Over the next month IGN will reveal huge details about XCOM 2, uncovered during our visit to Firaxis’ Maryland studio. Tomorrow you’ll get an in-depth overview and interview with Creative Director Jake Solomon that’ll highlight the major new features, including new soldier classes, new aliens, stealth-infused tactics, procedurally generated maps, and more. Following that, we’ll have a Rewind Theater examination of all the details in today’s trailer reveal with Solomon and Lead Producer Garth DeAngelis.

And, later this week we’ll go in-depth with Solomon and DeAngelis on the reasons behind the bold move to take XCOM from a multiplatform series to a PC exclusive, and how XCOM 2 will be tailored to take advantage of that single platform’s strengths – followed by Firaxis’ exciting plans to support modders and their work.

0:00:32 - Alien cities are traps to lure in citizens for mysterious purposes; they're built on top of real-world cities.

0:02:47 - XCOM appears, starting concealed. Civilians might be alarmed by you sneaking around and alert the aliens to your presence.

0:03:30 - The idea behind the statue is that you can't be quite sure if the alien is picking the human up or leaving him behind.

0:04:15 - Ethereal sighted! Sort of.

0:04:38 - You'll have to avoid street scanners.

0:05:12 - Sectoids and Advent troopers communicate.

0:06:03 - Our intro to the XCOM classes and their robot pal, the Gremlin drone.

0:07:07 - Sharpshooter is using an upgraded weapon. Weapons are scavenged and upgraded with parts acquired from looting.

0:09:09 - How ambushes work to counteract the scamper. "We heard the scamper stuff loud and clear. There are actually a lot of ways around scamper."

0:10:06 - Advent use magnetic weapons, aliens use plasma.

0:10:22 - Vipers are the "true form" of the Thin Men. "Earth is their planet, so they don't have to hide anymore."

0:11:34 - "These weapons will wreck the environments. We've even gone so far that floors and ceilings are destructible."

0:11:54 - The Gremlin's stun is an area-of-effect weapon that also does minimal damage.

0:12:09 - "That's her bind. But the dangerous thing about the Viper is she doesn't need to find you. She can reach out with her tongue and pull her to you."

0:13:00 - "Aliens are much stronger - you really can't go toe-to-toe soldier-to-alien."

0:14:00 - Sectoid appears. "These are game assets...What the player is going to see in-game, these models are reflective of that."

0:14:36 - Melee combat. "The Ranger's great. They can deal a ton of damage with their sword, but that's a really risky move." "The Sectoid can mind-control you early."

0:15:30 - "You can carry your squadmates, and you have to carry your squadmates sometimes if they're hurt badly." "If there's a mission where you have to evac at the end, you're not going to want to leave your soldiers and their gear behind."

0:16:34 - You can call a Skyranger in anywhere on the map in most mission types. "As long as it's in a space where the Skyranger can hover." You can still be killed as you try to reach the exit.

0:17:16 - "The player gets to play in a wide variety of environments, and some of them are out in the wilderness where people probably wisely don't want to move into the cities, and XCOM often operates on the edges."

0:17:58 - The Avenger rises out of the canyon. "The idea is that the player's on the run, and they have a base now that is mobile."

0:18:55 - "The idea is that XCOM games have had so many subtitles, we felt it was time to clarify that this was the next step for the franchise, so it made sense to put a 2."

“When we looked at what we wanted to do with the sequel, we had all these very, very ambitious goals,” said Solomon. On his must-have list were high-fidelity characters and environments, better-looking destruction, physically based rendering, and the crown jewel he’d wanted to get into Enemy Unknown but couldn’t: procedurally generated maps. “To do that, we had to use all of our studio expertise … and our expertise here is PC. That's our home, and that's where we're really comfortable.”

Focusing all of Firaxis’ efforts on the PC made logistical sense to DeAngelis, too. “Internally, with a relatively small team for the size of the game that we are, to be able to say we can focus on our platform that the studio has a pedigree for, and that X-COM: UFO Defense has a pedigree for, as PC-only... it just made a lot of sense, and that's how we wanted to dedicate our time.” XCOM 2 runs on a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 3.5 (Firaxis’ customizations are too extensive to easily move to Unreal 4), which in some ways has been rewritten to the point of being “unrecognizable,” and it’s much simpler to make that work on one platform than three or more at once.

“We talk about ‘What is the experience like on PC? What does the mouse feel like in this experience?’” The most obvious change resulting from those conversations is how the team is optimizing the interface to be mouse-and-keyboard friendly, moving UI elements and grouping them logically so that buttons we’re likely to press one after the other aren’t placed on opposite sides of the screen. “It will certainly be recognizable, but there isn't one UI widget that's the same,” said Solomon. We’ll also see more tactical information (such as detailed explanations of why your chance to hit is increased or decreased) displayed on the tactical interface, since Firaxis can now count on players sitting closer to their PC monitors and being able to read smaller text. And though Firaxis plans to add it in the future, the current plan is to launch without gamepad support.

Of course, the one thing that a console version of XCOM 2 wouldn’t be able to handle at all is modding, which Solomon and DeAngelis consider to be one of it’s biggest features and key to offering the kind of long-term replayablity and value people have come to expect from the makers of Sid Meier’s Civilization. We’ll have more on how Firaxis is embracing modders in XCOM 2 next week.

“People will see the gameplay source, all the scripting,” he promised. “This is the code that makes the game what the game is. Here's the editor and all the assets that went into this game.”

That’s all music to the ears of modders and fans of modding alike – especially since XCOM 2 will have Steam Workshop integration to make browsing, downloading, and installing the mods talented people create a one-click process. Sadly, we seldom see this level of support and open access to a game’s inner workings these days, so it’s terrifically refreshing to hear developers express such enthusiasm for embracing the mod community.

...

When asked what kind of XCOM 2 mods they expect to see, the team had a few ideas:

“We don’t have free-aiming. That will be one of the first mods, and that certainly will be fine,” said Solomon. “Maybe somebody will bring back time units,” he mused. “I'd be fine with that.”

Art Director Greg Foertsch had some words of encouragement for map makers: “If you want to make a completely static level, you can. If you want to make a basically completely procedural level - which is basically what our levels are in the game right now, that's 100% doable. It could be narrow; it could be square. It could be super big. And, again, it's super flexible. There's really no limit – you can do whatever you want. You could literally make an Enemy Unknown map.”

We are happy to announce Long War Studios, the developers behind the Long War total-conversion mod for XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM: Enemy Within, has partnered with Firaxis Games and 2K for XCOM 2.

The Long War Studios team, which is comprised of John Lumpkin, Rachel “Amineri” Norman and James “JCLewis” Karlson, is currently hard at work on multiple mods for XCOM 2. These mods are currently slated to be available at launch on February 5, 2016. We’ll have more information about the content of these mods soon.

Can't say anything else. Where I'm at in the game is under embargo now. I will tell you it's devouring my damn life.

I thought we were finally getting back on track with TB's channel... then the XCOM2 review code arrived today... RIP2016

Guys do I need to finish enemy within to know the story?

I did finish the original xcom so does it carry over the save to the enemy within and will that save be carry over to xcom2.