Game development studio 2K Maren were handed a dream job and an impossible task. To revitalise a much loved franchise that has laid dormant for almost 10 years.
I have absolutely no doubt that the initial approach and design documents had every intention of honouring the title of X-COM in every possible respect. For the record, the original X-COM, also known as UFO: Enemy Unknown, was a turn-based tactical squad shooter that also featured a strategic layer that saw you building bases, researching technologies, defeating enemy craft and initiating the tactical field missions on a global scale.
If you can't see the multiple difficulties of recreating that game for an early 2010's market, allow me to break it down for you.
Tactical turn-based games are almost unheard of. Heck, "turn-based" games of any stripe are a dying breed, and considered quite niche even by their fans. I say that as someone who loves the genre, and has sunk many an hour hitting the "End Turn" button on various Sid Meier labelled games. The possibility of an XCOM game with any degree of budget being released as a PC exclusive affair is a dream, and the fact is turn-based games don't sell on the home consoles. Nobody wants to watch units plod about one at a time on their glorious high definition 1080p screens.
Squad shooters are less of a problem. The problem here is assets. The original X-COM saw entire squadrons obliterated before superior forces as a matter of course. Even a successful player was tasked with constantly hiring a rotating roster of units to throw at the alien force to their doom. By the end of the game you'd have sentenced dozens of virtual men to death in lopsided conflicts. In 2011, the expectation would be that every man would look and sound unique. Dozens of them? Good luck with that.
X-COM was a cunningly designed piece of software engineering. The strategic layer was built into an entirely different engine, complete with an entirely different executable. In 2011, consistency is king. Games that break the experience into discrete sections are a dime a dozen, sure. They're mostly shovelware Wii minigame packages. The closest we get are unit loadouts before missions, and that's what XCOM will provide.
Finally the global scale. Missions everywhere in the world. This is another art issue. I guarantee that if any location looks anything like any other location in 2011, there will be hell to pay from critics and gamers alike. If the forests of Borneo look anything like the Amazon, heads will roll. Technology has advanced, and expectations have advanced in accordance with it. But the expectations have an astronomically high cost. The fans are essentially asking for every square inch of the globe to be mapped in excruciating detail. It's not going to happen.
It's clear to me that while 2K Maren may have initiated this project with the best of intentions, they would have seen the task laid out before them and found it impossible to achieve with their resources. Indeed, with any resources. So they chip away at the behemoth rock, to find the crucial pieces, invent a few new pieces of their own, and emerge with something looking almost like an X-COM statue.
For the fans, never enough like it. Never. But I watch with interest, because they may just turn out something very good instead.
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