XCOM: Enemy Within – cyborg battler

GameCentral’s favourite game of 2012 gets a standalone expansion, including more maps, more aliens, robot soldiers and… foreign accents.

Although no game is perfect we struggle to think of any serious flaws with last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It wasn’t just a masterful reboot of the venerable strategy series but also one of the best games of this generation. But although near flawless in execution there’s still an infinite number of ways we can imagine to improve and expand it, some of which are already part of Enemy Within.

One of the few genuinely new announcements at Gamescom (the name had leaked out a few weeks earlier but nobody was sure what it related to) Enemy Within is a standalone expansion for last year’s game, sort of. On PC it does require the original to run but on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 it’s being sold as the ‘Commander Edition’, which also includes Enemy Unknown and all its downloadable content.



The comparison that keeps being made is with Civilization V expansion Brave New World, not only because it’s very good but because developer Firaxis were the ones behind that as well.


Since we found out about the game only minutes before the interview below, with lead designer Ananda Gupta, we’ll leave him to fill in some of the details but the basic gist is that the aliens are back and to combat them XCOM is researching new technologies for robotic augmentation of soldiers – creating the new MEC class – and new genetic modifications for everyone else.

There’s also the new robotic Sectoid (the weedy cannon fodder that look like classic alien Greys) called a Mechtoid, 47 new maps (nearly doubling the total amount), new weapons, equipment, a new alien resource called Meld (which explodes if you don’t collect it quickly enough), and an expanded multiplayer.

They are all expansion pack type extras – and clearly not the stuff numbered sequels are made of – but we got to sit down and play a level, and the new gadgets certainly do make a difference. The MEC (Mechanised Exoskeletal Cybersuit) trooper does kind of speak for himself, but as well as access to flamethrowers and grenade launchers they also get a Pacific Rim-inspired rocket punch.

The MEC is its own class of soldier, but the gene mods can be applied to anyone and bestow almost superhero-like abilities in one of several areas. Snipers can now leap tall (well, quite small) buildings in a single bound to get into position and assault types can be given the ability to regenerate health over time. Interestingly, unlike other choices in the skill tree, gene mods can be swapped out whenever you’re back at base and are not permanent.

Of course death still is though, something that gives you an almost parental attachment to your anti-alien squaddies. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a fantastic game but for the first time since its release we’re not going to advise you to forget your preconceptions about strategy games and rush out and buy it right now.

Instead we’ll just advise you to pre-order Enemy Within and wait until November for what should be an even more engrossing experience.

Formats: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC

Publisher: 2K Games

Developer: Firaxis

Release Date: 15th November 2013

AG: So you’ve played the demo?

GC: Yes, I’ve just come from it – it was great. In fact I’m a big fan of the last game and the Amiga original.



AG: [laughs] We’re off to a great start!

GC: I’m afraid I must begin with a very banal question though, since I’ve only just found out about the game, but could you just go over the main changes so I can make sure there’s nothing I’ve missed.

AG: [laughs] No problem. So, the biggest things that we’re talking about here at Gamescom are: the new soldier capabilities, the MEC trooper and the genetically-modified soldiers, you can build a cybernetics lab or a genetics lab at your base – and covert soldiers into MEC troopers.

GC: Any soldier?

AG: Any non-rookie. Because when you convert a soldier into a MEC trooper they get a bonus ability based on what their class was. So, for example, if you convert a support you get a distortion field that gives a cover bonus to nearby allies. But the heavy gets a different ability and the sniper gets a different ability… But that’s the only thing they keep from their old class, they get this new ability and then they get this completely new training tree – the MEC trooper training tree – and then of course the suits themselves are customisable.

At MEC 1 you can choose either the kinetic strike module, the sort of jet-assisted fist, or you can choose the flamethrower. And then of course if you want your soldiers to keep their classes and keep their training you can give them genetic modifications and they will give them these otherworldly new abilities that are unlocked from your alien autopsy research.


GC: The guy in the demo room mentioned more customisation options, could you clarify what they are?

AG: Well, the biggest customisation option we’ve added is localised languages.

GC: Ah, so that wasn’t just the German version I was playing?

AG: Correct, one of the biggest things that our fans mentioned was that all of our soldiers sound American in this allegedly international endeavour.

GC: Please tell me that the English one talks like Mr Cholmondeley-Warner. You’ll know who he is [nods towards attending UK PR guy, who’s already laughing].

AG: [laughs] So when he misses a shot he says, ‘That’s not on!’?

GC: Exactly that! [laughs] It’s nothing but uncouth cockneys nowadays whenever there’s a British voiceover!

AG: [laughed] We added localised voices – we obviously localised the game into many languages and so we decided that we would reorganise the voice data and add that as a soldier customisation option. So that this international organisation can actually be an international organisation.

GC: That’s excellent, that’s a great touch. What about localisation of maps as well, considering you’re meant to be travelling all over the world?

