[360/PC/PS3] The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

[Sarkus]

The video is more interesting then I thought it would be, but I'm not sure there is much demand for Brothers in Arms with aliens, which is what it looked like.  The graphics look good, but they are still being vague about some of the strategic aspects of it.

But in general I agree that the whole idea doesn't make much sense.  "Hey, lets use this classic game license to make a game that even we admit isn't the same universe and has totally different gameplay and completely different aliens."   Seems like they could have saved a few bucks and just launched as a new IP and had just as much chance selling the idea.   The X-Com fans seem passionately angry about it, but I seriously doubt this approach is going to appeal the console shooter fans anyway.  So worst of both worlds.

[TiLT]

They could still salvage this train wreck by removing all association with the X-Com name. They're only hurting themselves by using it. Sure, it's giving them a little media attention (but not that much), but pretty much every X-Com fan hates them for it (to the best of my knowledge, at least), and the rest of the market won't be swayed either way by the title.

This kind of reminds me of the Star Control 4 (titled StarCon) disaster. In that situation they kept the name of the series but removed pretty much every other aspect of it so that the original creators (who owned the aliens, the story, and so on from the original games) wouldn't be able to have any influence over the brand. It ended predictably, with the game receiving massive flak from Star Control fans and eventually being canceled, leaving the Star Control series dead ever since.

[Blackjack]

I'll put aside my own "name rage" feelings to say I do see some promise, esp. in terms of the tactical "pause" interface and a renewed emphasis on squaddie-ness. Perhaps I might enjoy it in the way I did the couple SWAT tactical series (SWAT 3 and 4) or Brothers in Arms, maybe even Freedom Force.

It's just, when it isn't in that Tactical interface mode, it honestly looks like a humdrum pew-pew shooter with a few alien bits of wackiness to liven things up. And I'm just not sure the masses will enlist for a game where every encounter is a puzzle that they sort through their tactical interface for a solution for. I actually like the sound of that, but I've liked a lot of tactical shooter games that never quite found a mass audience causes the masses generally are happier simply "blowing **** up."

At the least, it seems to have more promise and ambition than some of the official X-Com non-RTS dreck (Enforcer, Interceptor etc.).

Also, 2K had a blog post meant to sort of serve as a lead-in to that E3 trailer:
http://www.2kgames.com/blog/presenting-the-xcom-e3-2011-playthrough

So we’ve been flying under the radar with XCOM, for about a year – and felt that it was about time to put together a little video update in order to lift the curtain on the reasons why.

2K Marin had just finished working on BioShock 2, and that game will always be deep in our DNA – but our first crack at adapting XCOM to a more personal, real-time experience was way too much within our creative ‘comfort zone’. It was kind of a run-and-gun affair, without a lot of focus on the command of your squad, or indeed on tactical play itself.

Candidly, it just wasn’t “XCOM” enough for the hardcore fans of the original games at 2K Marin, who serve as our creative conscience.  So over the past year, we’ve made some pretty aggressive design changes, in pursuit of the feelings that we experienced when we played the original games. I’ll cover those in the video itself, but a quick note about story:

Narratively, XCOM is an all-new origin story in its own timeline; a deliberate reimagining along the lines of something like Battlestar: Galactica or Batman Begins. What that means in practical terms is that while we take narrative inspiration from the original games, we have also deviated in a couple of key ways. For example, our game is set in 1962 within the continental United States – at the moment the XCOM organization is formed.

We wanted to tell the story of the first man on the ground – exaggerating cold-war fears about invasion from within – via this alien threat for which there is no precedent. And we felt the best way to express that kind of intimate take on the XCOM universe is from that character’s perspective: limited information, overwhelming odds, and direct personal involvement.

In our XCOM, you play William Carter, Special Agent in Charge of field operations at XCOM. So as you start up the video, I’d like you to slip into his shoes as he reviews a piece of evidence which was discovered somewhere out there in mid-century America.

