That's a great question, and I'm happy that it is popular because, personally, I'm just a huge fan and it's an honor to work on this franchise. What do you put its massive appeal down to? You saw Central, but you will just have to wait to see who else is remaining, too.Īhead of Enemy Unknown's release, few could have predicted that a turn-based game, born of an aged franchise, would prove so popular. This is the same universe, and it's important that the remnants of XCOM, even though they got scattered, are present.
Oh yes, you will see some returning characters, and it is a continuation of the timeline. Will we see more of these connections between the two games? The E3 gameplay demo showed the character Central returning from Enemy Unknown. But all that's come about via some nefarious reasons, and so the stage is set for XCOM to have to rebuild itself, so it can take Earth back once and for all. They've built their own mega-cities, they've set up this new world order, to sort of act as this propaganda where they want to draw in the rest of humanity to these cities because, in them, disease is cured, and there's no more poverty or crime. So, if you fast-forward 20 years into the future, the aliens have fended off XCOM, they've scattered them to the wind, The Council (of XCOM-supporting nations) has turned on XCOM and now the aliens occupy Earth. That led us to have some internal discussions about what the world would be like if XCOM didn't win. We've said: what if XCOM, the unit, never actually won the events of Enemy Unknown, which is kind of cool because a lot of our players lost, as it's a challenging game. What we've done is put a little twist on the XCOM premise. Garth DeAngelis: We have just done our gameplay reveal here at E3, confirming that XCOM 2 takes place 20 years after the events of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and, naturally, it's a turn-based tactical strategy game, again. VICE: Garth, tell us what's happening, right now, with XCOM 2. We covered the game briefly (and speculatively) once already, here, but at E3 in Los Angeles VICE Gaming got the chance to sit down properly with Garth DeAngelis, senior producer on XCOM 2, to delve deeper into what this anticipated sequel is going to deliver. Inevitably, then, a sequel is forthcoming: news of XCOM 2 broke ahead of this year's E3 conference, makers Firaxis setting its next game in a world where the alien invaders won, and are now facing up to the resistance of guerrilla forces.