Will We Ever Get X-Com 3? (And Do We REALLY Want It?) 

There is a 97% Chance of getting an XCOM3. *RNG* MISS. Guess we aren't getting it.

I’d love to see more XCOM but I don’t trust any modern game developers. Do it right or don’t do it at all.

The chances of XCOM 3 being a live service too high that i dont want it

As someone with over 12k hours in XCOM 2, it was because of mods. I don't know if X3 could do any justice compared to what mods already do. The modding community is so strong that they could make X3, if they wanted to. I talk to modders all the time, and the things they can do with this old game is just amazing. If you have never played XCOM 2 modded, you are missing a lot. Covert Infiltration changed the game to the point that I cannot even play it without it. MOCX makes it so you have XCOM enemies that use same tactics as XCOM. More enemies than Firaxis ever made. Strong modders like RustyDios, Reshi, MrCloista, RealityMachina, ShadowX, Deadput, FeartheBunnies, Aero, Iridar, and Kexx, as well as so many others that I cannot put them all here. They make XCOM2 what it is today, and I know if X3 happens, it will have a lot to try and simulate or make better. Because if its not as good as modded X2, it will fail.

I'd love an XCOM 3, but I don't know what they could change or add to make it much better than Xcom 2. One thing I would like to see is them bring back the horror/mystery aspect from enemy unknown. Xcom 2 is great for gameplay but I have always missed that creepy and mysterious feeling from EU. But even if we don't get an XCOM 3, Xcom 2 with mods is one of the most repayable games I have ever played. So many things you can. You can have 100s of hours with the base game, and then countless more with mods. Not to mention the original games from 1997, and terror from the deep. Gems in their own right as well. Absolute master pieces as well. And the game from 2012 that got me into Xcom, Xcom EW. TLDR: I want Xcom 3 if it's done well, but don't know where the franchise can go from here.

Death only matters if the characters can develop relationships. Imagine having a survivor from a 1st and second generation squads, now you are in your majority 3d and 4th gen with a jagged veteran from the 1st one with appropriate dialogue. RPG story telling is endless with that kind of high stakes on board. It requieres good writers though

Honestly, that core XCOM2 experience is a licence to print money. Bit of a mystery why so many imitations have failed to nail it but it may indeed come down to the absense of that OG team. There really is no need to change much aside from the obvious improvements to graphical fidelity and (especially) optimisation. Whatever may be coming our way, it won't be anytime soon.

I feel like someone needs to grasp the horns and make their own stuff. No one can do it "right" but do it properly and you may just claim the Throne.

I thought Chimera Squad's exploration of the humor and interpersonal relations in a post-war multi-species society on Earth was unique and very cool. I'd be happy to see more exploration of that in a bigger story of a war of multi-species Earth against the Ethereals and their minions across a lot of locations/environments, ending on the Ethereal capital world. You don't need to make X-COM 3 into a dating sim to deliver that. And none of the xcom-like franchises can deliver that.

I really want to see XC3, but don't care about the social/relationship side that seems to be the popular trend in games these days. Give me chains of command, leadership ratings, morale, specializations and personality quirks/strengths/shortcomings, but stay away from card play, zombies and superhero antics.

