The first piece of DLC for XCOM: Enemy Unknown added a new character and some new Council missions. It was also paid. The newly announced Second Wave content won't be, though, releasing today, January 8th via a free title update for all platforms. Speaking to IGN, XCOM Lead Designer Jake Solomon said that the Second Wave content comes from a desire to increase XCOM's replayability. "We want people to play our games until their return on invest is massive. Games are crazy expensive...for us one of the big company values that people associate with Firaxis and Civ is that if you buy this game you know you're getting a good return on investment. We're always thinking of replayability."
To this end, Second Wave adds a series of optional tweaks to XCOM's gameplay, including:
- Damage Roulette: Weapons have a wider range of damage.
- New Economy: Randomized council member funding.
- Not Created Equally: Rookies will have random starting stats.
- Hidden Potential: As a soldier is promoted, stats increase randomly.
- Red Fog: Combat wounds will degrade the soldier’s mission stats.
- Absolutely Critical: A flanking shot guarantees a critical hit.
- The Greater Good: Psionics can only be learned from interrogating a psionic alien.
- Marathon: The game takes considerably longer to complete.
- Results Driven: A country offers less funding as its panic level increases.
- High Stakes: Random rewards for stopping alien abductions.
- Diminishing Returns: Increased cost of satellite construction.
- More Than Human: The psionic gift is extremely rare.
Why add these changes in after the game's out, as opposed to including them with the initial release? Solomon said it was something he really wanted to do, but the code he was writing "basically on the side" (he's an engineer, as well as a designer) came together too late to make the final cut. The ideas that he and the team had were too good to abandon, though, so they worked it into their schedule as post-release content.
While some people might be disappointed that it doesn't add new characters or missions, it is totally free. And for Producer Garth DeAngelis, "it congeals nicely with people who are beating the game a lot...Now you can go through the game again in a sort of brand new customizable way." Solomon said that it's basically a way for players to "mod the game themselves," something not usually available to consoles.
Some of the game mods are simply ways to make the game more difficult, but others were ideas that the team had that just didn't make sense for the core release. "One perfect example is Diminishing returns," said Solomon, "What it is is that every time you build a satellite the cost of the next goes up. That's a very gamey mechanic, and I love it from a design standpoint -- and that's the actual satellite design mechanic I wanted originally -- but it also doesn't make any f**king sense. We always talk about design wise that you have mechanics and you have theme, and you have to try and make those make sense together. Mechanically it's strong but thematically it's weak...Now that it's pushed to Second Wave then I don't have to worry about narrative."
Have you received an adequate return on your investment in XCOM? We've lost hundreds of soldiers and slaughtered scores of aliens, and Second Wave provides yet more reasons to jump back in. It sounds to us like it's time to etch a few more names onto the memorial wall.
Anthony Gallegos is an Editor on IGN's PC team. He enjoys scaring the crap out of himself with horror games and then releasing some steam in shooters like Blacklight and Tribes. You can follow him on @Chufmoney on Twitter and on at Ant-IGN on IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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