Firaxis Games and 2K are building hype towards their much anticipated sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The official website dropped some knowledge on how environments will work in XCOM 2, along with the tidbit that procedurally generated maps are making a return to the series.
A staple of the difficulty in the original games, procedural content generation made sure that no two missions were ever the same. Enemy placement was always a randomized situation and your tactics had to be built just as much in adaptability as in the standard procedure for taking down a given enemy. This was taken away in favor of randomized maps in Enemy Unknown as the transition to a 3D game made it difficult to make procedurally generated levels without making them ugly or nonsensical. Unfortunately, Firaxis had not counted on the hardcore tenacity of XCOM fans playing through all these maps, learning their secrets, and adapting to them more easily than the developer might have expected.
Time has passed, technology has improved, and lessons have been learned. XCOM 2 will feature procedurally generated maps for missions which will move everything from small cover to buildings around, sure to be an improvement in the eyes of old school fans. Everything will be a bit more destructible as well. One of the new features in this one is that enemies (or allies) on a building top can be victim from an attack from below. If something were to destroy the ground underneath them, a unit might plummet right to their death. It’s an interesting mechanic to change up tactics just a little more in the heat of missions.
XCOM 2 will plummeting into PC on February 5th, 2016.