AG: Regionalisation is definitely something that we wanted to do more of, but the scope of that problem quickly grew out of control. Post boxes in London versus post boxes in Thailand… we did add a lot of new maps in general and we tried to vary up the environments more. For example, one of the things players point out is that it’s amazing how UFOs always crash in forests.


And then that got a little bit uniform and a little bit samey, and so what we decided to do is add a new thing so that UFOs can now crash in cities. So we now have these urban UFO crashes which are very different from the original. And I think that’s a big addition to the variety. You played on the farm level?

GC: Yes, that’s right.

AG: The 1993 game had battles in farms… literally throughout the entire project we have wanted to have farm levels and only now have we been able to do it. And there’s just a lot more map variety, that was one of the big fan requests.

XCOM: Enemy Within – another day on the farm

GC: In the same vein the only other thing I’d ask for, and this is a bit nitpicky, is that the animations at your base never reflected what was actually going on. Like, if there were 20 soldiers in the infirmary there’d still only be that one guy wandering around.

AG: Oh yeah.

GC: Is that something that will change in the new game?

AG: That’s something we…

GC: I know it doesn’t really matter, but…

AG: Well, it does. That’s a really cool little thing that we wanted people to enjoy and we wanted it to be interesting but… I think the main problem there is before we could fix what the people are doing in the rooms it’s really at the heart of the game. Because the rooms that you interact with the most are the ones that you didn’t build.

You interact with the research labs and with mission control and with barracks and the situation room. These are buildings you start out with and yet you didn’t build. And so that’s a more fundamental problem. We’ll figure something out for that… further down the round.

GC: Does the game’s subtitle imply your base gets invaded? Because that was always a great part of the original – where you’d be fighting on a map that was a direct representation of the base you’d built.

AG: That was a neat thing about the 1993 game. But we’re not really talking about the strategic level changes that we’re doing but… the enemy within theme is a very cool theme because it has a lot of possibilities… it’s a very rich game in terms of ‘the enemy is closer than ever before’. In the form of the MEC and the gene mods you’re bringing the enemy’s technology into your body. You’re no longer wearing armour and carrying guns that are just based on alien technology…

GC: So you’re not saying either way?

AG: We’re not saying either way.

GC: I’m struggling to think of serious flaws in the original but it was one of those games that – regardless of the actual difficultly level – did get easier towards the end. Battles did become more routine the further you got.

AG: Yeah, yeah, So we definitely have taken a look at some of that stuff. So, without again talking too much about the strategy level stuff – and I want to be clear, we understand that one of the most fun things about XCOM, and one of the reasons that it’s compelling to players, is that it’s both a strategy game and tactical game with this feeding pattern between them.

And so there’s no question, when we were designed the expansion pack – never did it cross our minds that we would do an expansion pack that was entirely focused on tactical.

GC: I should hope not!

AG: [laughs] Now, what you’ve seen here at Gamescom is all tactical. We’ve talked about the new rooms you can build, but in general we’ve only talked about the tactical. But we’ll be talking more about the strategy stuff later.

GC: I see…

AG: Actually, let me add something. However, we did take a look at some strategy layer stuff to alter the pace of the game. And so, there are two things I wanna mention there. First, on classic and impossible difficultly – so not on normal or easy – we have adjusted some of the tech costs up.

Not for the early tech, those are still the same, but later in the game the tech is kind of turned up a bit so you’ll have to tweak your schedule… you might want to look a little more at laboratory building, that sort of thing. And you might find yourself a little more stuck for some weapons. Because again with classic and impossible difficulty we’ve also taken a look at some of the weapon costs, so that that power curve is a little… a little less easy on you.

GC: That’s good to hear, because it did get to a point where it was more a case of when you win with the higher tech, not if.

AG: Another thing is that advanced players figured out that when you defeat the alien base there’s a global panic reduction of minus 2 points in all countries. So this is a huge tease but that has been split now. So you still get a small panic reduction from defeating the alien base, but there are now other ways to get global panic reduction from different stuff. And we’ll… stay tuned!

XCOM: Enemy Within – gene wars

GC: That’s great, thank you. I was just going to say the two big changes from the original where getting rid of action points, which I think everyone has accepted worked very well, and reducing the squad size. Was there ever any thought of increasing that again though? I think it was 16 originally, but even if you got just an extra two that would be interesting.

AG: No, we decided to focus on the quality of the troops rather than the quantity. I think the squad size works well. Both given the size of the maps that we’ll able to do, as well as giving the right balance between soldier attachment. In the original 1993 game your soldiers were very much cogs in a machine…

GC: That’s true, you did start running out of friends you could name them after.

AG: [laughs] Yeah, really easily. Whereas here we want players to feel close to their soldiers even though we have permadeath. And then with soldier classes and speccing out – picking training abilities for each individual soldier –there are five classes now instead of four, doing that for 18 soldiers would become kind of a micromanagement nightmare. And so this squad size I think is a really good balance between that kind of control and the determination of the destiny of your soldiers versus having enough firepower to beat the aliens.

