To think there was a time I was so afraid of the dense nature of tactical games that I never once engaged with them. I felt the entire genre was type was so very niche there wasn't any inroad for someone who fell in love more with the storytelling or action of games- I just didn't see a path where those sectors of game entertainment interjected. And that panned out in a lot of my attempts to get involved with this style of game, not least of all my attempts to play the original X-Com which, to this day, I cannot get my head around on the most basic level. At least, that was until I stumbled upon the X-Com revival games which not only brought the tactical gameplay down to a comprehensive level for new comers who don't feel like browsing several pages worth of tutorials in order to play their first battle, it also awoke me to the endless dynamic storytelling potential of titles just like this.
Enemy Unknown was a revolution for that entire subgenre of games, not just the brand which had been dormant for over ten years at that point. The tooth'n'nail pressure of managing a squishy group of mortal soldiers battling to keep together the crumbling embers of a collapsing world against a threat far outpacing them, ever present that with ever mistaken call, and often times ever with totally perfect calls, a grim grave can await anyone at anytime. There's little which can encapsulate that level of tension, those crushing blows and those miraculous wins, all decided by the fate of an offscreen die spinning your fate in the moment. And the make-up of what Unknown was became the basis of most boots-on-ground tactical games from then on in.
What I respect most about X-Com's series is the way they always endeavoured to make every game good enough to stand on it's own, to such an extent that all sequels had to try something a little bit different rather than just spin the ol' wheels as usual. Even as Enemy Within was building upon the base product with new ways of playing the game in both a moment-to-moment sense as well as overall meta- X-Com 2 totally flipped the gameplay dynamic on it's head, making the player the invaders attempting to overthrow an alien controlled world- with the guerrilla tint to gameplay not just being Ubisoft-level set dressing but a total revision to the presentation of gameplay and wider tactical narrative progression. And don't even get me started with War of the Chosen- perhaps one of the greatest expansions of it's age for the way it acted as practically a whole new game on it's own!
Chimera Squad was where the team started to fall off some small degree in my opinion, with the focus taken away from consequence and greater emphasis placed on tailor crafted 'hero units' the dynamic storytelling potential which seemed to be heart of the franchise seemed burnished somewhat. I respect Chimera for what it was trying to do and I still think it's a damn good time that once again shifts the core gameplay in just enough of a manner to justify itself as a standalone- but I'm not surprised that franchise fans felt a bit underserved by it. But it wasn't a break between audience and developers. Not in the way that their next game would be- to such a degree that even after all these years I don't even think the creators knew what went wrong.
Marvel's Midnight Suns promised so very much, bringing the X-Com style of play to a brand we all know whilst throwing something totally new in there to boot. The new card-based system of play was not received well upon reveal but I think it would be a little disingenuous to claim that alone turned people off to the game entirely. You also have the fact that as the marketing trucked along everyone became increasingly aware that the game's X-Com connections would not carry that same spirit of the original two games, with the dynamic storytelling potential, and instead be more like Chimera Squad with it's 'follow along the dotted lines' approach. In fact, Midnight Suns is entirely a driven story game that happens to share DNA with X-Com, once again not quite catering to the audience who had been patiently waiting all this time.
Now it's not as though a follow-up to X-Com was never considered. 2 literally ends with a tease to a subterrain menace mimicking the original X-Com sequel 'Terror from the Deep'. A tease we have been waiting to be fulfilled for about 8 years now. And in the time not only have the team decided to go other directions with their style of development, they've also started breaking off! The big gambit of Midnight Suns ended up not paying off, and underperformance leads to layoffs. The lead designer even left the company and is now off making Life Sims of all things. We lost Jake Solomon to perhaps the single worst genre of non-mobile game out there, the hilariously over commercialised parody-genre of Life Sims. Oh the humanity!
Which of course means that Firaxis are in a worst position than ever before to finally buckle down and make the follow-up to the franchise that put them on the map. They're going to have to build back up to it, proving themselves with smaller titles that score some success, all the while the people will be patiently waiting for X-Com three and won't respond well to these other titles that don't capture those same emotions. All along the way other teams are moving in on their territory and releasing their own takes on the genre, peeling off players this way and that, until eventually no one even remembers what it was they were so worked up expecting all along. In fact, I'd bet most are already at that point- given the 8 years and all that.
Which is all to say we're not getting an X-Com three. Not because the team no longer exists to do it, but because they missed their moment in time, can't capture that lightening in a bottle now that it's out in the wild and won't draw the crowd they once would. In some ways it's a sad state of affairs, but in another sense if we had to pick between getting X-Com three or X-Com becoming the influential phenomenon that influenced so many other incredible titles, I'm glad we got the latter outcome. Maybe the promise of what X-Com 3 might have been is greater than what we ultimately might have received if it came out and... well, ended up like Vampire the Masquerade 2 is currently looking. (Yikes.)
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