I think one thing you really can't easily transfer from the original couple games to a shooter is that sense of dread on the turn-based ground battles where you couldn't quite see what was lurking around the corner until you moved a trooper or turned him in a certain direction (fog of war). I don't know if there's a good way to have that in a shooter per se.

[Wargus]

....
http://www.2kgames.com/blog/presenting-the-xcom-e3-2011-playthrough

So we’ve been flying under the radar with XCOM, for about a year – and felt that it was about time to put together a little video update in order to lift the curtain on the reasons why.

2K Marin had just finished working on BioShock 2, and that game will always be deep in our DNA – but our first crack at adapting XCOM to a more personal, real-time experience was way too much within our creative ‘comfort zone’. It was kind of a run-and-gun affair, without a lot of focus on the command of your squad, or indeed on tactical play itself.

Candidly, it just wasn’t “XCOM” enough for the hardcore fans of the original games at 2K Marin, who serve as our creative conscience.  So over the past year, we’ve made some pretty aggressive design changes, in pursuit of the feelings that we experienced when we played the original games. I’ll cover those in the video itself, but a quick note about story:

Narratively, XCOM is an all-new origin story in its own timeline; a deliberate reimagining.... along the lines of something like Battlestar: Galactica or Batman Begins. What that means in practical terms is that while we take narrative inspiration from the original games, we have also deviated in a couple of key ways. For example, our game is set in 1962 within the continental United States – at the moment the XCOM organization is formed.

We wanted to tell the story of the first man on the ground – exaggerating cold-war fears about invasion from within – via this alien threat for which there is no precedent. And we felt the best way to express that kind of intimate take on the XCOM universe is from that character’s perspective: limited information, overwhelming odds, and direct personal involvement.

In our XCOM, you play William Carter, Special Agent in Charge of field operations at XCOM. So as you start up the video, I’d like you to slip into his shoes as he reviews a piece of evidence which was discovered somewhere out there in mid-century America.

I think one thing you really can't easily transfer from the original couple games to a shooter is that sense of dread on the turn-based ground battles where you couldn't quite see what was lurking around the corner until you moved a trooper or turned him in a certain direction (fog of war). I don't know if there's a good way to have that in a shooter per se.

I find it amusing that they created a game that isn't at all like x-com because Bioshock wasn't "x-com" enough for the hardcore players. I'd love to know which hardcore players he's talking about.  Does this guy actually believe his own BS? I'd love to give the guy some credit for whatever worth the game has, but he keeps dragging us back down that road.

That said, I think the game looks like it has potential. I just hate how they keep trying to beat us over the head with how much more awesome their version of the IP is because they are smarter than us.     

[TiLT]

I find it amusing that they created a game that isn't at all like x-com because Bioshock wasn't "x-com" enough for the hardcore players. I'd love to know which hardcore players he's talking about.  Does this guy actually believe his own BS? I'd love to give the guy some credit for whatever worth the game has, but he keeps dragging us back down that road.

You misread the quote. What they're saying is that their first vision for X-COM was too much within their "comfort zone" as Bioshock developers, resembling that game too much. The hardcore fans they're talking about are within their own team, people who (supposedly) protested against the direction the game design was heading.

Even so, the quote is still BS. It reads too much like "okay, here's what we've got. Let's make up some excuses.".

[Blackjack]

I was going to put this in an old X-COM thread, but so much of the IGN piece is about 2K's reasonings on straying from X-COM's strategy game roots, it only seems to fit here...

Should X-Com Have Stayed Turn-based?
A look at why turn-based gaming still has a place, and why publishers should be prepared to gamble on it.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/119/1195142p1.html

So who told 2K Marin that envisioning the belated return of Mythos and MicroProse's X-Com franchise as a frenetic FPS was the way forward? 2K Games president Christoph Harmann did.

"Every studio we had wanted to do it and each one had its own spin on it," Harmann said to MCV back in July. "But the problem was that turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth.But this is not just a commercial thing – strategy games are just not contemporary."