GC: I think you’re right. Is there anything you can say about the multiplayer?

AG: I can say lots about the multiplayer!

GC: It was just a bonus really, but it did seem very undercooked the first time round – especially given the lineage with Laser Squad. Has there been any thought you could turn it into a spiritual sequel to that game? Maybe even a spin-off?

AG: Right, I mean multiplayer wasn’t the focus obviously but we still wanted people to enjoy it…

GC: If you were looking for something to expand on for a new game that is an obvious subject.

AG: So putting in asynchronous gameplay is something that’s a very big task. And that’s something that we had to make a big decision about and we decided not to put in asynchronous play. And that obviously would’ve helped a lot. But what we did do, we did a lot with multiplayer… our two biggest fan requests for multiplayer were first of all more maps – we did that, we’ve more than doubled the number of multiplayer maps, so we added eight multiplayer maps – and then secondly we added offline squad editing.

So now you can save off multiple squad configurations: tinker with them, organise them. You can say, ‘Okay I’ve got this squad, I’m now gonna save off a copy, and change one thing. Okay, now I’ve got both these variants, so I go to the lobby, pull the one I want and off we go’. There’s no more having to connect online to do that, which was a huge request from our fans.

And then in addition to supporting all these things we now have MEC troopers and gene-modded soldiers – and the Mechtoid – in multiplayer. We have done some point balancing, we have taken another look. I did point balancing for Enemy Unknown and looking at play patterns there’s definitely some things that can be improved. Like, I probably made grenades too expensive because I’m generally very paranoid about the balance of area of effect attacks in multiplayer.

GC: So are there MEC equivalents for all of the original aliens? And are there new aliens on top of that as well?

AG: We are adding a new alien, which we’ll talk about… soon. I think. The Mechtoid is the only new mechanised version of an alien.

GC: Ah, okay.

AG: The Sectoids are the only ones that needed it, right? We actually did have a concept of a MEC Muton but the problem is the Muton is already so huge and hulking that when we put him in the game you can’t tell the difference between him and the Elite Muton. Because there was a limit on how big he could get, and he doesn’t look sufficiently better and more impressive than the other Mutons. So we need to mechanise the squishy aliens, the ones that need the help, and the Sectoid was very obvious. And not just because of his name either. [laughs]

GC: Actually I guess that was a slight issue with your version of Enemy Unknown, in that it actually stuck too close to the original alien designs. Because even at the time they looked kind of silly and obvious – like they’d come out of a clip art collection or something.

AG: [laughs] We did draw a line and say, ‘We cannot have Snakemen in this game’.

GC: [laughs] Wow, I forgot all about them in the original.

AG: So they became the Thin Man, right? The Thin Men are the creepy sort off… like if you look at their autopsy they have this long snake-like skeleton. If you look at their eyes they have very reptilian eyes. So Thin Men were definitely a shout out to Snakemen, but we were definitely not going to put Snakemen into the game because they cross over the silly line.

GC: Just to finish I have to ask exactly how well Enemy Unknown actually sold? I was very hopeful it’d be a big hit because it worked so well on consoles, but it only seemed to get anywhere on PC.

AG: As far as I know 2K has been overjoyed with how well it’s done. We’ve got nothing but happiness from 2K about the performance of XCOM. I don’t know the exact numbers though, they don’t tell me that.

GC: Is that just because its low budget makes it profitable or because it was more successful than I realise?

AG: I think it’s just more successful than you realise.

GC: Because it was only in the sales charts for a week or two and never especially high.

AG: On Steam we actually stayed in the top 10 for a long time.

GC: Yeah, but that’s PC. I just… I had this hope that it would cause this sea change in attitudes to strategy games on consoles. But multiple times I had people writing in saying, ‘I didn’t realise this was even on console’ – even though that’d been the whole focus of our review. It just seems like you’re preaching to the converted on the PC.

AG: We have gotten great fan feedback from the console players, I’ve lost count of the number of forum posts that are like, ‘I’ve just got this on PS3 and I can’t stop playing it!’

GC: Yeah, definitely. Everyone enjoys it once they start, but it’s convincing them to make that leap.

AG: I don’t know the numbers breakdown but I know 2K are very happy with XCOM, we would all be updating our résumés if it hadn’t done as well as it should. [laughs]

GC: Well I’m very glad to hear that! And just finally, obviously you’re not announcing anything here, but have you already started to plan for the next gen and a numbered sequel?

AG: We’re always talking about what’s next and we always brainstorm about what to do next…

GC: So the situation isn’t that 2K have said you can have this expansion, because it’s cheap to make, but that’s it?

AG: Oh, I think 2K’s very happy with XCOM as a franchise.

GC: Well, that is very good to know. Thank you.

AG: Thank you very much. Thanks for coming to talk to me.

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