Bay 12 Games Forum

On a few of your points:
1) The green stuff, I don't think they've explained it yet. It seems to me like it's designed to incapacitate large groups of humans, as they seem to appear on all the "abduction" missions, I'd imagine it's to make for easier transport. I'm sure more will be reveal in game.
2)I also don't understand hilife (german for help? If I remeber the demo correctly), also, I found the narration enjoyable, and gave a bit more life to the world. Also, not sure her accent is french, I thought it sounded more germanish, but I'm hardly an expert
3) Didn't feel insulted personally, not sure how you found them stupid?
4) Didn't find the cutscenes hindering personally, and since it was just the first two tutorial missions, I'd expect them to be more story heavy. i'm not quite convinced that complete freeform, no story is always the best way to go. It works sometimes, but sometimes I like a good story element.
5)Again, first two tutorials, of course it's over narrated, it's both the tutorial AND setting the scene and mood for the game. It's first contact! And the second is to ease you into the game. From the gameplay we've seen elswhere, the levels will open up, don't worry.
6) I like the concept of an impactful decission, while I hope they have some sort of explanation for it, I feel it works. Again, just my opinion.

1) Makes sense.
2) Apparently she is supposed to be German, yeah. But that's a very basic German word. You'd think a guy sent to handle an international organization would know the basics of some more prominent languages enough to know what the XCOM soldiers might be saying (if they weren't all talking flawless American English). Like I've never studied German, and I know more than this guy.
3) Alright, two examples:
"You're our first and last line of defence." - so the armies of the world are sitting this one out? Alright. Sounds like an idiotic buzz phrase to me, though.
"Do you have visual on the crash site?" "Yeah, you could say that." - game expects you to find this funny/quirky. This is on par with Transformers.
4 & 5) Yeah, the first really sets the atmosphere. Problem is this is Independence Day level atmosphere. Like who the fuck would approach an apparently crazy guy holding a grenade and shotgun? You tell the guy to drop 'em from a distance, you don't walk up like a dumbass.
Also, even for a tutorial the first level is pretty horrendous. Like it's one thing to tell you what to do, it's another to have you clicking at exactly the places the game wants.
6) Except this decision only infuences a number in a very artificial way. In the original this would happen emergently, and you could handle both if you tried hard enough. Your hand was never forced through a Choose Your Own Adventure prompt.

Quote from: lordcooper on September 25, 2012, 04:32:04 am

There are definitely more than twenty sovereign nations.

Uh, yeah, over 200, unless I'm seriously mistaken.

Not in the game. I recall them mentioning a number, and it was definitely less than 3 digits.

Also, somebody here is overestimating the cost of including different voices. Jagged Alliance 2, anyone? That fit on 1 cd.

So, uh, they've gotten to 1.8 mil. And they've been doing daily updates. So far, some of the more notable things:
-There will be a DRM-free version on GOG.
-They're still thinking of the races, but apparently humans, elves and dwarves are in. They call these the "recognizable" races, and they're also considering "out-of-the-ordinary" and "truly odd" races to put in. And since they've now reached two stretch goals encompassing a new race, hopefully we'll see something more interesting among the playable races.
-There's supposed to be themes related to souls, how they fragment over generations, how more than one can reside in a person, and how that ties to magic (update 5 for more details).
-Civilization technologies are to range from stone age to Renaissance-like (early gunpowder weapons).
-They're using the Unity engine.
-Experience will be quest-awarded, so diplomats get the same exp as berzerkers.
-Utility skills are built up separately from combat skills. So you don't have to choose between upping your lockpicking and upping your sword skill (or whatever categories they'll have) when you level up.

Also, Tim Cain in a Kingdom of Loathing t-shirt.

A flash game I played on kongregate, You play as a small little semi solid sphere and you had to swim underwater to kill and bring up creatures made of lines. It had an oxygen meter and you could upgrade different stuff. And the further you went underwater, the biigger the creatures got.

Fisher-diver?

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What? When?

The threat of war or an ongoing war are things that really drive technological advancement fast forward, if anything. A lot of the stuff we use today was developed for the military first.

Some weapons were developed and flourished during this period and others have been almost exactly the same since the first world war. Obviously the kinds that would be used in this game would be the stagnant ones.

Weapons in use by the military during the Cold War have totally changed since world war 1. Also, there's a difference between a weapon being developed and a weapon being popular.

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What are you talking about? "Their alien nature working against them"? Elaborate, cause that doesn't make sense.

The blob monsters being weak to fire for example... or the robot monsters that are weak to electricity. Both are creatures with weaknesses that stem from their alien nature.

Both weaknesses shared by humanity, hence no advantage to either side.

Also, I guess the electric gun would be totally useless in X-Com 1. If only electricity helped stun things. Then a ranged weapon that did that would be totally more useful than the stunrod. But alas.

