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Firaxis glad it didn't go ahead with "awful" 2003 XCOM reboot
Posted: 29.01.2013 13:33 by Nick Akerman Comments: 1
Firaxis lead designer Jake Solomon has described a prototype XCOM remake that was in the works a decade ago. It appears the studio made a brilliant decision to not go ahead with the design.

"It was awful. It’s a good thing it never went ahead, because I was way too young, I had very little experience, and I just wasn’t in the right place to make that game. It really took a long time until it made sense for the team and for the company."

By 2008, Solomon felt he was ready to tackle an original addition to the XCOM world.

"We were going to remake the original game, with the original game mechanics, and we were going to add a couple of things to it," explained Solomon.

"We had to identify those things that make a game XCOM, and it’s very hard to do with a game that’s so big and emergent, and has all these complex systems in it."

The end result wasn't bad, either...

Comments

By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Jan 29, 2013
herodotus
Yes well, we all have early dreams of what something will look like and then grow up. I remember the early screenshots for "Star Wars: Force Commander", which had it looking basically like a "Dune 2"-type game with better visuals and an isometric approach but still basically a "top-down" base-building RTS. What was vomited onto my PC was a very beast, that I only enjoyed after accepting that what could have been and should have been wasn't going to happen.