Lowkey thought chimera squad was terrible

XCOM is an immortal PC game franchise that was fantastically remade and implemented. Iron-man mode XCom is one of the few games that made me care about my soldiers. The only character I remember now from all of 100s of hours of XCom is the first senior officer I lost. That battle had felt like a symphony up to that point: bold moves that eviscerated all of the bad dudes save one pathetic near-dead floater. Then instantly, with a single enemy act, the whole day transformed. Mary "Wednesday" Wilson, my goto Assault finisher...dies to a floater grenade from the very maximum range after finishing off three Chrysalids that were about to eat some bunched up fresh meats who got themselves out of position. The very last enemy, on its very last act, at its max range, with it's minimum damage potential. She died for the rest of the squad right in front of them. I went to the in-game bar something like twenty times to hoist a whiskey and deal with the post-trauma in-character issues. I role played the commander's experience: mentally wrote the letter to her parents, faced the troops at the morning-after reveille, tapped her successor. And returned to the bar, usually saying little to the troops in those brief visits. They knew I had their backs. They also knew why I was there. _______________ The "superpowers wielded by unique characters with pro voice actors" path that XCom2 took at the very end DLC was effectively a dead end...once XCom soldiers are voice by Michael Dorn and company, and are nearly too important to the game experience to "just die"...what's left? Yup, someone suggested "let's make an entire XCOM-alike game with bespoke heroes so important that we really can't have permadeath"?. In a time when people are clearly dead tired of men-in-tights superhero toyz? Oops. In "XCom3: Depths of Vengeance" I could have played as a contender. I could have been someone's commander. Instead I'm just a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.

The ending of xcom 2 makes me think that the elders planted a device that unleash a biological weapon that'll irradiate the entire planet and anyone that didn't find shelter would be turned into zombies and maybe even have a new enemy make a appearance since the elders said something about a danger that was coming and they wanted to prepare for it

As someone who is very much invested in the new XCOM games (I've run several RPs set in X2 setting, and are in the process of writing two fics in the world, plus I've played the game many times), I too would rather have xcom die on a high note, than be run into the grond like Halo, Mass Effect and countless other titles turned over to a new team. If there is to be an XCOM 3, I'd like it to be a narrative continuation of XCOM 3, which should include mechanics. In X1 and X2 the "scale" of the game did fit the narrative relatively well, where in X1 you were a covert, underfunded UN organization, and in X2 you have a single resistance group, which thanks to the Avenger can spearhead the liberation efforts, but you lack a structured, government level support. In the context of the post - victory world, such approach would not make sense. The Earth was liberated, so you have a access to milions of possible recruits, assistance from countless new city states and nations which would reappear after the defeat of advent. Naturally however, some of those nations would be at odds with one another, or with you (XCOM). And on top of that the problem of merging society between the sheep who lived in the city centres and the 10% or so of people who lived in the wilds and independent settlements. The enemy which is hinted at in XCOM 2 is also.. much more serious that Ethereal Collective ever was. From what we can gather , aliens had pretty much no off - Earth holdings and their invasion fleet revolved around one mother ship (the Temple Ship), which btw moved on before events of XCOM 2. And the enemy which pursuded the Ethereals, is mentioned to have destroyed the homeworld of said species, and with other planets. And more importantly, Ethereals were fleeing from it, and as wotc revealed, still decided to flee Earth as soon as possible once Avatar was complete. This means the enemy narratively should be significantly more dangerous than Advent and Ethereal Collective. Technology should also have improved, so it makes zero sense for XCOM not to begin with plasma and magnetic technologies, as well as entry into space technologies, and potentially colonization of other planets and systems. With the following, we have the perfect landscape for 2 types of games: a 4X strategy, similar to Terra Invicta, where you have to coordinate the assets provided by different nations to stage a global defence, or a political simulator. The problem is, both would require good writing to pull off, something that I do not think Firaxis has an experience , or writing team to do. X2's world and writing was good enough (especially if you consider potential of unreliable narration, and the Asaru theory, which fixes all the issues with the narrative), but it was largely a skeleton, and relied on headcannon to fill the blanks in it - something that won't be possible to do in the post - war world. A shift to grand strategy would also be a big change in identity of the series

There’s still passionate and creative developers out there and perhaps still with Firaxis. But Firaxis is under 2K and TakeTwo so… Hopefully! HOPEFULLY! The suits see what Larian accomplished with Baldur’s Gate 3 and go for that approach. But I’m being naive in thinking that :/

The indie scene is going to come in and fill the XCOM vacuum. We already have series like Xenonauts which is a throwback to the classic 90s XCOM, and there's Mars Tactics coming which is a homage to the XCOM reboot style of gameplay. It's been long enough that people are getting hungry for more XCOM like experiences so I anticipate that we'll see a few more indie offerings soon.

