Soldiers you send to infiltrate the enemy human faction will go with a pistol, one item, and nothing else.

I'm already thinking of how to build the perfect agent character. Psionic sniper with Gunslinger?

You say that like it's a bad thing, though.

 

What's the release date for this btw? I haven't been excited about a games release in quite a while.

 

November 12th if I'm not mistaken.

I'm waiting for Firaxis to hide the fact that if you don't deal with EXALT they will try and fight you over the UFOs you knock down. Think about the possibilities of a three way fire-fight between the aliens, the EXALT, and XCOM on an alien battleship.

 

I'm just going into this assuming that they're not telling us about the Muton mechs.

 

I would be incredibly surprised if they warned us about all the enemy types ahead of time.

 

They're giving us X-Men and Astartes Dreadnoughts.

But it's also X-COM.

I'm not going to rule out space Shoggoths at this point.

 

I'm actually kind of worried about the dreadnoughts. Sure they are expensive to make and cant take cover but from what I've seen of them so far they seem kinda overpowered. Its almost like having your own sectopod except better since it can heal itself with the right upgrade... and heal others... and do crowd control... and do AOE.... and can be healed by a medkit. I'm really not seeing the downside to having them, figure as long as you play smart it wouldn't surprise me if you could end up with a whole squad of them by the end of the game. And since they seem just better than all the other classes except perhaps the sniper I don't see why you wouldn't do exactly that.

 

TotalBiscut thought the same thing in his WTF Is Enemy Within. He spent everything up to the last five minutes saying they're too strong, and then nearly got his shit rocked by a single Mechtoid when he had two Mechsuits on the field and a long-range sniper giving rear support.

He'd have lost a Mech and at least one of his regular soldiers if the Mechtoid hadn't done something tactically unsound at the end there. He got out of it with no deaths, but by the skin of his teeth.

You say it'll be OP, but looking at TotalBiscut and remembering how fucking important cover was when fighting Sectopods and Discs, I don't think it'll be nearly as bad as some people think. The Mechs are a strong opening move to make if you're not on Impossible or Iron Man, but they're going to quickly stop being overpowered and start being necessary. They might even become a liability later, with their frequent injuries knocking them out of the roster for days at a time, potentially robbing you of your primary means of offense and defense at a critical moment. A skilled Assault vangaurd trooper or demolitionist Heavy might prove more valuable in the long run. Especially since Mech troopers lose any gene mods they have when they become augmented, and cannot have any mods put onto them. You can have your soldiers be X-Men OR Dreadnoughts, but not both. I won't know for certain until I get my hands on it to play with it, but it feels as though the mods and the mechs are deliberately meant to be two divergent paths to take. You're probably only going to have the resources to do one and dabble a bit in the other if you're on any difficulty of consequence, particularly since they upped the cost and time requirements for research, so you've got to make a choice. The Mechs seem like a strong opening move with a weaker endgame, while an army of gene modded soldiers with sophisticated gear and equipment seem to be the weak opening move that pays off big later on.

So you can go immediate advantage for a later disadvantage, or you can go immediate disadvantage for a later advantage. Your call.

Also, try to keep in mind that there's a whole new set of difficulty mods and optional handicaps to play under that only unlock when you beat the game now.

And that the odds that they've shown us every new enemy type is incredibly small.

 

I agree on the last bit there, they certainly haven't shown us everything. The recent footage of base assaults being in the game is proof to me Firaxis can keep a secret as long as they want.

I have to say using his video as an example there is pretty poor since he was playing rather... I'm not going to say badly since that would be rude but its pretty accurate. He was taking a lot of moves that were purely out of overconfidence on the strength of the mechs and that did cost him.

Looking at the video though I think I've found their weakness... it scares me. They have a low will level. For a max level trooper to only have a will of 76 makes them one hell of a tempting target for mind control. I'm seeing horror shows in my head right now of dealing with ethereals later on and just having your big AOE centric mech turn around and torch your cover and leave you in the open.

 

We have footage of base assaults? Where? I thought that was just a rumor for something that MIGHT be in the game.

 

I do believe I'm about to make your day. Excuse the horrible person playing the game though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUxqjq6HW3M

Aliens are attacking XCOM. From what I can tell the map is based upon the uppermost level of XCOM's base, the parts that were built before you start the game.

 

Stopped at a minute and some change in. He is terrible, yes, but I also don't want to spoil it for myself too much.

What I'm curious about is whether this is a one-off thing or if it can happen multiple times as a rare event. They did apparently go to the trouble of creating an entire tileset from scratch just to show this off. I'd like to believe we'd get to see this sort of thing again, and not just once in the main mission.

Even if not, seeing it at all is a great change of pace. I'm always a fan of expanding the story.

 

It would make sense for it to happen more than once. Figure just because you beat the aliens back once doesn't mean they're just going to go away. Add in the fact that there are EXALT infiltrators to deal with and I can see them finding a few ways to have us fighting within HQ.

Looking through some of the preview videos now and I have to say the whole tracking down EXALT cells is going to be the biggest change for me. Doing another run through of XCOM right now and all I can think about is that having the ability to do scans to hunt down EXALT cells to lower my panic level will make my life so much easier.