14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Firaxis working on the Enemy Within expansion for XCOM: Enemy Unknown is ready to offer more information on the new EXALT organization, one of the primary new enemies that gamers will have to face.
Ananda Gupta, the leading producer on the new content, uses a developer blog to explain that, “EXALT is a paramilitary secret society. Their goal is to capture the benefits of the aliens’ arrival – their genetic project for humanity and their technology – and use those advantages to rule what’s left of the world once the aliens have completed their plan and departed. And XCOM is in the way.”
The team wants the EXALT missions to be paced according to the needs of the player and to feature a level of complexity that alien encounters do not offer.
EXALT can set up cells on continents, which can sabotage XCOM efforts, so the organization needs to use scans to identify them and then send agents on infiltration missions.
Once a spy has done his job, players will have to send in normal teams to protect them as they extract and destroy the enemy cell.
Gupta adds, “Tactically, EXALT poses a new challenge. They use squads similar to XCOM squads, with four types of soldier: the Operative, Sniper, Heavy, and Medic. After some time, they will gain access to Elite versions of each of these, which are tougher and have dangerous genetic modifications.”
Firaxis says that the design of the new organization will show its elitism and inability to connect to the normal humans who are fighting for XCOM.
The Enemy Within expansion will also introduce plenty of new alien enemies alongside genetic enhancement and mech suits for the player to use.
Launch will take place on the PC, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in the middle of November.