X-Com 2 confirmed...trailer

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 10:05 am

Yeah that was cheesy crap and needed some treatment. The way they went feels reasonable.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 5:32 pm

I've been avoiding as much of the pre-release coverage as I can so to not be spoiled. I already have my pre-order in with CDKeys.com and have freed up the 5th.

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:35 am

tgb wrote:I've been avoiding as much of the pre-release coverage as I can so to not be spoiled.

Indeed.

After the initial round of trailers and demos, I stopped watching too. I want to see things first for myself, not see things again that I've seen others doing. So I know how the base works, what the world map kind of looks like, and what a few turns of a single mission look like and that's about it.

I never got that last achievement in XCOM: Enemy Within and never played Long War and I may not ever if this plays out well. I kept meaning to, but I've already logged 379 hours in the original.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Tue Jan 26, 2016 9:53 am

Paingod wrote:I never got that last achievement in XCOM: Enemy Within and never played Long War and I may not ever if this plays out well. I kept meaning to, but I've already logged 379 hours in the original.

I started Long War this weekend.

tgb wrote:I've been avoiding as much of the pre-release coverage as I can so to not be spoiled.

I guess I've been spoiled on new enemy types and some of the lower tier soldier skills and it would be nice if that stuff was all new and fresh, but the stuff I have seen has avoided story spoilers. I generally try to avoid pre-release hype on a game, but I just haven't had anything to play this month that has kept me interested (until I started the Long War mod), so the XCOM videos have filled the gap. The release the youtubers got only allowed play of the first three in-game months and they aren't allowed to show any story spoilers, so it hasn't been that revealing, just gameplay spoilers.

coopasonic wrote:Yeah that was cheesy crap and needed some treatment. The way they went feels reasonable.

I saw a Firaxis video where they talked about this. They are making it a sometimes thing, so you can take the risk, but you might lose the bait.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Tue Jan 26, 2016 10:32 pm

New article on PCGamesN: XCOM 2 class guide: how to arrange a ranger, suit up a psi-op and other quandaries

Oh my goodness, XCOM 2 is hard. Harder than Enemy Unknown and wholly unfamiliar to boot. So hard, in fact, that you may need an XCOM 2 guide to help you. Because while you’ll want to save the surprise of which alien does what to the spleen of your colonel for the battlefield, it can’t hurt to know the particulars of the soldiers fighting on your side.

I'm going to keep this as a hip-pocket guide (ironically, using Pocket) for when I realize I have no idea what I'm doing. Say, about ten minutes in..

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 6:58 pm

Another article on PCGamesN: How to unlock the psi op in XCOM 2

Where in Enemy Unknown Psionics was something you likely only experimented with long enough to access the endgame, in XCOM 2 it’s with you from the start: a mystic purple putty sectoids like to lob around the battlefield. You can harness it for yourself, driving mutons insane - e.g. with the thought that they’ve forgotten to turn the heating on and will return to their home planet to find freezing, burst pipes - or simply taking them for a test drive. Here’s how...

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 2:33 am

And yet another article: XCOM 2 mods: all the news from the PAX panel

Update 30 Jan, 2016: Firaxis and Long War Studios held a joint panel at PAX South today. Get the info here.

After the announcement that the two studios would be working together, Firaxis also said in their official blog that they and LWS would be holding a panel at PAX South to talk about the mods, some more unannounced XCOM 2 bits and everything related. That’s happened now and you can read a summary of what was said below, as well as watch the full archive.

It was the middle of last year that Firaxis originally contacted LWS about making some official mods. They also helped with making sure the modding tools are robust and able to support multiple mods operating at once.

They will be distributed for free through the Steam workshop.

The first mod shown is new weapons with unique models. They prevent you being detected as easily by enemies.

LWS also added some new enemies. They show off the Muton Centurion, a super-Muton of sorts that buffs other aliens nearby. Part of this means that the AI, drops and benefits of modded enemies will also be alterable.

Naturally XCOM’s soldiers also got some new bits and bobs. They’re adding a Leader tree of special abilities that, like the Muton, buffs allies around your soldiers. You’ll only be allowed one Leader per mission and they’ll require a lot of time to train, but they will be very good.

While all these mods are small additions that fit into the structure of the game as-is, they don’t really know what the limit of the modding tools is. Total conversions are on the cards.

The editor itself has thousands of assets already available, forty-five gigs worth, including all the animations, textures, maps, data, particles, etcetera.

A lot of debug tools are also shipping with the game, though won’t normally be available, obviously. There’s a replay function that can be used to analyse what happened in any game, as well as lots of smaller tools for everything from taking better screenshots to showing representations of line of sight and fog of war.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 11:36 am

I am suddenly worried that my aging PC will have trouble handling this. Surely, if I can run the previous XCOM at high with no problem, I can run this on at least medium, right?

