XCOM: One Does Not Simply "Shoot" a Cryssalid...

[Grif]

I never had all that much trouble with Chryssalids.. but then, I did most of my scouting with tanks, high explosives, and laser beams, none of which are subject to being turned, so I generally spotted them from far enough away to put them down before they got close enough to be a problem.

How about alien bases and their endless narrow corridors and corners?

[Krade]

How about alien bases and their endless narrow corridors and corners?

I don't see how that could stop you from scouting with tanks.

[tyckspoon]

How about alien bases and their endless narrow corridors and corners?

See: High explosives and laser beams (well, Heavy Plasma is needed for breaching UFO interior/base walls, but same idea.) Also blaster bombs, although those make everything easy anyway. If you can't see the room you're about to enter, knock down walls until you can. One of the nice things about X-Com's engine is you never need be restricted to only the paths the map already has in it.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Good old reconnaissance by fire.

[Muz]

Here's a link to something at Rock, Paper, Shotgun about 40 hands-on hours with the new XCom. (Minor gameplay spoilers.)

And now I'm even more anxious for it to come out. I like that where you place your base gives you certain advantages depending on the region, almost like choosing a particular civ in Civ 4 (or 5, maybe, but I haven't played that).

[Rake21]

Here's a couple videos from OXM, where we see Matt Lee (the guy who did the Dragon's Dogma videos) plays through a couple early missions.

Warning: There are some things in it that could be considered spoiler-ish, but nothing too bad.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

[RagingKrikkit]

Going to have to come back to that channel, 'cuz that is win.

[Iskandar]

Huh. Well, okay then.

That video erased the last of my lingering doubts. This looks like a really awesome game.

[Lost Demiurge]

I want this game!

[Krade]

Not really any new information here (or really any, for that matter), but I thought this video was really neat.

[RagingKrikkit]

Huh. Well, okay then.

That video erased the last of my lingering doubts. This looks like a really awesome game.

Yay, we finally have Iskandar's officall approval!

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Here's a couple videos from OXM, where we see Matt Lee (the guy who did the Dragon's Dogma videos) plays through a couple early missions.

Warning: There are some things in it that could be considered spoiler-ish, but nothing too bad.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Those vids clinch it. The game looks fantastic.

[Krade]

So I've been sitting here watching gameplay videos for the past hour and you know what? Imma go play X-Com for a bit.

[MLai]

At least the game also comes out on X360 and PS3 at the same time. I won't miss out, except on the modding scene.

I will weep when modders introduce the classic Chryssalid for the PC game, though. I don't really like the Starship Troopers vision for the new Chryssalid.

As for multiplayer, I would not play anyone who wants to use a mixed team. Not for balance reasons, but for the same reason I wouldn't play against a mixed orc-elf army in a hypothetical LOTR game.

[chiasaur11]

At least the game also comes out on X360 and PS3 at the same time. I won't miss out, except on the modding scene.

I will weep when modders introduce the classic Chryssalid for the PC game, though. I don't really like the Starship Troopers vision for the new Chryssalid.

As for multiplayer, I would not play anyone who wants to use a mixed team. Not for balance reasons, but for the same reason I wouldn't play against a mixed orc-elf army in a hypothetical LOTR game.

Because you are a boring person with no sense of adventure?

If you don't smile when you think of a Muton and a human high fiving over the corpse of an Ethereal, something inside you is broken. Something important.

[RagingKrikkit]

The producers said that the multiplayer is supposed to have nothing to do with the story. It exists for the sole purpose of allowing to harness the aliens, something that players have drooled over the concept of since 1994.

[MLai]

Because you are a boring person with no sense of adventure?
something inside you is broken. Something important.

Or because for some games, I do not find it fun to separate the background narrative from the objective gameplay.
When you distill games into their raw numbers, then what the elements are represented by visually/conceptually doesn't really matter. You would just have chess, or tetris.
So why are many games not based in abstraction, but rather in a narrative? Why bother with cutscenes? Why wrap the raw numbers up in combat and explosions? Because the human mind fills it in with epicness, and that makes it more fun for many people.
Suspending that immersion no longer makes the game as fun for me. Now, if the narrative has room for it... for example, if the humans are shown to have mind-control harnesses on when they fight alongside the aliens, then I can get behind it no problem.

The producers said that the multiplayer is supposed to have nothing to do with the story. It exists for the sole purpose of allowing to harness the aliens, something that players have drooled over the concept of since 1994.

Playing with aliens is fine; that's not what I was addressing. But you don't see mix-and-match in Starcraft mp, for example.

