RPS Feature Tactics, Turn Timers, Difficulty, Boardgames, Bugs & Beards
In which Adam and I sit down with XCOM 2 lead designer Jake Solomon to dissect the strategy sequel. We discuss what it does well and some of the complaints levelled at it, hear about ideas tried and discarded during development, why story had more of a focus this time around and the continued importance of the original X-COM games.
RPS Feature Solomon: "I should probably have put in a fake difficulty below the lowest difficulty"
XCOM 2 was made significantly more difficult late in its development cycle after playtesting suggested it was too easy, says the game’s lead designer. “I remember saying ‘you know what, we’re going to make the game a lot harder. We’re going to go back and make the game a lot harder on every level, because this game is not engaging people the way it should,'” Firaxis’ Jake Solomon told RPS. “Of course it triggered a fairly mad rush to balance things out, but I think when the game got more difficult then you started to see people engaging, you felt that spark of life.”
However, he acknowledged that some players might be struggling with the game as a result. “There were definitely moments of ‘is this too much?’ and how do we cater to people that maybe don’t want that experience?”
Solomon also felt that the presentation of the game’s difficulty settings might be to blame for this frustration. “I made a mistake, I think, by calling the lowest difficulty Rookie”.
I say ‘vs’, but the reality of this meeting between the 20th and 21st century masters of X-COM is that they repeatedly seem on the verge of embracing each other, rather than trading blows in a bitter row about time units and action cameras. Rev3Games arranged for original X-COM co-creator Julian Gollop to meet Jake Solomon, the lead dev on Firaxis’ XCOM remake, the result being this rather delightful recording of their seventeen-minute exchange.
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RPS Feature Bugged about bugs
In this concluding part (the first one is here), we discuss boardgame influences, commercial success, what XCOM might mean for the future of strategy, the need for realism within science-fiction, and why XCOM wound up rather buggy.
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RPS Feature On accents, bases, guns and surprises
With Firaxis’ de-hyphenated, largely very well-received remake of the legendary, incomparable, enormous-haircutted X-COM now out there saving the Earth from the worst scum of the universe for several months, now seems the time to sit down with its enthusiastic main man Jake Solomon. What went right, what went wrong and what comes next? As per recent tradition, we had a very long chat.
Covered in this first part – the base, the skills, the missing element of surprise and what they’ve learned if they ever do this again. Edited out to spare you the horror: his Punch & Judy-style impersonation of an Englishman.
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Very soon now, XCOM will launch. Much like a Skyranger emerging from an underground base it will cause people to point at it and go ‘ooooo, that’s spectacular’, of this I am sure. But unlike a Skyranger it won’t fly to a petrol station, unload a group of frightened human beings and then return home hours later with an empty hold and a pilot with a lament for fallen soldiers on his lips. Or maybe he just whistles nonchalantly and says he dropped them off at a party or at a beach resort. One without lobstermen. To celebrate the impending release, here are two videos. One uses footage of the game to make it look like a different game, while the other features lead designer Jake Solomon going undercover to sell the game. That’s the one to watch.
RPS Feature Knowing Me, Knowing You
After something in the region of 30,000 words across four interviews, the odyssey that is my series of chats with XCOM: Enemy Unknown lead designer Jake Solomon finally comes to an end. While my battered transcribing fingers are inordinately relieved about this, I’m strangely sad otherwise – it’s been fascinating, and no matter how the finished game actually turns out, one thing I have no doubt of is that Solomon is yer bona fide X-COM superfan with only the best of intentions for the remake he’s heading up at Firaxis.
In this last part, we talk about the Guile haircut, how the alien AI works, which obscure aspects of the game he’s most proud of, soldier/armour customisation and bagpipes.