I've given up on XCOM 3 in the same way I've given up on Half Life 3.

If asked 'How do we do an XCOM 3?' This is what I'd suggest to them. You need a scenario in which the scale is relatively small in practice, but presents itself as large. My solution to that would be to focus on a recon effort into the territory of that looming threat from the end of WotC. Missions would be in the style of XCOM2 in terms of 'get in, do objective, get out before being overwhelmed'. Strategic stealth (like covering up information about XCOM) would be a major factor of gameplay. Leaving bodies or gear behind would give the enemy more info on XCOM and Humanity. Think of it as being on the other end of XCOM 1's missions, you are the force striking with surprise, but the more your enemies learn about you the harder they'll ramp up. Structuring the enemy as a hegemonic/feudal style empire would allow for a plausible limit to how much force/resources they could/would bring against the recon team. Ultimately it would be framed as a first contact/information war, about the recon team learning more than the enemy does about humanity. There would have to be a transition point in both narrative and gameplay terms from the skirmishing XCOM 1 and XCOM 2 fighting to a more open warfare situation. I would essentially break the game up into 3 phases for this. 1. First Contact (Assault Recovery). This is the XCOM 1 style raids to learn the lay of the galactic landscape, find the borders of ruler jurisdictions and get a handle on what the enemy tech is like. Enough info would convince humanity's governing council that we need to hit first and peace isn't an option. A soft failure state for this is the enemy getting enough info to do the same and launch it's own first strike. That would push you into a highly pressured phase 2 framed as stalling the enemies ability to martial to war while humanity scrambles to match them. The player is working with limited logistics and thus has strict budgets for this phase, but command encourages 'field requisitions'. 2. Preparatory Strikes (Sabotage before D-Day.) This is the XCOM 2 style strikes on strategic assets and locations located during phase 1 and phase 2. Places with fortifications and guards, much faster enemy response times and the enemy's XCOM equivalent dropping in as a soft enrage timer to pressure you. Objectives would be less pass/fail and more margins of victory, so players need to balance the scale of damage done to the risks they're taking with their forces. Eventually either the time before humanity takes the offensive runs out or the enemy makes a major offensive move. The player again is working with what logistics can be spared (in part because you did so well already or because humanity is scrambling.) but now instead of sending stuff back to the core worlds it'd be put to use locally. (Oppressive regimes breed resistance and feudal style power players don't care where the deniable weapons come from.) 3. Open Warfare (Special Forces) This would be the new, larger scale engagement setup, with linked missions in a branching pass/fail setup as this elite team hits targets to shift the tide of bigger battles that simply wouldn't be meaningful to try and implement directly on screen. If you've seen LW2 style raids with lots of defending settlement NPC's vs lots of aliens, you know why that needs to be avoided. Depending on how the overall strategic situation is going, the player may have wide latitude to throw around munitions like confetti. (If they're doing well.) If they've been having a rough go of it, more desperate mission types and tools come into play. (Release this engineered plague into the atmosphere system of a vital fueling station that has non-combatants is an example of something you wouldn't see if things were going well.) The phase would be a tug of war for territory and resources, with the player not directly making strategic decisions at scale, but given latitude to intervene anywhere they see fit. (Either because they've done so well, or because higher ups are too busy bickering to clamp down on them.) The endgame states would be either the collapse of humanities frontier colonies closest to the enemy (opening up a 'what if that went poorly?' sequel or expansion and leaving narrative space open.) or the ending of offensive operations in this border region with conquest completed. (opening up a 'what does the enemy do next and how does XCOM's elite strike force contribute?' sequel or expansion.) A good chunk of a third game's challenge is giving a compelling framing for retaining the smaller scale and limited resources to work with. It's my opinion that this is surmountable, especially because we the audience are on board with such from the start. Would I like a 4x style game? Sure, but that is best fit for a spin off, not a mainline XCOM title. XCOM has always been about an outmatched force with limited resources made of all too mortal soldiers outfighting a foe that vastly outweighs them.

