14 DAY TRIAL // Syndicate, which publisher Electronic Arts rebooted with developer Starbreeze, failed to ignite the imagination of the modern player despite the well-known title, but one of the developers working on another reboot, that of XCOM, believes that his team knows how to make his own projects a success.
Speaking to MCV Pacific, Jake Solomon, who is the leading designer working on XCOM: Enemy Unknown at Firaxis, stated, “Those names still have power with people. To be entirely honest, if I were to make but called it ‘Alpha Squadron Bravo Two-Seven-Niner’, the reaction would’ve been like, ‘Yeah, OK, maybe. We’ll see!’ But when you say, ‘we’re reimagining X-COM’, they say, ‘OK, I am intrigued’.”
The developer restated Firaxis position that using the old name also means that the core mechanics are also brought over to the modern game, saying that they were not looking to reinvent the formula for XCOM but to simply update its components so that they can appeal to the modern gamer.
Firaxis is best known for creating the very successful Civilization strategy series and the team working on XCOM uses that experience in creating the game while also looking to expand its own horizons by dabbling into other genres.
Solomon added, “And with XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it’s not a straight-up strategy game. So you span all these different genres with X-COM, we have RPG elements, we have strategy elements, we have action elements we have tactics, and then you have the strategic layer over the top of that. Obviously our hope is to appeal to people who have an interest in all of those.”
XCOM: Enemy Unknown will be launched during the fall of this year on the PC but also on the Xbox 360 and on the PlayStation 3.
2K Marin and Take Two are also working on a squad-based third-person shooter based on the same universe that will be launched during 2013.