Yeesh, the underlined seems a bit of over-generalization, and clearly he didn't pay attention to Starcraft 2's sales last year. And I hate to think one of 2K's studios pitched an idea closer to the X-COM source material and got squelched for not being "contemporary" enough.

The industry's perception of what gamers want right now is wrong, blighted by billion-dollar concerns and based on an uneducated bias they help to create themselves. In the same way that Metacritic is deceptively misrepresentative of how good or bad a game actually is, so too are the sales charts incorrect when it comes to quantifying who's enjoying what out there and why. The reality is, we're not being given the choice. We're being given shooter after shooter, year after year, because one company hit it out of the park one time and big money fell in line [I assume he means Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, although he could mean many things?-bj].

How many turn-based games has the mainstream actually received this generation? Even if you're missing a few fingers, you can count them on two hands. It's a snowball effect only made bigger and rollier by the surface appraisals of guys like Harmann.

He also shares some praise for Frozen Synapse on PC, Tom Clancy's Shadow Wars on 3DS and a few others keeping the turn-based candles lit.

While I have some hopes this will be OK (and given the FPS Fallout's success, I don't to some extent blame 2K for thinking it can revamp this as well), I hope it doesn't crush the possibility someone might do, you know, another true X-COM strategy title, whether it's like the original (though who can envision a big publisher bankrolling a turn-based squad game right now?), or is more "pausable real time" (i.e., maybe something closer to Freedom Force). I have probably tried all of the often horribly buggy European made unofficial X-COM knockoffs at one time or another and nothing ever evoked the same feeling in me as the original (or even X-COM From The Deep).

[Sarkus]

The problem is that the big publishers are stuck on only making "AAA" titles right now.  And if you give a game a AAA budget you want to maximize your potential return.  It would be as if Hollywood only made movies designed to be blockbusters and didn't also budget for mid and small budget titles as well.  The big game publishers are headed for disaster if they continue this AAA only approach because inevitably those big bets are going to fail to pay off adequately to keep the publisher going.

[Blackjack]

Blue's pointed out a diary video...
http://www.bluesnews.com/s/125837/new-xcom-adheres-to-the-tenets-of-x-com-by-changing-everything
 

To some extent, I'm at peace. It's no different than X-COM Interceptor, X-COM Enforcer or the abandoned FPS X-COM Alliance (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/xcomalliance/video/2602075/x-com-alliance-movie-1). Even 12 years ago the publisher then was trying to twist it into an FPS because that's what was hot. So I guess I should stop blaming today's trends per se.

I just wish they'd stop yakking about how it's "still X-COM" or "it's like X-COM except you're a grunt in 1950s attire rather than a commander" etc. Just tell us what's cool about the game, 2K, and stop trying to convince us "it's still X-COM."

[TiLT]

To some extent, I'm at peace. It's no different than X-COM Interceptor, X-COM Enforcer

It's true, and look at how fondly we talk about them when they come up in discussions... or how fondly we would talk about them if anyone felt they were important enough to waste time discussing in the first place.

[Blackjack]

Some scuttlebutt about possible layoffs (15) at 2K Marin (Canberra, Australia), which is the studio working on XCOM (see: http://www.2kgames.com/news/2k-games-announces-xcom-reg-suspense-and-mystery-filled-first-person-shooter-from-creators-of-bioshock-reg-2):

Rumour: Fresh Staff Cuts At 2K’s Canberra Studio
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/10/rumour-new-staff-cuts-at-2ks-canberra-studio/
*Assuming it's true, I guess it could just mean they're close to finishing the game. These days, if you're not working on an MMO or some uber-franchise it seems like finishing a game project is practically signing your own pink slip unless the studio has another big game to assign you to right away. No wonder games get delayed so often.  

[Blackjack]

Not that anybody's waiting with breathless anticipation, apparently Take-Two's earnings report suggests release has moved back from fiscal 2012 into fiscal 2013 (April 2012 through March 2013):
http://www.bluesnews.com/s/127365/take-two-financials-xcom-delayed

[CeeKay]

delayed until the year 2013! 

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216430p1.html

[Blackjack]

delayed until the year 2013! 

