The team wanted more complex interactions between humans and aliens

Dec 19, 2013 22:46 GMT  ·  By

The development team at Firaxis is satisfied with the reception for the Enemy Within expansion for XCOM and Ananda Gupta, the leading developer on the new content, offers some more details on the part that was cut from the game.

The team initially wanted to create a complex system of collaboration with the aliens that involved an Infiltrator human character and a special alien type, the Venomorph, that could transform civilians and could burst from them to battle operatives.

The developer explains in an official blog post that, "We designed a new mission type in which XCOM soldiers had to extract a double agent while neutralizing disguised Venomorphs… but once the extraction occurred, the Venomorphs would all burst, and it would become a combat mission where the double agent had to be escorted to safety."

A similar mission still exists in the game, but without the new alien types.

Gupta adds, "It didn’t make any sense. The Venomorph itself was artistically very challenging; it had to look like it could pose a real threat, yet also plausibly originate in an embryonic, parasitic form inside human bodies."

Firaxis was already committed to the addition of MELD, the new resources, MECs, the power suits that agents could use, and the gene mods.

Finally, it abandoned the Infiltrator and Venomorph ideas and decided to create a new human faction that gamers will have to fight with, called EXALT, which has access to superior hardware and gene modifications of its own.

XCOM: Enemy Within is one of the best expansions ever launched for a turn-based strategy title and manages to add a wealth of new options for the player, while also increasing the challenge that he faces from alien forces.

All the new content can be played on the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.