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XCOM, the proper XCOM, not the shooter one, is back on November 12th in the form of an expansion pack known as XCOM: Enemy Within. Featuring two new aliens, 47 new maps, two new leveling trees, another collectible resource, numerous additional items, and several new mission types including what appears to be the base attack mission from the original game, are forthcoming. Hold onto yo' butts!
Some highlights:
There were other things I'd like to have seen, like the ability to build more skyrangers to respond to threats or send more soldiers at a mission, stuff like that. But honestly, this is more than enough new content to get me to pick up the game again. The expansion will launch at $30 or 20 British pounds. You get a 10% discount if you pre-order.
Hell yeah!
UPDATE OCTOBER 9: We have information on EXALT, the fifth column human faction that XCOM must fight in addition to the Aliens. Also, a PAX gameplay demo that I missed but has been out for a while.
Here's a video of some of the new features in action:
Stuff about EXALT
Here's a TL;DR version if you don't feel like reading or hate the article's ****ty grammar (which I kindly cleaned up in the quote above)
EXALT is a human organization that supports the Aliens' Borg-esque efforts to assimilate men into their empire, cause I guess that's what they're doing. (I like to forget the dumb boring infodump at the end of the game, because **** plot, who needs one.) Anywho they set up bases around the world, growing like black mold behind your walls and eventually you have to do something about it. You don't just do it by attacking their bases and killing their men. There are now infiltration missions in which you send some poor unlucky voluntold bastard into one of their outposts, armed only with a pistol. He has to steal some **** and sneak/fight his way back out again. The extraction phase is the actual mission bit. You send a team of 4-6 men as usual to get him out, and while they're fighting their way toward him he's on the other side of the map hacking terminals and **** to get information. Success is based on how much **** he can steal before he leaves, and if he dies you lose everything he nabbed.
EXALT personnel, as enemies, appear to be very very VERY ****ing dangerous, using good tactics that I've never really observed the alien AI doing much in Enemy Unknown. Specifically, using AoE to force you to split up your squad, then hunting down separated squad members with wolf-packs. The aliens in the early game don't have access to powerful AoE; Thin Men have poison, which is deadly, but it can't wipe your squad all at once like a 6-damage Rocket would. Yeah, EXALT has rockets, and it has grenades, in fact it has a lot of the same equipment you do. That seems way more ominous to me than the plasma pistols and light plasma rifles you face early on.
EXALT can be completely eliminated, and the Aliens remain the primary antagonist in the game. In that sense, from what I can tell it's sort of like the civil war storyline in Skyrim, except some form of completion/cease-fire/whatever may not be necessary to progress the main story. That is currently unknown.
EXALT gameplay video by someone who clearly does not know how to play the game (still awesome)
Two key takeaways from this video:
1. EXALT does not appear until some time into the game, so the extremely crowded first two months or so won't be filled with even more unbeatable missions. It appears earlier on Classic and Impossible than it does on Normal and Easy.
2. EXALT's tech increases at a much slower rate than yours, so while EXALT members are very numerous, they are lacking in advanced equipment and that puts your men at an advantage. In some ways it's the reverse of the aliens.
October 10: Trailer featuring base invasion mission, sorta
Some highlights:
- 47 new maps, obviously, means that finally you won't be seeing every map two or three times. New environments like a snowy crash site add variety to a game that desperately needs it.
- New mission types will be coming, and the achievements indicate as mentioned above that one of those will be a base invasion, where the aliens attack your base and try to kill everyone inside.
- You can now upgrade your soldiers like robocop or space marines, with cybernetic implants and genetic modifications that enhance their fighting abilities in interesting ways. Two new base rooms enable these upgrades, and they count as workshops for adjacency bonus purposes.
