It’s impossible to please each and every crowd with a reboot of a popular franchise. The purists will verbally assault the new developers if the past formula has been tampered with, while the newcomers will ignore the product if little but the graphics have been changed. Firaxis Games’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown came terribly close to reaching universal acclaim, but the creator of the original X-COM has admitted that he would have done things a bit differently.
Speaking with PCGamer at this year’s GDC, X-COM co-creator Julian Gollop mentioned that he would have tackled the 2012 recreation of his game in a different manner – even if it wouldn’t have led to nearly as much success.
“I would have designed it differently, for sure,” said Gollop. “Would it have been as successful as the new XCOM? Probably not. No, I’m afraid.”
That doesn’t mean that Gollop didn’t enjoy the new game. In fact, he even went as far as to say that “it’s very, very good,” but there are still things that bother him about the moment-to-moment gameplay. Namely, he found issues with the difficulty.
“Maybe I should try it on an easier difficulty level, because I haven’t managed to get to the end yet,” he said. “If there’s anything that’s a problem with the game, it’s that you can be playing it for quite a while without knowing that you are actually completely screwed and you should have stopped and started again.”
The satellite system, which acts as XCOM’s main source of in-game income, also caused Gollop some grief.
“I think my second playthrough I did a lot better, but it got to a point where I could see I was in a bit of a downward spiral, and I just couldn’t see a way out of it,” he said. “I was losing too much funding. It’s quite unforgiving, actually, in that sense… pretty much every decision you make has to be fairly carefully considered, because there’s always a very distinctive trade-off in decisions. I think Firaxis did a really, really good job. If you ask me, would I have designed the game in the same way? I would have to say no.”
Gollop wasn’t nearly as positive on the first-person shooter version of his IP, which at this time is undergoing some major changes.
“I think they got some bad reactions on several levels. One was the fact it was an FPS,” he said. “Secondly, the presentation was a bit… this 1950s style alternate reality thing probably didn’t go down too well with a lot of people, either, so it may be they’re rethinking that. I’m not sure. Graphically, it was amazing.”
No matter what he thinks of either the strategy game or the upcoming shooter, Gollop is happy to see his creation coming back to life. Maybe he would do the combat, presentation, or narrative differently, but in the end, his desire to continue development on the franchise has been squelched.
“For years I tried to remake X-COM. But with the new one, the urge is gone. That demon’s been laid to rest.”