Xoom doesn’t need hit chances, harder to hit targets should just take less damage instead of the soldier missing an enemy right in front of you.

I tried midnight Suns, it was just okay. My biggest hang up was the three person squad limit, with no way to upgrade it

Honestly I always felt that XCOM 2 was entirely carried by its customization rather than its inherent mechanics. Besides all the small quality of life improvements like being able to reload and move in the same turn, there’s equally as much just minor annoying shit. Even if it’s more barebones and a little bit more clunky, I’ll always feel the EW gameplay experience is much better balanced and doesn’t become frustrating nearly as often. That being said, I’m still glad I have a game where I can have 37th President of the United States Richard M. Nixon and Grunkle Stan team up to kick alien ass.

Midnight Suns looked like the relationship stuff was excessive but Denuvo killed any chance of me buying it

X3 has such a high bar of expectations that I’m worried. Even if it does happen, and it’s not just another chimera squad or midnight suns, and it does follow properly after X2, it probably still becomes what I call a “zombie game.” A game that comes out, is given a respectable attention by the players in the genre for about a week, and then is left to die. I’ve seen so many xcom-likes disappear so quickly and I think the term xcom-likes has a lot to do with it. By calling these games xcom-likes, we associate these games with xcom, a game that not only was groundbreaking on release, but has even further developed WAYYY out of proportion over the last 8 years thanks to the absolutely incredible modding community. Expecting these games to feel the same as xcom is unfair, and that’s why we leave them to die, so we can go play more xcom. Now, this is what I’m afraid will happen to xcom 3. I just can’t see the skeleton of a development team having anywhere near the creative power to match what xcom 2 has become. If it doesn’t match modded xcom 2, we will leave it to die and just play more xcom 2. Xcom 2 is getting even better every day, and has an 8-year [and counting] head start. 8 years worth of modding development is very hard to catch up to. At this point, I think the modding community would make a better xcom 3 than Firaxis ever could. That said though, there may be a little bit of hope left. ChristopherOdd mentioned someone during his recent xcom EW campaign, (sorry I don’t remember the name), but he was a pretty major player in xcom 2 and he is still at Firaxis. If xcom 3 will ever be able to reach the extremely high bar set by xcom 2, and the even higher bar set by mods, he would be the most likely one to do it.

The powers that be have evaporated two of my messages. All I wanted was to recommend a mod for UFO Defense called the "X-Com Files" and while I'm being prevented from describing it, it's entirely worth looking into if you can stand the original UI.

I absolutely loved midnight suns. the amount of work that went into that game must have been huge because the social sim part of it was literally full of all the comic book stories that characters experienced over the years. as a longtime marvel fan that game was a blast for me. But I also adore Xcom. wish they continued with both midnight suns style games and xcom games.

Honestly I'm not sure I want an XCOM 3 simply because we'll never get a Long War mod for it with Pavonis busy on Terra Invicta for the forseeable future, and probably not interested in going back to Long War even when they're done with TI. I haven't played vanilla EW or XCOM 2 in years, Long War is just so much better. The community have done a good job carrying the torch with Long War of the Chosen but I just don't see the same thing happening for a Long War 3.

I am a lot more attached to my squad members in XCOM 2 than the heroes in Midnight Sun despite them being just randomly generated characters with no special dialogue.

If we are gonna get xcom 3 i want actual detailed character creation with body type, face and all or don't even bother. Xcom is all about the soldiers for me.

i feel like xcom 3 would have to push the boundaries of the tacitcal turn based genre in the correct direction and currently that boundary is still in the fog. so until the genre starts being confined, even with modding, xcom 3 isn't ready to be made. story wise, 1 is invasion, 2 is occupation, following the trend 3 would be liberation. i could see the story line being along the lines of capturing an alien ship, and using it to liberating the various enemies species from the conquering overlords or something similar. and as you liberate worlds you can start recruiting and using tech from that species.

