XCOM 2 Interview: Talking mods and PC exclusivity

MMGN got a chance to go hands-on with Firaxis XCOM 2, the latest entry in the famed strategy series, which is set to hit PC in February.

We also sat down with art director Greg Foertsch to chat about the game, its PC exclusivity, story and moddability.

MMGN: I just spent three hours playing this game and I died. I died a lot. My squad hates me. The human race is in bad hands.

Greg Foertsch: [laughs] Yeah, the game’s brutal, but when you have success, it about as satisfying as it gets.”

MMGN: Definitely. So over lunch we spoke a bit about Enemy Unknown and how popular that game was. I played it predominantly on iPad, and I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed that it’s not coming to consoles. Can you explain the reasoning behind XCOM 2 being a PC exclusive?

Greg Foertsch: Well when we sat down after EU, we were talking about where we were going to go with XCOM 2. The four leads got together and we looked at what the user experience was and what we actually wanted to do from the beginning with EU. With EU, we wanted to make it procedural, but when you haven’t even figured out the game that’s one of the tough things to do. So adding it to the mix was hard on the first version, but it was something that we wanted to improve on the second one. So the very first thing we did was we wanted to make it procedural. That led to the next question which was whether we wanted to make the game moddable. So those two decisions, they work together because you build the procedural system and it has to be modelled on that, and it just led us to PC being the option, which is what we started developing toward.

MMGN: So consoles were never an option from the start because you wanted to make the game moddable?

Greg Foertsch: Well at the time the consoles were just coming out, and modding on consoles, nobody had really done that. So it didn’t feel like it was the answer for us. Naturally, the PC just was the answer and those choices led us down that road. Visually it’s great because it allowed us to go a little nuts with the game visually. It’s totally scalable, but if you’ve got a hot machine, it’s going to look that much better.

MMGN: Were there any specific mods or I guess community changes to the game that you took and applied to XCOM 2?

Greg Foertsch: Well to be honest, the first game wasn’t really mod friendly. Those guys are ninjas you know [laughs], but we didn’t make it easy. We made this decision before [mod expansion] Long War was even out, and we wanted to embrace that. Civ does that well. We wanted to do that with this franchise.

MMGN: It’s interesting that you’re so open to it, which is great. Sometimes I feel that developer hostility to the modding community kind of misses the point. Personally I see it as a means of evolving how one engages with the game.

Greg Foertsch: Well yeah, It was more about wanting to see what people could make because EU wasn’t really structured that way. It would be interesting to answer this question later actually because I can’t wait to see what people can do. One of the things I’m most excited about is when it gets in the hands of the modders, to see what they come up, it’s going to be great. It’s a super talented community. And we’re giving them 50gb of assets, they’re going to be able to do whatever they want and we’re going to make it as easy as we can for them.

MMGN: So when you announced the game and the plot, I think it caught a lot of people by surprise.

Greg Foertsch: Well the one thing EU players had in common, was that everybody lost. Everyone had that experience of losing and restarting, where you were in the campaign and to do a linear story to it, probably would have hamstrung us a little bit, honestly. It opened the pipeline for us to do some neat stuff that’s different. We felt that it was unique. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sequel that asks, well, what if you had actually lost? So it seemed like something a little different. We all kind of got behind that.

MMGN: Has it been generally positive feedback about the change?

Greg Foertsch: I don’t think anybody expected that when we announced it at E3. Everyone was like, wait a minute: we lost? But the more people think about it, and understand our angle on it, people start to get it. I think some of the comments I’ve seen have been pretty positive towards it.

MMGN: Do you think it makes it more accessible for players that didn’t play the original?

Greg Foertsch: We really want that experience, the set-up phase, if you didn’t play the first game, it doesn’t necessarily matter. Hopefully you did [laughs] but if you didn’t play it, it shouldn’t effect your knowledge of what’s happening here.

MMGN: Thanks for the chat and good luck with the launch!