While the big budget reboot of XCOM, which is due for release sometime in 2013, has been met with some polarising views from the community, due to its shifts away from strategy and more towards a slightly generic FPS territory.
Long-time XCOM fans have been lamenting most loudly about this, complaining that the new title only shares a name with their beloved franchise, and nothing else. Fortunately, Fireaxis was aware of this perceived whining, and have stepped up to craft a XCOM game that should suit those nostalgic tastes better.
And they’re also claiming that it will play very similarly to the original XCOM games.
Project lead Jake Solomon recently spoke to Kotaku about the new XCOM title, claiming that in many ways, it will resemble the 1994 original. “I do think that like if you look at screenshots, 320×240 screenshots, of the original X-COM, next to ours, you would see that sort of lineage there,” Solomon said.
You’d see the sort of DNA, because we’ve still got the top-down view of the soldiers, and a lot of the fact that it’s turn-based, certainly there are changes and this is kind of our own game, but definitely if you look at the two side by side, a fan of the original could play our game because we are fans of the original.
Solomon may just very well be the best person for this project currently, as the XCOM fanatic begged Fireaxis for a decade, to allow him to revisit the cult franchise, a game that Solomon wants his to feel like as much as possible.
“If you play the game, it’s definitely XCOM,” he said. “It’s just a new XCOM.”
Last Updated: March 7, 2012
