XCOM

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I might, maybe I'll do a hard run at some point, but, uh, I'm kind of, on one hand I'm liking it 'cause I'm s- I'm getting through the game, which in XCOM games I don't normally get to near the end of.

But, um, I also feel I'm kind of missing part of the story is, I always feel like part of this story is you're meant to lose some of your team and have that heartache.

Yes.

smothered in pan spit and with its Elizabeth Lyon tube station signs in Hindi, is it? Or Punjabi? One of the two.

Whichever squiggles come up at the bottom of my screen when I'm fighting some alien horde in XCOM, I don't want it.

And I'm allowed to call that colonisation, and I'm allowed to advocate for some decolonisation.

Thank you very much.

Is that, so is that the one where-

XCOM, Star Wars

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I read there was a bunch of drama about the devs?

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it is the best Star Wars game we've gotten in a long time, and it's a pretty solid tactics game.

And I like XCOM 2 and I like XCOM and, and, and the, the Fire Emblems and all that stuff.

Like, this game is so magical and to have all of that nonsense happening on the background of it-

You're very smart and talented and you've done this job to completion.

Is this the XCOM guy? So we talked to our handler.

He wanted us to just finish.

He was like, come back to the mainland.

If a new player came to you and said, should I get 5 Parsecs or should I get Planetfall? I mean, I'm assuming your answer is kind of, it depends, but like, what would you kind of, how would you, how would you break it down for them?

Uh, well, my answer is you should get both and also pre-order XCOM.

Um, But no, I think Parsecs is still the best starting point because it's both a more open-ended, but it's also just a simpler place to start.

Planetfall is, in hindsight, phenomenally... ambitious, uh, because there's just so much there.

Um, so I can talk about, um, there's two, well, there's a bunch, uh, cause I was trying to work like 12 projects.

Um, so, but because the overlords did start talking about it.

So obviously XCOM is happening.

Um, based on the old computer games.

Let me just throw out a couple.

XCOM was very pivotal for me.

And you said Eurojank.

I've literally never heard that term before, but I would honestly apply it to Deus Ex.

I think Zach McClendon wrote an article at some point about why a certain level of jank was required in the brilliant Bethesda Softworks games, because... you could either choose to polish things entirely or focus on saying yes to the player and letting the player do something wild, in which case the game gets broader and broader or deeper and deeper and you don't have time to polish everything, right? And so that was kind of the ethos of Deus Ex as well.

It's like, say yes to the player, let them explore, let them do crazy things, but it means we probably won't have time to polish it because we had a 30-person team or something like that, you know, so...

And XCOM was definitely unfriendly, lots of friction, a little bit of jank.

The UI was mind-blowingly bad.

I even mentioned it in the comment.

I was like, not even Zero Company? It's just Star Wars XCOM.

Yeah.

But I think it

But usually utilize near the end, where I was getting closer to a platinum run.

Yeah, I mean, as we've been talking, I can't believe I didn't mention it up front, but XCOM is maybe one of the most important games that fits into this category and how it handles death in its gameplay.

I mean, I'm pretty sure everybody in this room maybe has made a team in XCOM named after all of your friends and family.

I definitely did that at least once and I definitely did one where they were all WWF wrestlers.

where the undertaker ate shit in the last mission i was like no it's anchors down but yeah you feel it different when you know that it's they're gone especially in x-com because there's the experience factor where you have to like raise up each of your individual troops and when you lose one of them that's been around for a long time you feel it like it puts a hole in your roster that actually like you feel emotionally bad, but also mechanically it hurts.

And yeah, and XCOM, I think maybe it was the first XCOM, not the second one, but there's a mind control thing that all the last bosses in that game do on the last fight of the game that just virtually guarantees that you're going to lose somebody.

And I remember that sucking really bad because I had a no-death run going.

I think that's kind of how I've always played XCOM, is try to try to get through every run without losing anybody.