Imagine a spacefaring race that HASN'T mastered faster than light travel, and is just disposed to being very very patient. They send off ships in hundreds of directions, hoping to get lucky, and the passengers deal with what they find when they arrive, but mostly plan on being settlers. Like the military outpost in Pandora, they lose because they aren't prepared for a war, and their best effort still isn't enough.

Like District 9, but the aliens are hostile albeit under equipped and with generally incompatible technology that isn't far beyond what we have now (since we could, in fact, do this same exact thing ourselves now with the technology we have, if we had the desire).

That is perfectly sensible. Even if they HAD sent a scout first, he would have reported a planet with no civilization to get in the way of colonization when he returned! Why would you bother giving a bunch of civilians tons of advanced weaponry when they'd just end up killing each other with it? It's a colony run, after they get fabbers set up they can make their own if needed, but even that would take dozens of years...


And all of this is moot, because the aliens didn't cross a ton of anywhere, they were supposed to be extradimensionals like the Apocolypse kind, and the "attack" could simply be a probing attack to determine "is this area worth invading" (and your job in game is to convince them its not worth the cost)

None of these are really all that far out there for scenarios, and none require the overwhelming force or supertech the other aliens earth would encounter later have.

No. We couldn't do that now. We have troubles sending shuttles to and back from space. Imagine sending out something large enough to sustain itself and the people on board for light years of travel. Just imagine the heating bill to keep people warm when they're out of reach of any sun. And the way we manufacture things right now it couldn't hope to last a hundred years, let alone light years. It'd critically malfunction before it got a hundredth of the way there. And imagine the resources and finances it'd take to make more than one of these. There's just so many things that simply wouldn't work with this plan.

Also, considering the events of X-Com 1 and Interceptor, it'd be a really crappy investment. Like a couple decades later, we've got fast and reliable space travel. Whoever they sent out into a deep space voyage for thousands of years would be easily caught up with.


Alright, so they know how to travel through dimensions. That's actually worse for your argument, cause it suggests they can send more shit without the agonizing wait.

The two of you mention being under-equipped and not having the technology to surpass 50s America. But as far as the gameplay videos have shown, they have advanced beam weaponry, vehicles that alter their own geometry and force fields that'd make the Apocalypse aliens gurgle with envy.

How is 50s USA a match for this shit to the extent where they could contain and cover this up? The very same USA that later couldn't win a war against a bunch of commies hiding around in tunnels with crappy weaponry.

Obviously the stupid FPS was covered up. Hense why it was never referenced.

As well this was BEFORE I heard about any "alien technology"... mind you as I said... if the final stage of weapons was the starting weapons of the first Xcom it would be genius.

How do you cover up a war with aliens from another world? Are these aliens really supposed to be this impotent? Like they only ever showed up in the 50s USA and got beaten back by the FBI with colts and tommy guns? Seriously?

And no, that would still show a stagnation in technological development. Like 40 years and they've come up with nothing new? In the Cold War arms race?

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No. It couldn't have. There was no mention in the original X-Com of this and there was no trace of any improvised alien technologies. Compare with Apocalypse where you've got elerium-based technology everywhere and even sectoid-human hybrids. Making a prequel that contradicts the proper series is just sloppy writing.

No no no... The Improvised weaponry wasn't improvised alien technologies but improvised real life technologies. For example the Flame Grenades were very much possible using the technology of the time but weren't practical so no one would make any instead of just an ordinary grenade... However against oil based amourpheous blobs of alien origin it is excellent. Thus all the weaponry is improvised technology against unknown enemies. (Ohhh it would have been so awsome if the final tier of weapons... were the starting weapons and equipment of the original Xcom)

Plus they had a excellent reasons, before they showed its more silly side, as to why there wouldn't be any trace once Xcom started.

It would make it a much better Xcom shooter then the ACTUAL Xcom shooter... well... until the game became more like Mass Effect

What excellent reasons? I must've missed them.

So you're saying NONE of the technologies used against the aliens in the prequel were considered practical against the ones later (or human beings in general)? Like I'm pretty sure I saw bipedal aliens in the gameplay vids that turned the game into a cover shooter. You'd think whatever they devised to fight these shits would prove sort of useful later on. Even against other human beings. There was a thing called the Cold War supposed to be going on, you'd think someone would use the technologies as leverage later on. So like 40-50 years between the wars and these idiots lose all the technologies rather than developing something based on them?

In Apocalypse you had laser sniper rifles, plasma pistols, limited psionics, vehicle-mounted plasma weapons, anti-gravity elevators, corporations manufacturing power armour and flying power armour. All things from the first alien war.

Also note how it's called the first alien war, indicating there wasn't a zeroth alien war.