So we added concealment, squad-based concealment which is really cool and is a different mechanic. A lot of that again is from user feedback where every time you stumbled on the aliens, they got the jump on you, so we wanted to turn that around on them a bit and address it. There’s also hacking, there’s loot, and there’s all sorts of cool stuff added. On top of that, we tried to take all the characters, whether they’re enemies or soldiers, and really push them apart. We didn’t feel like they were different enough in Enemy Unknown. We wanted to create separation and contrast between all the different elements of the game. That’s sort of how we approach the art side, too, with all the different environments, we really pushed them as far apart from them as we could to offer different experiences, so they’re dramatically different spaces. That’s kind of our approach, both on the design side and the art side.

It’s one of those things that plays well with the amount of damage it deals with different percentages and values. It gives that class and soldiers something that’s cool and the abilities grow with that class as it goes.

In what has to be one of the greatest examples of fan service in the history of games, Firaxis has drastically expanded the customization options for soldiers within XCOM . Whether it's changing their nationality, gender, or even giving them a custom backstory, there isn't much players aren't able to do to model their soldiers exactly how they want to. As these soldiers rank up, more cosmetic apparel options will become unlocked, and players will soon find themselves buried in items like baseball hats, monocles, and even a Duke Nukem -esque cigar . That's XCOM , b

We saw the introduction of swords into combat. How does that affect the gameplay considering XCOM has always been a firefight heavy game when you have to be in cover all the time? What benefit is it to run out expose yourself?

It was funny. We had a lot of ideas for where we’d go with two while we were developing Enemy Unknown, and after the game came out and all the fans were posting stuff, it was amazing the metric for how many people lost. Face planted and lost multiple times. So it seemed, the strange part about XCOM is that people would lose and restart entirely, unlike a lot of other games where you just don’t do that. So it seemed like a really natural place for us to go to take more of an alternative history approach instead of a much more linear narrative. It felt like something most players would relate to having like "wait a minute, the first time I played it I lost. As if, after I played and I lost, now I’m playing the sequence of the game I lost." It was something we honestly didn’t think many people had done. It’s so easy to do a linear path, and we wanted to take more of an alternate history approach to see what would happen.

While not a major development fact, the XCOM franchise was the first IP Firaxis worked on that did not have Sid Meier associated with it. Sid Meier is the Director of Creative Development at Firaxis SLG PC Games and responsible for many of the games developed by Firaxis, such as Civilization and titles from MicroPro

Firaxis made it clear that this game was focusing on telling interpersonal stories and experimenting with game mechanics rather than making a full expansion for XCOM 2 or War of the Chosen . The game's unique characters and removal of permadeath mainly stem from Firaxis experimenting with storytelling components. While it hasn't been outright confirmed, it's safe to assume that Firaxis made Chimera Squad as a way of testing the waters for major mechanical changes in a future XCOM ti

Three years after XCOM: Enemy Unknown took the strategy world by storm and proved that turn-based titles could still shake up the industry, Firaxis has followed up with a successor that is certainly capable of carrying on the name. Within XCOM 2 , players will find a challenging title that not only improves on the core gameplay experience from the original game, but adds plenty of new elements to keep die-hard fans on their t

The classes in the modern XCOM series all have interesting and fun weapons and abilities . Watching the soldiers grow and gain cool abilities is one of the major joys of playing an XCOM game. The soldiers are the ones that shape the story and are the ones that pull off the hero plays that players will remember fon

The way concealment is designed is to be broken. It gives you a heads up and a jump on the enemies, but it’s certainly something the player can stay in for as long as they want. But it’s not really designed to be stayed in the entire time.

This is additive with their base hit chance, meaning that if you had an 85% hit chance, Holo Targeting would guarantee a hit. In a game like XCOM where RNG can determine engagements, turning it in your favor is imperative to survival. Skills like these make the Grenadier a solid option in any sq