c0mc0
Rear Admiral
But it does beg the question - Why was it called X-Com at all?
X-Com wasn't a game that was based around story. It was based around gameplay, atmosphere and strategy. IMHO - there wasn't enough story in X-Com to justify a spin off set in the same universe. If you wanted to do a UFO shooter, they could have called it anything. Carrying the name X-Com doesn't really do anything more than cynically exploit your fanbase. The same can be argued about Syndicate. The story was always secondary to the gameplay. It provided an excuse to have the action, as apposed to being a rich world to engross the player in. I loved X-Com, but its "story" was pretty well "aliens have been kidnapping people, the governments of the world form an international military force to stop them" And... That's about it, really. There's some cool info about the aliens and it all pulls very nicely from UFO popular culture (crop circles, greys, UFOs, abductions, cattle mutilation etc) but you'd be hard pressed to call it a "universe" in the same manner as something like Fallout, Mass Effect, Wing Commander, Star Wars etc...
Wing Commander and Mass Effect, however, are very much story driven. They have a diversity of characters, established history, locations, organisations and groups, cultures etc.
You could even argue that Wing Commander had gameplay to provide an excuse for the story - An exaggeration, to be sure, but what I remember most about Wing Commander 3 was Hobbes betraying Blair, Thrakkath killing Angel, the Behemoth being destroyed (and that bastard Tolywn blaming the Victory for it, heh) etc. The space combat was great but the focus - the parts of Wing Commander that I remember decades after I stopped playing it - was the story. That's why I agree with some of the sentiment here - that ME could be turned into a flight sim or that WC could be turned into an RPG. I'd pay to play either, providing they were done well.
And the X-Com flight sim goes back to what I was saying earlier - if you're going to throw out a continuation to the universe that is so far from your fans' expectations that it's in a different genre, you'd better make sure it's a damned good game. If it isn't, you can end up damaging the value of your franchise.
X-Com wasn't a game that was based around story. It was based around gameplay, atmosphere and strategy. IMHO - there wasn't enough story in X-Com to justify a spin off set in the same universe. If you wanted to do a UFO shooter, they could have called it anything. Carrying the name X-Com doesn't really do anything more than cynically exploit your fanbase. The same can be argued about Syndicate. The story was always secondary to the gameplay. It provided an excuse to have the action, as apposed to being a rich world to engross the player in. I loved X-Com, but its "story" was pretty well "aliens have been kidnapping people, the governments of the world form an international military force to stop them" And... That's about it, really. There's some cool info about the aliens and it all pulls very nicely from UFO popular culture (crop circles, greys, UFOs, abductions, cattle mutilation etc) but you'd be hard pressed to call it a "universe" in the same manner as something like Fallout, Mass Effect, Wing Commander, Star Wars etc...
Wing Commander and Mass Effect, however, are very much story driven. They have a diversity of characters, established history, locations, organisations and groups, cultures etc.
You could even argue that Wing Commander had gameplay to provide an excuse for the story - An exaggeration, to be sure, but what I remember most about Wing Commander 3 was Hobbes betraying Blair, Thrakkath killing Angel, the Behemoth being destroyed (and that bastard Tolywn blaming the Victory for it, heh) etc. The space combat was great but the focus - the parts of Wing Commander that I remember decades after I stopped playing it - was the story. That's why I agree with some of the sentiment here - that ME could be turned into a flight sim or that WC could be turned into an RPG. I'd pay to play either, providing they were done well.
And the X-Com flight sim goes back to what I was saying earlier - if you're going to throw out a continuation to the universe that is so far from your fans' expectations that it's in a different genre, you'd better make sure it's a damned good game. If it isn't, you can end up damaging the value of your franchise.