplification of the TUs to turns made it much more fluid and the kill cam thing improve immersion massively. Then XCOM2 came along and basically removed most of my issues with XCOM EU by making it more like the original series with new ideas and improvements across the board. I really hope TFTD and apocalypse get the remakes they deserve, even better if they add more political systems like Apoc, and the ability to build secondary bases with a bit more financial management would be nice too
Also Jake Solomon is one of my heroes, having a hard core fan leading the charge was exactly what the franchise needed to move forward into the modern age
Great video Chris! I've loved Xcom since it came out in '94, and Xcom: EU for me nailed it. (As did X2, looking forward to see what they do with 3...)
THIS SHOW ALWAYS RULES DUDE. AND THE ORIGINAL XCOM AND TFTD ARE MY FAVORITE GAMES OF ALL TIME. PEACE
late privktorian era there is not much "PEACE" about writing in caps
I remember playing Laser Squad, not knowing decades later a game will be so popular of that genre.
never thought about the long journey XCOM made to next-gen
Fantastic video... our whole team found it really insightful!
This really gives a new appreciation into how much thought and work went into the final product. When I first played it I was frustrated with some of the dumbed down features but looking at some of the overly complicated itterations im glad it tuned out as well as it did.
Remember that every time you miss an 90+ shot just say to yourself “That’s Xcom baby”
I love how it was incredibly obvious to everyone involved that the lines on the screen were terrible but Julian Gollop still put them in Phoenix point.
Love XCOM. Never tired of playing it.
The Christopher Titus's dad way of making a game. " You'll fuck it up but sooner or later you'll get it right! Just go do it!"
"Question everything!" is the answer.
Thanks for the vid and research on this.
What awesome was they Keep the legacy of RNG alive and kicking since the 90s and THAT is the reason i have been a fan since the 90s.
I literally knew nothing about X-COM until XCOM, specifically Yahtzee's review on Zero Punctuation. 8 years later, I've watched more hours of XCOM games on YT than any other game. I've played through UFO Defense twice, TFTD three times, EU three times and XCOM 2 once. I'm currently playing Long War 2 and having a blast. XCOM never gets old.
Woah, out of those classic gameplay mechanics, out of one rabbit hole at a time. Indeed fascinating!
I love that sid meier is in xcom enemy withtin and xcom 2 as a xcom hero which is wayyyy to op
I just started playing XCOM 2, and imediately fell in love with it. Funnily enough, one of the most enjoyable parts for me is the character customization. It really gets you attached to your soldiers when going through the campaign. Wonderful experience, and I'm planning to get War of the Chosen soon. I heard a lot of great things about it.
Honestly, I would still like to have an indicator whether I flank an enemy from a certain position. Even without the angled cover, it's sometimes a bit hard to tell, and turning the crosshair that indicates whether you see an enemy from a position or not into a yellow crosshair would perfectly handle that.
Liked XCOM Enemy Unknown, bought XCOM 2 in July and absolutely love it. Trying Long War 2 currently
Makes me think of Blizzard. "We've been working on Titan for five years... And it sucks. Scrap it."
Jake Solomon = brave XCOM Trooper
Todd Howard = lying Thin Man
learnt something new, thanks for the good content. great story and story and storytelling.
Thank you for making this video. Huge Xcom fan.
Kind of sad we lost that complex original. I like myself some complex games, and that original looked almost like 7.62, which is pretty fun.
KUDOS to Firaxis and Extra KUDOS to all the modders that make the game a much better exp.
Enemy unknown on andriod is so great. I wish they would fix camera options a bit but its a gem in my pocket
Easy solution: look at disgaea for multiple weapons types and stats. Brilliantly deep and limitless variety of specialization. Even disgaea 1 had that much figured out
Despite having variety most of it wasn't worth the effort to use it. Sure I could use an Ax against single enemies. Or I could have a Sword and hit 3-4 enemies for a total of more damage. Most of the weapons get dwarfed by magic anyways completely devaluing weapon types and since anyone could learn the spells you could wield the 4 strongest attacking spells and the strongest healing spell.
It would be like giving a Sniper 3x the normal vision range in Xcom. You can hit your enemies... but they can't hit you.
Chris Bratt, another great video well done
Chris is a delightful human being.
As much as i like the Xcom enemy unknown and Xcom 2. I still would like to see some mechanics come back from the original games.
Great video. Cheers Chris!
and 45 degree cover still exists still on medium ufos
Why is angled cover a problem? It is in the game as an option that you can add if you want it and to my mind it makes the game a lot better. A flank is still a flank, just as it always has been, but you still know that even if you can't pull off a flank you will fare better if you almost do.... and not this binary on or off cover system that is in the vanilla version.
Awesome piece on a game evolution, apart from pro X-Com, its nice to see something like this. Well done Chris!
Makes me want to play XCOM again.
Been playing XCOM 2 since the release and am really enjoying the War of the Chosen expansion.
Got my first ever 99% to hit missed shot the other day, though, and I haven't touched it since.