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:27 pm

baelthazar wrote:I am suddenly worried that my aging PC will have trouble handling this. Surely, if I can run the previous XCOM at high with no problem, I can run this on at least medium, right?

I had the same concern, but we should be OK based on what Steam is saying:

Minimum:
64-bit Windows 7/8/10
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 2.6 GHz or AMD Phenom 9950 Quad Core 2.6 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or better
DirectX: Version 11

Recommended:
OS: Windows® 7, 64-bit
Processor: 3GHz Quad Core
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: 2GB ATI Radeon HD 7970, 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 or better

But here comes the fun part:
Storage: 45 GB available space

Yikes.

There had better be a pre-load.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 2:52 pm

tgb wrote:But here comes the fun part:
Storage: 45 GB available space

Yikes.

There had better be a pre-load.

Sheesh

. That's not quite GTA V territory (64 GB), but it's more than Assassin's Creed Syndicate (42GB). I'm running out of SSD space, it's time to start making some hard decisions.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 4:48 pm

Thanks TGB, that helps a lot! But man... that is huge. I am sure they will do a pre-load, but hopefully Greemangames will get the keys to us in time to take advantage of it.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 5:00 pm

baelthazar wrote:Thanks TGB, that helps a lot! But man... that is huge. I am sure they will do a pre-load, but hopefully Greemangames will get the keys to us in time to take advantage of it.

You mean CDkeys, don't you?

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 5:54 pm

tgb wrote: Graphics: 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or better

Naive question because I don't understand video cards: Is my AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series higher than a 5770?

How about this CPU? Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 760 @ 2.80GHz, 2801 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

I had assumed that I wouldn't be able to run this game, but now hope is stirring.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:01 pm

ww.systemrequirementslab.com

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:57 pm

dbt1949 wrote:ww.systemrequirementslab.com

Thanks, that's really handy. I can play X-Com 2.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 9:26 am

RPS review by Adam Smith hot off the presses: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/0 ... -review/2/

To say this is a positive review is somewhat of an understatement. I rarely purchase games on day one at full price but I may have to make an exception here.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 9:50 am

Other positive reviews are starting to pop up which is good, since I don't take anything RPS says seriously.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:13 am

I can't wait. The new computer arrives tomorrow. I'm kind of sad I won't be even close to finishing my current game of Long War. I'll see if I can come back to it after playing through the new game... or maybe by then they'll have a new Long War. I'm going to miss fatigue (oddly enough as it's a pain in the ass).

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:33 am

tgb wrote:Other positive reviews are starting to pop up which is good, since I don't take anything RPS says seriously.

Why? I thought they were supposed to be fairly reliable.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:42 am

GreenGoo wrote:
tgb wrote:Other positive reviews are starting to pop up which is good, since I don't take anything RPS says seriously.
Why? I thought they were supposed to be fairly reliable.

I like RPS as well, but I don't base my purchases on them alone. <shrug>

I have watched a ton of Let's play videos. Brill13(I think that is his handle) on you tube did a series, and it hooked me to the point I bought the entire kit and kaboodle on steam. I rarely buy the 'future' content stuff, as I like to see if I like the game before I buy that stuff, and to save 5 bucks today has never been a selling point for me. But for Xcom 2, I did it.

We shall see if it was money well, spent. I also worked it out to work from home Friday, I wanted the day off, but too many meetings popped up that I need to be on. So I figure work from home and attend meetings, but play XCom 2 during my down time.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:08 pm

RMC wrote:
GreenGoo wrote:
tgb wrote:Other positive reviews are starting to pop up which is good, since I don't take anything RPS says seriously.
Why? I thought they were supposed to be fairly reliable.
I like RPS as well, but I don't base my purchases on them alone. <shrug>

There's a difference between taking someone's word as gospel versus not taking anything they say seriously.

I don't make decisions based on "professional" reviews at all, and tend to get a feel for what communities think about stuff, but this is the first I've heard someone say "I don't believe anything RPS says".

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:46 pm

GreenGoo wrote:
RMC wrote:
GreenGoo wrote:
tgb wrote:Other positive reviews are starting to pop up which is good, since I don't take anything RPS says seriously.
Why? I thought they were supposed to be fairly reliable.
I like RPS as well, but I don't base my purchases on them alone. <shrug>
There's a difference between taking someone's word as gospel versus not taking anything they say seriously.

I don't make decisions based on "professional" reviews at all, and tend to get a feel for what communities think about stuff, but this is the first I've heard someone say "I don't believe anything RPS says".

