2K’s Firaxis Games made a lot of changes to the basic design of its turn-based combat game with the new expansion XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.
The tactical combat game launches on August 29, the same day as turn-based Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. War of the Chosen will debut on the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
In this expansion, players will take on a new class of aliens, dubbed the Chosen. The aliens will give the game more personality and cinematic story sequences. It will also have options for easier gameplay (I had some huge difficulties with the original XCOM 2 last year).I’m glad to hear that Firaxis moved to address the game’s accessibility, as it will now allow the player to set the time limits for how long it takes to complete certain missions. I talked about these changes with the game’s creative director at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big game trade show in Los Angeles this week.
“We wanted to give XCOM a personality. That’s what the Chosen bring,” said Jake Solomon, creative director of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. “The idea is that we have these three ultimate enemies, and they all have a very distinct personality. These personalities manifest not just in combat, the way they fight, but also in how they talk to you.”
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
GamesBeat: What did you want to achieve with this project?
Jake Solomon: We wanted to give XCOM a personality.
That’s what the Chosen bring. The idea is that we have these three ultimate enemies, and they all have a very distinct personality. These personalities manifest not just in combat, the way they fight, but also in how they talk to you. They’ll talk to you as you’re fighting and reveal different personalities. You have the assassin, who’s about honor and duty. The warlock is sort of a zealot. He believes in the alien cause. Then you have the hunter, voiced by Nolan North actually, and he’s this more cynical, lighthearted character.They talk to you in combat about real events – things you do in combat, your history with them, how you’ve done against them in the past, how the other Chosen have done against you. Even on the strategy layer, they’ll talk to the player.
Image Credit: Firaxis Games/2k
GamesBeat: Are they human?
Solomon: Not exactly. But they can speak to you. You have this interaction with them. They’ll comment on everything you do. On the strategy layer, they’ll comment on things you do there. They’ll comment on achievements you’ve had, if they’re trying to hunt you down, if you’ve succeed against them. It adds a lot of personality.
It’s not just the Chosen. We also have these factions, three resistance groups. They’re meant to be the counters for the Chosen, the three big enemies. Now we have three powerful resistance factions that can join with XCOM and counter each of the Chosen. Those factions have leaders that are also personalities, who will also comment on how things are going.
We even have little details we’ve added where—after a mission you fly back to the base. While you’re flying back we have the voice of the Advent, the government controlling Earth, trying to spin what you just did for them. They’ll say, “Don’t worry, that was just a small dissident faction. No one was wounded.” You get a sense from that side, and then in the base, if you go to the bar, we have Resistance Radio, which is the resistance side of things. They’ll be sending out propaganda for what you just did.
There are lots of new voices in the game in addition, of course, to all the gameplay features. Overall, the initial goal for us was to add a lot of personality to XCOM. Sometimes you’d be fighting for the world, but you couldn’t hear voices talking about it. We’ve added the sense of important people talking about this, commenting on the things you do. It feels more warm, more alive.
Image Credit: Firaxis Games/2k
GamesBeat: So you have the alien enemy, which is somehow aligned with these human-like enemies?
Solomon: The Chosen are kind of like really special, powerful leaders of the alien army. You’ll fight them multiple times over the course of the game. They’ll jump into missions and you’ll have to fight them. The assassin uses stealth and her swords. The hunter is more of a long-range sniper. And the warlock uses psionic abilities.
The idea is that the aliens created these characters to be perfect champions. They told them their goal in life, the Chosen, is to hunt down and destroy XCOM. The thing is, they’re not operating as a team. They’re kind of racing each other to be the first one to beat you. Whoever beats you, they’ll become the ruler of Earth, basically – or that’s what the aliens have promised them.
Of course, we’ve added a bunch of other new enemies as well. We have the Lost, a sort of zombie enemy. If the player goes into certain maps and encounter certain situations, they can get swarmed by these Lost. They’ll be large groups of enemies. It’s a different combat experience, where you have to fight off a lot of enemies at once. There’s an Advent Priest, a psionic unit. The Purifier is a flamethrower…
The post XCOM 2: War of the Chosen upgrades design, enemies, and cinematic story appeared first on FeedBox.