E3 2012: XCOM - Enemy Unknown

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If you're a fan of the classic XCOM series

of strategy role-playing games that pit

soldiers versus an alien invasion,

you are in luck.

2K Games is reviving the series this year

with XCOM Enemy Unknown.

We spoke to the developer Firaxis Games

about what makes the new version just as difficult

as previous versions.

So if you're a fan of the original

I think you'll really find

that we've stuck to a lot of the core principles.

There's a lot of stuff that's still similar to the original,

but we've grown it a little bit forward

and made some thing a little bit more easily navigatable.

You're gonna find permadeath

and restructable environments to be pretty big.

We've done a lot with that,

those are really core pillars of the game.

And they were from the original

which are still in the game today.

You're also gonna find a lot of RPG light serve elements.

You're gonna be able to level your soldiers up,

you're gonna be able to grow your squad

in ways that you couldn't do in the old game.

Each soldier unlocks different abilities.

And so there's a lot of depth there

and a lot you can do strategically.

Psionics is a very large part of the game.

And it was in the originally, it is in this one.

What you saw on the demo,

we had a soldier who controlled, mind controlled

and then blow himself up.

There's a lot of that sort of thing you can do, psionics,

you're actually going past humanity

and evolving the human race in a way that

normally wouldn't be able to.

So to avoid being psionically controlled,

your soldiers all have random

qualities and attributes to them

that you develop over time and notice.

And one of their stats is will.

And so, some characters are a little more resistant

and some are a little less resistant to psionic attacks.

And some of them develop a little bit more.

So if you're new to XCOM,

there's really nothing like this out there.

There's no game that does what this game does.

In a normal gameplay scenario,

you're juggling growing your soldiers, evolving your base,

discovering new technology, adapting it to the human race.

You're going through all that stuff and still responding to

different missions all over the globe

and trying to keep all the nations happy.

We're looking at a Fall 2012 release on PC, 360 and PS3.

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