Two Generations of XCOM: Gollop and Solomon on This Year's Remake
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"I think Firaxis has done a great job," Julian Gollop told me. The legendary designer of X-Com and Laser Squad has recently settled jumped ship from Ubisoft to work solo on remaking his 1985 design Chaos from his bedroom in Bulgaria, but the new XCOM has taken a good chunk of his time. "The game is addictive and absorbing, not to mention quite challenging on the classic difficulty setting." Given that the original X-Com was infamously unsentimental about mowing down the player's squaddies by the Skyranger-full, that's some remarkable praise.
Prior to the release of the new game, many X-Com fans howled at the decision to develop XCOM for both PC and console, unlike the original and Firaxis's flagpole franchise Civilization. And while this new XCOM is decidedly more streamlined than the 90s-era source material, Gollop sees nothing wrong with the nips and tucks. "Most of their decisions have been pretty sensible, and they have made a very console-friendly game. Overall I think they have preserved the essence of the original X-Com."
Not all of the streamlining meets with Gollop's approval, however. "One small disappointment is that the positions of events and bases in the world view have no relevance at all," Gollop said, comparing the new game's single-base approach to the original's player-driven expansion of bases around the world. "I often get the feeling that some things are just too deliberately contrived. The three simultaneous abduction sites [of which the player can only respond to one] being the worst offender.
