Firaxis is taking special care to make sure that the PC and console versions of XCOM: Enemy Unknown have their own specialized user interface, so much so that two separate teams made sure the UI was optimized for each type of platform.
Console version features a “free movement” UI.According to game designer Jake Solomon, ”The PC version for us is a big deal. With a shooter or an action game you may be able to fall into the dangerous trap of porting the UI, but for us that was never an option.”
As such, the PC version allows gamers to play with the original game’s classic grid as an option, because the ”free movement” version of the console version was ”a pain in the ass” on PC.
”We’ve had two separate teams working the whole time on the UI, one on PC and one on console. We’re pretty excited that they look very different and feel very different,” Solomon explained, ”We don’t have a grid in the console version, it’s all free movement, but on the PC version it was such a pain in the ass to not have a grid that we went back and added it.”
XCOM: Enemy Unknown will be released on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on the 9th October in North America, and 12th October worldwide.
