Firaxis senior producer Garth DeAngelis on XCOM’s continued evolution
Firaxis veteran Jake Solomon hasn't seen mass layoffs like this in his whole 25-year career.
Alot’s changed in 25 years. We have games with $300 mill budgets, people not interested in games other than Fortnite and Minecraft, the older generation of gamers giving up the hobby or dying off, a period of super bad inflation where the industry decided to hike up prices on games, Gamepass harming game sales, GaaS games being pushed left and right with obnoxious monetization and worse looking/playing (Suicide Squad vs Arkham Knight).
The industry is just shite right now. Games ain’t selling, games cost massive amounts, businesses can’t bleed money and this is what happens. Part of it is on them and part of it is on consumers not buying.
Consumers ain't buying because of what they're selling; There is no new SSX or Burnout, everything is now Online Required, everything is 'service', etc.
Indies are still delivering the goods, perhaps even better than ever, because those are often the guys and gals who know what they want to make and just make that and hopefully we dig it as well and support it ...
... but when you look at those multi-million budget AAA games, are they improving on what we have had before? Is the new Forza Motorsport better than a Forza Mototsport 4? Is Halo Infinite better than Halo 3? Is Dragon Age 2 such a huge improvement over the first Dragon Age? Etcetc.
Yeah, graphics have gotten better, worlds have gotten better, but I think a gaming generations stands or falls with diversity and experiences, and a few gens ago we had access to whatever we wanted, so if we wanted a boxing game we picked up one of the boxing games, if we wanted snowboarding we'd pick up one of the snowboarding games, if we wanted to do a rythm game we had DJ Hero, or Guitar Hero, or Rockband. If we wanted to sneak around we had Splinter Cell or MGS or whatever.
We had variety and we had options, and that makes or breaks a generation, imo. You're in a foodcourt of games and they're serving all kinds of different cuisines, and so you'd pick and choose whatever you felt like that day.
Right now, you're in a restaurant, and you're only allowed to pick from one menu, and there's a dress-code, and you have to register, and you have to stay in your seat, etc etc.
The PS5 is an incredible console, and if you're lucky enough to have one, or have just received one for Christmas then you'll already know there is a host of great games out there.
What you may not be aware of is that if you subscribe to PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium, you'll actually get access to a huge catalogue of titles to play at any time. Many of which you can stream without having to do any downloads. If you have a PlayStation Portal you could even play these titles from your bed.
Damn the only one I’ve played so far is Miles Morales, although I do own Control and Rift Apart.
Odd list. Where is Horizon Forbidden West? Ghost of Tsushima? Demon’s Souls? Returnal? And fun indie games like Superliminal? Where’s “A Plage Tale Requiem” and “Evil West”, the current PS+ Essential offerings?
Like seriously? Those are games Extra Tier can get - so not worth upgrading to Premium
Firaxis Games says that the redundancies come as it aligns talent against its "highest priorities"
Damnit , shtty for those people. I've liked most of what I've played from them. Especially xcom. Love that to death. I still havent picked it up but it's in the plans. I personally think people were turned off due to the card based system. Despite that I've read it was good but I can't help but think it wasn't the smartest move.
I think most of us just wanted X-Com but with Marvel, and they went with a card-game instead. I’m sure it’s a decent/good game, but for me personally, I never had an interest in playing a card game, and I never liked how Midnight Suns looked. I know it was based on a comic series, which is dark and has dark characters, but I’ve never been all that interested in ‘dark’ games, vampires, etc.
On top of that, I just wasn’t impressed with the character-design.
We know they can make brilliant games (X-Com 2), and they had access to one of the biggest licenses in the world, and it’s just a shame they chose a direction that just wasn’t very appealing to a lot of players.
I think you should try it. The card game is literally just changing up your moves so you don’t spam powers and win without challenge.
There’s also no “missing” with moves.
It plays like X-Com other than that.
Midnight Suns missed the mark. I thought it would be great and it was a fail. So repetitive.
I heard the story was extremely bad on this. Bad and boring dialogue on cut scenes. I think I recall that from SkillUp's review