[RagingKrikkit]

I think I get it. You are trying to impose a sense of order on something that was meant from the start to make no damn sense.

[MLai]

That's about right. But I'm not alone. Even game developers themselves address this mindset.
For example, in W40K Dawn of War II mp, you have 3 players vs 3 players. Each 3-player team can be composed of narratively antagonistic factions, for example Eldar and Chaos.
The mp lets you do this just fine. But when player A's Eldar troops see their "allied" Chaos troops, the Eldar commander will say something along the lines "Even Chaos can be maneuvered to serve our ends, I suppose." With obvious distaste in her voice. In that, you see the devs at least superficially addressing the immersion break which occurs in their mp mode.

[RagingKrikkit]

And that applies to this... how?

[MLai]

I'm simply replying to and expounding on chiasaur's question.
I don't subscribe to the notion that a multiplayer mode must necessarily not make sense in-universe.

[GloatingSwine]

Playing with aliens is fine; that's not what I was addressing. But you don't see mix-and-match in Starcraft mp, for example.

Sure you do, in 2v2 or higher.

Hell, you get mix & match in the Starcraft campaigns from time to time.

Or because for some games, I do not find it fun to separate the background narrative from the objective gameplay.
When you distill games into their raw numbers, then what the elements are represented by visually/conceptually doesn't really matter. You would just have chess, or tetris.

This is broken thinking. Strategy games aren't distinguished by the shape of the units, they're distinguished by the choices they make the player make. If you played chess with warhammer 40k figures you're still playing chess, and you played 40k with chess pieces you're still playing 40k.

[MLai]

Sure you do, in 2v2 or higher. Hell, you get mix & match in the Starcraft campaigns from time to time.

I knew somebody would raise this. But the answer is self-explanatory and you'd only pose this if you think I know nothing about SC.
(1) When it happens in campaign, there's in-universe narrative that leads to 2 sides working together.
(2) Teamplay example is why I mentioned DOW2. And it's not directly comparable to XCom case because you don't build both Terran and Protoss units out of a Terran building. And you don't control both; your ally controls the other.

This is broken thinking. Strategy games aren't distinguished by the shape of the units, they're distinguished by the choices they make the player make. If you played chess with warhammer 40k figures you're still playing chess, and you played 40k with chess pieces you're still playing 40k.

And yet strategy games don't just use dots to represent the units and vehicles, and feature explosions and voice samples rather than just numbers popping off on the screen.
There are games solely of abstractions, and there are games which use abstract rules to bring a game world to life. XCom is the latter.

[SmartAlec]

Narratively, mixed teams can simply be aliens and mind-controlled humans.

You're welcome!

[endoperez]

There are games solely of abstractions, and there are games which use abstract rules to bring a game world to life. XCom is the latter.

Bringing a game world to life isn't the purpose of a game. At least, not this game.

Are you aware of Caillois' "Man, Play and Games"? It divides games into various separate things which people enjoy. Two of them are Agon and Mimicry (other two Ilinx and Alea, and then there's the structured game of ludus vs freeform play of paidia).

'Agon', competitive spirit and triumph of skill, apparent in chess, league of legends, soccer and sharpshooting competitions.
'Mimicry', the illusion of another world, apparent in children's play, RPGs, and many open world games.

You are saying X-Com is defined by mimicry. That's not what the original game was about. It's not remembered fondly because the world is realistic, but because of the challenge. A single mistake may lose you your best soldier. However, if you play well, you can survive most situations. That's not mimicry.
Some parts of mimicry did make the game more memorable - night missions, terror missions, governments reacting in different ways, these gave the illusion that the aliens are more than just pieces on the chessboard. However....

http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_...agination.html

" Any game, like God of War, Prince of Persia or Splinter Cell, which has challenge at the centre of its play is going to top out around three to five million units or so. Any mimicry included in these games is stiffled by a structure which is anaethmatic to the play needs of a wider audience: a series of challenges which must be overcome to progress.
...
The secret of GTA's success is a structure which allows the player to simply play. The challenges are there, when the player wishes to tackle them, but they are practically secondary to the world the player is invited to have fun within."

X-Com belongs, clearly, to the first category. Both the original, and the new one.

Mimicry takes second place to Agon, and that's why you get alien-human teams.

[Krade]

*snip*

I think that was a way more elaborate (and awesome) answer than anyone was expecting.

Good show.

[endoperez]

I think that was a way more elaborate (and awesome) answer than anyone was expecting.

Good show.

I study that kind of stuff in school.

Also, I'd like to add a bit into that - mimicry IS a good thing. Knowing that you like it is a good thing.