I never said that I don't believe anything they say. I use them as one of my main sources for straight news, particularly about new or more obscure releases.

Their reviews, on the other hand, read like they were written by an over-caffeinated 17 year old, and I find them largely unreadable.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:57 pm

tgb wrote:
I never said that I don't believe anything they say. I use them as one of my main sources for straight news, particularly about new or more obscure releases.

Their reviews, on the other hand, read like they were written by an over-caffeinated 17 year old, and I find them largely unreadable.

Sigh. You were talking about reviews, I'm taking about reviews.

That said, the few reviews I've read lately didn't read like that at all. I would have noticed, I think, since that's pretty much the majority of modern reviews in my experience.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:48 pm

Now for something completely different, Long War Team Reveal XCOM 2’s Launch Day Mods

XCOM 2 [official site] is pretty flipping great, is Wot Adam Thinks. But should you fancy tinkering with that fine formula, a few mods will be available when the game launches on Friday, thanks to the Long War folks teaming up with Firaxis. Now we’ve heard what these mods are and no, they haven’t made Long War 2. Instead, you can expect things like a new weapon class and squad leader perks. They’re small additions, not massive changes, but I’ll be curious to see how they affect things...

And there's a video in the article too.

Scoop20906 · Post by **Scoop20906** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:03 pm

Did anyone order this through Amazon? I'm wondering if they still deliver on Release Day or is it now ship on release day. I absolutely can't tell from their website.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:21 pm

Scoop20906 wrote:Did anyone order this through Amazon? I'm wondering if they still deliver on Release Day or is it now ship on release day. I absolutely can't tell from their website.

Like a physical copy? I got release day delivery with Prime on two console games in November.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:36 pm

coopasonic wrote:
Scoop20906 wrote:Did anyone order this through Amazon? I'm wondering if they still deliver on Release Day or is it now ship on release day. I absolutely can't tell from their website.
Like a physical copy? I got release day delivery with Prime on two console games in November.

Doesn't Amazon give you some discount now when you buy a physical copy of a video game through them? I bought my copy from Steam, paid full price like a chump. But hey, it's only money, right?

I just hope that there is a preload, so I can play on Friday and not have to wait until Saturday. My internet is not the fastest.

Scoop20906 · Post by **Scoop20906** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:40 pm

Thats correct and why I went with Amazon. They give 20% discount if you have amazon prime and you preorder the game. The other slightly interesting thing is you can still get the discount two weeks after the game releases in case you wanted to wait to see people's reviews first.

I stopped order physical games after it was possible to get steam games as a discount. Back then amazon guaranteed release day delivery. Now I can't find it anywhere on the item's page if it is available.

Scoop20906 · Post by **Scoop20906** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:48 pm

http://www.pcgamer.com/xcom-2-review/

A good review from PCGamer though I am sure no one will be surprised.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:48 pm

The Steam forums are live, and according to a developer post there will be a pre-load, but they're not ready to say when.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 3:17 pm

Scoop20906 wrote:Thats correct and why I went with Amazon. They give 20% discount if you have amazon prime and you preorder the game. The other slightly interesting thing is you can still get the discount two weeks after the game releases in case you wanted to wait to see people's reviews first.

I stopped order physical games after it was possible to get steam games as a discount. Back then amazon guaranteed release day delivery. Now I can't find it anywhere on the item's page if it is available.

It may be too late so it doesn't show up on the product page anymore. Check your order details and it should say when it is supposed to arrive.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 3:21 pm

tgb wrote:The Steam forums are live, and according to a developer post there will be a pre-load, but they're not ready to say when.

..and then the question when will GMG give me my key... on the plus side at 300mpbs it shouldn't take long to download.

Scoop20906 · Post by **Scoop20906** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 3:23 pm

coopasonic wrote:
Scoop20906 wrote:Thats correct and why I went with Amazon. They give 20% discount if you have amazon prime and you preorder the game. The other slightly interesting thing is you can still get the discount two weeks after the game releases in case you wanted to wait to see people's reviews first.

I stopped order physical games after it was possible to get steam games as a discount. Back then amazon guaranteed release day delivery. Now I can't find it anywhere on the item's page if it is available.
It may be too late so it doesn't show up on the product page anymore. Check your order details and it should say when it is supposed to arrive.

Yeah, thats the frustrating bit.

Amazon wrote:Pre-ordered
Delivery estimate: We need a little more time to provide you with a good estimate. We'll notify you via e-mail as soon as we have an estimated delivery date.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 3:33 pm

coopasonic wrote:
tgb wrote:The Steam forums are live, and according to a developer post there will be a pre-load, but they're not ready to say when.
..and then the question when will GMG give me my key... on the plus side at 300mpbs it shouldn't take long to download.

