“We realised that most players lost their initial playthrough of Enemy Unknown, and we realised there was an interesting and unique opportunity to have XCOM 2 begin with XCOM losing the invasion.” Solomon and the team took inspiration for XCOM 2’s bleak premise from the way people actually played Enemy Unknown the first time through: badly, which I can empathise with. “By asking: what did they enjoy? What didn’t they like and how can we make it better? What was our community requesting? How do we renew and refresh that sense of struggle and triumph?” “We began the process of defining XCOM 2 by looking at how players responded to XCOM: Enemy Unknown,” creative director Jake Solomon tells me.
In XCOM 2’s world, you lost the war against the extraterrestrial invaders of Enemy Unknown, and this is not your planet any more. In the demo Firaxis shows me, I see civilians crowded behind barriers, futuristic police cars right out of the Total Recall remake, armoured fascist twats known as Advent and floating holographic billboards. That significantly changes the pace and dynamic of the game. In Enemy Unknown, the alien invaders were on your turf.