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216430p1.html

And now.... delayed until... 2014.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120522006431/en/Take-Two-Interactive-Software-Reports-Results-Fourth-Quarter

2K Games now expects to release XCOM, its shooter version of the franchise that is in development at 2K Marin, during fiscal year 2014.

[CeeKay]

delayed until the year 2013! 

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216430p1.html

And now.... delayed until... 2014.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120522006431/en/Take-Two-Interactive-Software-Reports-Results-Fourth-Quarter

2K Games now expects to release XCOM, its shooter version of the franchise that is in development at 2K Marin, during fiscal year 2014.

Fiscal year 2014 probably starts in April 2013.

[edit] yep

    Financial Outlook for Fiscal 2013

    Take-Two is providing its financial outlook for the first quarter ending June 30, 2012 and fiscal year ending March 31, 2013 as follows:

[Blackjack]

The breathless buzz off this Kotaku "rumor report," is they may have revamped this into a console-only, $30 squad-action third person shooter. Apparently the geniuses behind XCOM: Enforcer and XCOM: Alliance (unreleased) are at work again....

The Other XCOM Game Might Now Be a Third-Person Shooter
http://kotaku.com/5947737/the-other-xcom-game-might-now-be-a-third+person-shooter

First seen by the public as a uniquely retro first-person shooter, these screenshots sent in by a Kotaku reader - part of what we're told was a recent marketing survey - suggest the game has gone back to the drawing board, coming back as a third-person shooter.

While the 1960s setting and general XCOM prequel vibe remains, it's now apparently being pitched as a squad-based game similar to SOCOM or Republic Commando, with the player in command of a team of agents, which you can order around the map to perform various actions.

The survey suggests the game is still in development at 2K Marin (it was originally being led by 2K's Canberra team before all the delays), as it tells the user that "it is being developed by the same people who created BioShock 2".

If that's not interesting enough, the survey takers are also being told the game would be for PS3 and Xbox 360 (with no mention of PC), and are being asked how they'd feel if it was made available as a $30 downloadable title, as opposed to a $60 retail game.

[TiLT]

I guessed they realized what a commercial and PR disaster this game would have been (particularly after the glowing reception to its bigger brother) and decided to cut their losses. I'd rather they just canceled the whole thing without tainting the XCOM brand with it, but it's not my money they're spending so my vote doesn't count.

[Turtle]

Remember, this is Kotaku. They report any minor rumor as fact and are wrong way more often then they are correct. And even if they have a shred of correct information, it's awfully vastly incomplete.

Most likely the game has changed, but to what extent I doubt anyone knows until they show it again.

Honestly, I think the likely success of the turn based game's release will add some pressure towards a more tactical slant.

[Doopri]

cancel in 3... 2... 1...

which i admit is kind of a bummer - some of the earlier stuff they posted, while UGLY actually seemed a bit cool and would have been 1000Xs more great knowing that i had a "real" xcom to play as well

the company has already publicly gone "back to the drawing board" at least once and probably twice, so im more inclined to think that while this might not be 100% true, there probably is something to them testing the waters on another revamp - which cant be good news.  it either means they arent close (no one market tests something when the something is near completion) or they wont be close (they WERE close, but now its time for ANOTHER revamp)

[CeeKay]

the latest rumor going around is that this may no longer an XCOM game but re-branded.

[TiLT]

That would certainly make me happy, at least. I would never have been able to enjoy that game as long as it's called XCOM.

[MonkeyFinger]

Probably for the best... then perhaps we can judge it on its own merits and not filtered through whatever XCOM baggage people bring along with them. 

[Turtle]

LOL, at not being able to enjoy what looked to be a good game just because it happens to add another good game to a series.

[Harkonis]

LOL, at not being able to enjoy what looked to be a good game just because it happens to add another good game to a series.

certainly seems weird to me

[CeeKay]

fresh look in the coming days .

[CeeKay]

so apparently this is a full retail game again.

for now.


I bet it turns into an iOS title by mid summer.