Well researched video. Great work!
The line would have been a very very useful feature.
I didn't much care for xcom 1 and it's expanded content, still have yet to finish it. But I LOVE xcom2. Despite its flaws I deem it a perfect example of what it wants to be.
Please more of this
great stuff. enjoyed this immensely!
6:25 I'm just glad that Aiming Angles exists.
8:06 Beta Strike, ho!
Fantastic vid 👍🏼
@ 2:35 , is that XCOM 2 i see on the right!!!!! :)
Damn, this is really cool stuff to know. Thanks for such an insightful video.
show this to the long war guys
Ah xcom the game that makes us feel supreme as humans.
Firaxis XCOM is an amazing game, as well as XCOM2 (which looks increasingly like Power Rangers: The game to me, with each DLC). I have them both, and adore them greatly.
However, they are not successors to original X-Com.
Xenonauts probably is.
What happens if enemies stop being a pack of 2-3 cluster pods which are only triggered to offensively interact with the soldiers the moment they are discovered and instead have their own paths / actions independently of one another?
What a great video! Thank you!
Yes. But do you want to know which disaster Firaxis did not prevent? My campaign.
and so in enemy unknown and xcom 2 changing your soldier name to sid meier will give you a powerful soldier so the reason behind it because solomon learn a thing from sid meier?
That was awesome. Thanks!
What if: the aliens didnt activate in pods, but just wonder around the map?
I'd have liked for the dumber aliens to do that, wandering instead of patrolling.
Aliens do wander around the map, "activating pods" only mean you trigger them by making them see you.
10:10 wow i would looove those old sectoids again =)
Sectopods with double HP. Oh god no 😨😨😨
The Firaxis office is a map in EW!
I want to know who came up with the idea of Chryssalids and how Xcom would come to find out about them. The game wasn't quite clicking until I saw the monsters walk a whole mile to stab a citizen which then turns into a zombie right in front of a soldier who then gets FUCKED.
I didn't know a turn based, tile, strategy game could make me feel the way I did before that moment.
I just didn't think such a thing was possible.
Then my soldiers get fucking mind controlled, shortly after those same soldiers learn to control the minds of those very same enemies... and i finally in love with the game, like a christian seeing his lord Jesus Christ... only... its real.
never played the old xcom games started with the UFO games then the reboot there great games
This video was awesome
Xcom 2 is nearly unplayable for me because it crash's every map randomly. I loved XCom and it's addon.
Sorry, i can understand some parts of there Planing.
I´m a total fan of the old X-Com and i would love to have it with a new engine ( still playing the hobby games )
but xcom is allso good.
But it could be way better, they loked in the wrong details from my point of view.
instead of quardrat use 8 sided fileds. ( so you would have diagnols ) problem solved with Angeld shots.
Next thing, each weapon is just a stat and Grafic upgrade.
Give each Weapon a total new mechanik and allow old weapons to upgrade.
For example, "Basic" Weapons shoots in burst of 3 with 2 Damage ( so even 3 times chanes to hit ).
Tier 1 Enemys have no armor so, full hit would be 6 Damage
Tier 2 Enemys have 1 Armor, so only 3 Damage
Rail Weapons have 1 Shot but do 9 Damage, so hitting an enemy with 2 Armor is still 7 Damage.
Upgrading Basic Weapons with AP Ammo to do ignore 1 Armor would also bring them back.
That Mechanik would work way better.
ANd so on.
It's a masterpiece.
really interesting story, given XCOM 2 i assume they didn't follow the same development process for that or it would be a very different (much better) game :/
very interesting indeed..
Nice video.
The original Xcom was my fave game ever. I no longer have my original 3.5 floppies but I have it on cd. I had always bemoaned that there was never a great modern version so when this version came out it was like rediscovering how to breathe. All was right in the world again. Thanks Chris for a great vid and Thanks To the devs for such an amazing game that just keeps getting better.
Sounds like you should give OpenXCOM a try. Without bugs and engine limitations of the original, it is like rediscovering that game all over again. I mean, smokes and proximity mines are actually working there.
ZomboTV as a matter of fact I have! And yeah it's fun
I have all the original Xcom games on DVDs. Got Xcom: Enemy Unknown for the PS3, and now have it, and Xcom: Enemy Within for the PC.
As soon as I quit being lazy and finish moving my gaming machine to its new tower case, I'll start delving into those.
Ever tried Xenonauts or the UFO: After____ series?
XCOM 2 is, however, on a totally different level. Got those TitanX[P]s SLI'd together to run the bloody thing, have you? {actually, I'd guess it was more about having at least 16GB DDR fast ram and a 4Ghz quadcore cpu on an SSD to get the thing running smoothly}.
Unless they've optimised it by now?
[it's prob just me but this Eurogamer - sounds english to me - guy has the weirdest eyes.. he scares me]
1:08 - the shit love is real lol
The transfer from Steam to the 2k launcher is broken.
It would have been an entirely different game if they had managed to figure out how to build a UI to communicate complex information to the user that wasn't horrible.