- A new resource called "meld" allows you to do this, and it comes in barrels that explode at random times throughout the battle. You have to judge the risk of your men getting blown to pieces vs. the reward of the sweet sweet
plasmidsmeld. - There appears to be an achievement for killing human enemies. Read from that what you will.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown had enemies to cover the gamut of interesting types, with one glaring exception: there was no stealthy enemy that could sneak up on you for massive damage. That is forthcoming. A new flying squid-like alien called a Seeker now fills that niche. They travel in pairs, cloaked, sneaking up on your joes and then strangle them from behind. Watch out.
- Another new alien type, the Mechtoid, is a sectoid in a powered armor suit which drops Meld and arrives around the time sectoids disappear, keeping the difficulty curve rising.
- A bunch of items have been added such as several new special grenade types with interesting tactical effects, such as area denial, poison, and aim debuffs.
- Several upgrade abilities that were considered comparatively worthless have been rebalanced to make them more viable.
- New foundry projects have been added to address some frequently modded-in missing elements, like "tactical rigging" which gives everyone another item slot.
- Panic has been redone so that your soldiers are not very likely to kill their teammates.
- New second wave options let you do things like make the RNG seed change on reload and, (THANK GOD) disable the Dr. Shen/Dr. Vahlen tutorial dialogue
- Various balance changes and bug fixes have been implemented.
- More to come as more information is released.
There were other things I'd like to have seen, like the ability to build more skyrangers to respond to threats or send more soldiers at a mission, stuff like that. But honestly, this is more than enough new content to get me to pick up the game again. The expansion will launch at $30 or 20 British pounds. You get a 10% discount if you pre-order.
Hell yeah!
UPDATE OCTOBER 9: We have information on EXALT, the fifth column human faction that XCOM must fight in addition to the Aliens. Also, a PAX gameplay demo that I missed but has been out for a while.
Here's a video of some of the new features in action:
Stuff about EXALT
Originally posted by Rock Paper Shotgun
Here's a TL;DR version if you don't feel like reading or hate the article's ****ty grammar (which I kindly cleaned up in the quote above)
EXALT is a human organization that supports the Aliens' Borg-esque efforts to assimilate men into their empire, cause I guess that's what they're doing. (I like to forget the dumb boring infodump at the end of the game, because **** plot, who needs one.) Anywho they set up bases around the world, growing like black mold behind your walls and eventually you have to do something about it. You don't just do it by attacking their bases and killing their men. There are now infiltration missions in which you send some poor unlucky voluntold bastard into one of their outposts, armed only with a pistol. He has to steal some **** and sneak/fight his way back out again. The extraction phase is the actual mission bit. You send a team of 4-6 men as usual to get him out, and while they're fighting their way toward him he's on the other side of the map hacking terminals and **** to get information. Success is based on how much **** he can steal before he leaves, and if he dies you lose everything he nabbed.
EXALT personnel, as enemies, appear to be very very VERY ****ing dangerous, using good tactics that I've never really observed the alien AI doing much in Enemy Unknown. Specifically, using AoE to force you to split up your squad, then hunting down separated squad members with wolf-packs. The aliens in the early game don't have access to powerful AoE; Thin Men have poison, which is deadly, but it can't wipe your squad all at once like a 6-damage Rocket would. Yeah, EXALT has rockets, and it has grenades, in fact it has a lot of the same equipment you do. That seems way more ominous to me than the plasma pistols and light plasma rifles you face early on.
EXALT can be completely eliminated, and the Aliens remain the primary antagonist in the game. In that sense, from what I can tell it's sort of like the civil war storyline in Skyrim, except some form of completion/cease-fire/whatever may not be necessary to progress the main story. That is currently unknown.
EXALT gameplay video by someone who clearly does not know how to play the game (still awesome)
Two key takeaways from this video:
1. EXALT does not appear until some time into the game, so the extremely crowded first two months or so won't be filled with even more unbeatable missions. It appears earlier on Classic and Impossible than it does on Normal and Easy.
2. EXALT's tech increases at a much slower rate than yours, so while EXALT members are very numerous, they are lacking in advanced equipment and that puts your men at an advantage. In some ways it's the reverse of the aliens.
October 10: Trailer featuring base invasion mission, sorta
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