X:COM Enemy Unknown First Details

I recently brought up the new XCOM when it was announced by Game Informer less than a week ago. I also talked about how it will be modeled after the original games, you can check out that short post here. Yesterday Game Informer had a new article about XCOM and they revealed the first screenshots plus they had a short Q&A with themselves where they revealed a bunch of information about the game. There is some truly worrisome information that had been brought up in that interview but first check out the first ingame screenshot. Presumably the game hasn't gotten past the alpha or beta stage yet so don't be as harsh as I want to be with the screenshot, especially the odd looking identical people at the forefront of the shot.

If you can't tell from that screenshot those are Xbox 360 controls displayed, but they had already announced that they had planned for the game to come out on consoles and PC. The odd thing about it is that they didn't release a screenshot of a PC version first, the platform they are known for and the platform that XCOM is known for, and it is also odd that the point of view is so close while the original games all had a top down view. There is also a possible screenshot, or design shot, of how a XCOM base will look. That shot is also quite a bit different than anything from the original game, but it seems to have more favorable possibilities than how the ingame missions look so far.

XCOM was a great series and I will always be worried about someone recreating or re-imagining the game in less than complementary ways, but at least this XCOM has a greatly larger chance of being fantastic than the FPS XCOM that barely resembles the series. To clarify, the FPS XCOM could be a great game on it's own, as a FPS, but not a great XCOM game since it barely follows anything that made the original games great. XCOM Enemy Unknown does a lot to follow the original series. Game Informer talks about turn based and real time strategies and what they reveal is comforting, they insist that this XCOM will be sticking to the old school turn based formula. They also talk about how the global view will present very similar options to the original games, like researching technologies, intercepting UFO's with jets, train soldiers, manage your base and send your transport ship bring the fight to aliens on the ground level. That all sounds good and all but here comes the bad, which may not be bad for certain. Game Informer clearly states that the game will be "dumbed down" to an extent because it is being made for consoles as well, removing large amounts of micromanaging and streamlining aspects of the game. If that doesn't sound bad to you then you must really like it when companies do what they do to games like Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age 2, Final Fantasy 13, Fable, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Thief 2 and so many others. Despite my concerns this game still can be great and Game Informer insists that it still looks awesome. They are promising to have a continuously flow of content on XCOM all month and I will report back next time they have something significant, but for now head on over to Game Informer to check out the short article yourself. Thanks for reading.
Main Website: http://www.xcom.com/enemyunknown/index.html



All screenshots and new information is from the Game Informer article below. 
Source: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/01/09/first-screens-and-details-of-xcom-enemy-unknown.aspx

-Written by Sean Cargle