I'm waiting on GMG as well. 300mbps? I have to get along with a measly 35

. Of course that's all academic when the servers crash

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 3:37 pm

I seem to cap out at 2mbps with my shoddy basic residential service.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 3:57 pm

I'm in the same boat except I'm waiting for cdkeys.com

persself · Post by **persself** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 4:00 pm

I'm new to GMG; ordered from them. Forgot if they said they email key??

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Mon Feb 01, 2016 4:22 pm

persself wrote:I'm new to GMG; ordered from them. Forgot if they said they email key??

They will notify by email, but I always check my orders on their site just on case

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 12:01 am

Interesting article over at Gaming Trend: PAX South: The XCOM 2 mod panel shows a world of possibilities
This looked very interesting...

To enable the community to expand the XCOM 2 universe with their own creations, the team is providing a 45GB separate download of the tools and data that brings the game to life. Every asset you can imagine will be at your fingertips: more than 4000 bits of material, 10,000 textures, 2000 sounds, 3000 particle effects, 600 character assets, 7000 props, and 600 animations helped bring the 2400 maps (yes, 2400 — that’s a bit more than the roughly 100 present in Enemy Unknown) that will ship with XCOM 2 to life.

2400 maps? Yes please

Also of interest:

XCOM 2 – Making Maps
The final section of the hour-long talk on modding in XCOM 2 revolved around the area where XCOM: Enemy Unknown needed the most attention — map creation. As I mentioned above, there were only 100 maps in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which hurt replayability with its static nature. Knowing that they needed to correct this, the team created a procedural system that allows maps to be assembled from various blocks to create a new experience every time you take the field. It was this piece of this talk that made this talk a must-see for me.

Procedural generation has been attempted before, and with a great deal of quality variance in the end result. The team wanted something that would create something as high-fidelity as the hand-crafted work in their past, assembled seamlessly from the various set pieces in the library. Popping to the editor, it was easy to see that this assembly is snap-together, combining the pieces of 20 different objects into one cohesive map. These pieces are split into Parcels, PCPs, Plot Types, and Biomes.
Behold a terrifying Muton mod!

Parcels are the “meat and potatoes” of XCOM 2. They are the set pieces I talked about in my review of The Art of XCOM 2, falling into small, medium, and large segments. These can be small houses, cottages, a large connected pair of apartment buildings, alien structures, and everything in between. As the team snapped a few of these together, it was easy to see that a great deal more attention has been paid to verticality for this sequel, but they were also quick to point out that this verticality brings danger as well. Floors can be destroyed, as can roofs, which can cause you to fall to your death. Conversely, it creates opportunity to ambush or otherwise destroy your foes — it’ll be interesting to see this in action.

To create a world that feels more alive, you need the connective tissue to connect the parcels together. These are PCPs. They are the roads, railways, sidewalks, and other pathing sections that connect the Parcels. They can be entirely static and scripted, dynamic, or a mixture of both — the system is very flexible.

To ensure you don’t have an actual square jungle block in the middle of a downtown concrete jungle, the team has divided up the maps into sets. They are calling them “Plots”, subdividing them into City Center, Shanty Town, Small Town, Slums, and Wilderness, though it is not nearly as simple as all that. To really bring it to life, you need the next component — Biomes.

The original plan was to create three biomes for XCOM 2. These would color the Plots into jungle, snow, or the like, but like the Enemy Unknown map system, it would have proved insufficient. Pulling the same card from the deck, they instead built a system that allows modders to adjust individual elements in the Plot en masse. To demonstrate this, the team slid through a variety of biome adjustments, showing the same cabin transition from arid desert conditions to mild overgrowth, severe plant infestation, light snowfall, and deeply-packed snow. Now, rather than building entire maps and adjusting each piece, the individual style can be modified with the smallest amount of effort.

"Floors can be destroyed, as can roofs, which can cause you to fall to your death. Conversely, it creates opportunity to ambush or otherwise destroy your foes — it’ll be interesting to see this in action." Now that's pretty cool

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:20 am

jztemple2 wrote:"Floors can be destroyed, as can roofs, which can cause you to fall to your death. Conversely, it creates opportunity to ambush or otherwise destroy your foes — it’ll be interesting to see this in action." Now that's pretty cool

In Silent Storm, I loved to rip apart buildings, piece by piece, to get at the delicious Nazis inside. I look forward to seeing a large apartment building and then just shredding the 1st floor and making the entire thing crumble down onto the aliens inside.