However, if you go into a game expecting mimicry but it focuses on something else, you'll be disappointed.

Now that I started thinking about it, what would an alien invasion game that focuses on making a believable world be like? Especially if it focuses on free-form over strict rules for "missions" you have to "win" to proceed, it could be all kinds of interesting stuff.

DayZ is after the apocalypse, this would be during the invasion I guess.

Perhaps a co-op game where the point is to stall the AI invaders for as long as possible, some players defending with turrets and barricades and guns, others going on commando missions to destroy alien infrastructure? Some sort of an ongoing plot on the same server, maybe?

[MLai]

@ SmartAlec:
Thank you... for repeating what I already said in my first reply to Chiasaur and Yakyak?

@ Endoperez:
While that was nice info on game theory, it doesn't really prove whatever you're trying to prove...

You're trying to say that X-Com UFO Defense is more like God Of War than GTA, when in fact X-com started (or was 1 of the forerunners of) the innovation of "open world gameplay" structure with paced mission objectives that you complete at your leisure. Part of the reason X-com was so memorable was exactly because it didn't follow a distinct level-by-level structure like platformers or shooters; it gave you the narrative illusion that you're saving the world the way you feel is best, and that you're discovering the weaknesses of the aliens at your own pace. Being a challenging game doesn't automatically mean it's a pure Agon game; there are plenty of extremely challenging strategy games which paint a rich narrative or have RPG elements.

Ofc, that only applies to the campaign mode. Which was all the original game was. So ppl who played the original, and are buying the remake for the mimicry, are not being ignorant or misleading themselves.

X-Com belongs, clearly, to the first category. Both the original, and the new one.
Mimicry takes second place to Agon, and that's why you get alien-human teams.

And that's why your conclusion is wrong regarding X-com.
You're right regarding the MP mode though. But something tells me nobody is buying X-com because they want to jump into the MP first.

Now that I started thinking about it, what would an alien invasion game that focuses on making a believable world be like? Especially if it focuses on free-form over strict rules for "missions" you have to "win" to proceed, it could be all kinds of interesting stuff.

To a degree, X-com does exactly this. You can pick and choose your battles. You can lose a mission and pick yourself back up. You can win a mission in such a way that you doom yourself to losing the game. In regards to your organization, there were no rails.
And that's part of why it was beloved.

[endoperez]

Part of the reason X-com was so memorable was exactly because it didn't follow a distinct level-by-level structure like platformers or shooters; it gave you the narrative illusion that you're saving the world the way you feel is best, and that you're discovering the weaknesses of the aliens at your own pace. Being a challenging game doesn't automatically mean it's a pure Agon game; there are plenty of extremely challenging strategy games which paint a rich narrative or have RPG elements.

As I said in a later post, I'm not saying mimicry is bad, I'm just saying you shouldn't expect X-Com game to favor mimicry above agon.

Mimicry is an important part of the games, but Agon is even more so.

I bolded a part of the quote. Yes, challenge doesn't make a game predominantly Agon. That right there is why I chose to quote the blog. It gave examples of games that are predominantly Agon, even though they containt elements of Mimicry.

Again: "Any mimicry included in these games is stiffled by a structure which is anaethmatic to the play needs of a wider audience: a series of challenges which must be overcome to progress."

Or, you get rewarded with mimicry as you overcome challenges.

How was this seen in original X-Com? You get rewarded with lore, received through research, as you defeat an enemy or ufo. As you advance in the game, it becomes easier to allocate resources into non-critical research, which has the lore in it. As you defeat new types of enemies (Agon challenge), you get to read their lore (Mimicry reward).

Also, if you ignore UFOs (challenge, agon), you lose the game. Contrast this with a game where you can ignore the main plot or main quest to enjoy the world.

[tensai_oni]

Am I the only one who cringed when reading this paragraph?

Every animation is a big sell. People don’t reload carefully and daintily, they SLAM a clip into their weapon, and an angry muton doesn’t snarl, it ROARS AND BELLOWS AND PUNCHES ITS CHEST AND THEN EVERYBODY PANICS AND WHIMPERS, CRYING AND PEEING IN THEIR FANCYPANTS ARMOUR. There’s not a great deal of subtlety in the portrayal of the space bastards, although there’s a huge amount of character and variety. Sectoids are almost dog-like at times, fitting their role as advanced, expendable scouts perfectly. They scamper, crawl, snarl and flee when the going gets tough.

Looks like someone doesn't get what the old X-Com was about.

The new game looks great regardless, it's just the "forty hours" article I have an issue with.