14 DAY TRIAL // When XCOM 2 was announced as arriving exclusively on the PC, a lot of people wondered why the development team at Firaxis would abandon the home console market for their title, but the exclusivity reveal is great news for those who are aiming to actually mod the experience in any way.
The developers are saying that they will offer the gameplay source code and all the scripting for gamers to tweak in any way that they see fit because they understand that mods can make any solid title more attractive in the long term.
Jake Solomon, the leader of the Firaxis development team, tells IGN, "we're committed to this idea of player value. We want our players to play our games forever, and so we want to have this sort of vibrant community around the game. We want people to talk, to communicate with us, and for our games to have this really long life cycle because that increases the value of our games."
The team working on XCOM 2 wants to make sure that the core systems that power it are solid and deliver interesting results when they are played again and again.
The company also accepts that gamers might want to introduce tweaks that Firaxis itself will not be ready to make to the game.
XCOM 2 could support a better version of The Long War
The original reboot received a major mod from the community, which many see as better than the core experience for players who love a challenge and a larger variety of equipment.
Firaxis appreciates the work that went into The Long War and believes that it should be easier for its creators to implement similar ideas in the sequel when it arrives.
The fact that XCOM 2 includes procedurally generated maps means that mod creators have even more tools to increase the variety of the title.
The new title will take place 20 years after the original, with the alien force able to defeat the military of Earth.
The XCOM organization has been driven underground and now relies on hit-and-run attacks to keep the invaders off balance and to find new ways to liberate the population.
The title now boasts four more classes, with a fifth mysterious one set to be revealed at a later date, and the game also features hand-to-hand combat.
XCOM 2 will be launched at some point in November.