X-COM creator Julian Gollop discusses his most important games (2019)

X-Com was amazing, and Xcom2 also pretty good. I just checked, and there is an amazing mod and very active community around LwotC (Long war of the Chosen), with tons of fixed bugs and improvements, a decade or so after the game was released. [0]

I am surprised Firaxis didn't work on an X-Com 3. I would guess the fan base is still huge.

I'm getting old and I don't play videogames anymore, but if I have a month of free time imprisoned in a cell with nothing else to do, I'd give xcom2 with LwotC a go. (and Master of Magic, and Master of Orion 2, etc).

[0]: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Long_War_of_the_Chosen

There's also an open source reimplementation of the original Gollop designed game which has extensive modding support. There's quite a few total conversion mods for it

https://openxcom.org/

https://mod.io/g/openxcom

I do not think you're talking even about the same games? This is about the _original_ X-Com.

Yep. It's this game:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/xcom_ufo_defense

Not this one:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/200510/XCOM_Enemy_Unknown...

There's a bit of confusion because the first game was called "UFO: Enemy Unknown" in the UK and "X-COM: UFO Defense" in the US [1] but the one discussed in the article is the 1994 game:

  X-COM: Enemy Unknown
  Developer: Mythos Games
  Publisher: MicroProse
  Format: Amiga, PC
  Release: 1994

Also: graphics [1].

_____________

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown

[2] https://dcnxazdl1qzggl.archive.ph/2Ue9d/b72fb5aeb68b363eebfc...

>> I am surprised Firaxis didn't work on an X-Com 3.

Firaxis didn't but Julian Golop's company, Snapshot Games (discussed in the article) published Phoenix Point which is kind of like X-Com 2.0.1:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/839770/Phoenix_Point/

That one unfortunately got caught up in publisher politics as they had a very successful kickstarter but then broke promises to backers because Epic offered them a lot of money for an exclusive. I think the game would’ve been more popular if it hadn’t had the distraction of many of their biggest fans feeling used.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/phoenix-point-becomes-epic-...

The long war mods are X-Com 3-ish - they are extensive!