XCOM 2 is honestly a fantastic base of a game that they could just push decent DLCs at the level of war within if they wanted to. I 100% agree that live service is where they will take the franchise or a reboot due to a new game lead since Jake has left Firaxis.

since the ending of X2 teased an underwater enemy, Id love to see underwater and maybe air combat. you could control a submarine as an HQ and put diving gear on and stuff.

In my eyes (not a game developer, just a modern XCOM fan) if you were to simply take WOTC update the graphics, add Phoenix Point’s “Fine aim”, and maybe (huge maybe) research carry over from 2 to 3. Or if you like doing all the research and having to start from square one again maybe a bio-virus eats through lily’s systems and wipes all their data and connects to any offsite locations to wipe it there too. I’m gonna be honest though, i like the idea of starting with all the previous research done. That said, maybe new weapons and armor. Maybe the “Final Enemy” could be a Biomechanics race necessitating the revisitation of “Meld” tech. It could easily explain how a virus could so quickly and easily wipe their files and bring the flying fortress down. In summary; if it ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.

Fire emblem has already proven you can have interpersonal relationships in a permadeath strategy game Mind you fire emblem also proves that isn’t always a good thing (stares at fates)

XCOM-like? Isn't that just a turn-based strategy game genre? Also, nickle and dimed in Civ 6 where? That game came out with a stable launch and a good amount of content, and then they added to it. DLC for that game was good, I'd say, and worth the asking price.

Personally I’m all in on mars tactics

Eventually someone will put together a game basically just like x com because they are inspired by x com and wish it was still around and not abandoned like how that indi dev made war grove because Nintendo won’t make an advanced wars game like the old days

Welp, you were right about Civ 7.

I guess the best we'd get as Xcom 3 would be Troubleshooter imitation. A lot of set unique characters that each have their story and relationships. Not that I'm against it, but it's just not XCOM after all.

I want xcom3

wish they polish xcom 2 vanilla to be as smooth as wotc.

I’m personally down for an Xcom 1 remake

Xcom 2 and Civ 6 are the only games that I play from their eras. Just finished a yet another Xcom 2 Legendary run last week. It still has a lot of legs. I tried Chimera and just didn’t like the mechanics/gameplay.

Nuclear take but I think Long War 1 was peak nu-xcom. Very fun and a lot of depth to tactical battles, with the strategy layer preserved, but not so much strategic micromanagement required. A perfect blend of arcadey EW and OG xcom. But XCOM2 and WOTC moved even further away from that and I'd be worried XCOM3 would be too arcadey and lack the depth needed for a proper XCOM game

Midnight suns combat was great, it was the story and relationship side of the game that brought it down Whoever made to call to have Lilith as the main villain when much better villains exist also bears responsibility, and dating without romance also made the relationship side bad

I heard Chimera Squad is a short game, I can't confirm I only played it for 2 hours.

Midnight Sun is actually free on Epic somehow, or it was!

If you want another X-Com, I sincerely recommend Phoenix Point. After the last couple of patches, it's actually pretty great now! 👍 Midnight Suns could have been awesome if only they had the balls to pull the trigger on the more adult aspects of that side of Marvel, i.e. grown-up relationships, blood here and there, death, and alcohol. As it is, it's almost comical how toothless and tame it is in that regard. Especially with characters like Deadpool, Blade and Morbius. Spider-Man finds the *OBVIOUS* corpse of a Hydra soldier on a stretcher in Morbius' lair, and Morbius HAS to say out loud "He'll be fine later." Blade unloads his machine guns on a guy? He's just knocked out, of course! Romance a character? Nah, but can be "very good, close friends." Maybe even hold hands! 🤣

Yah no more Chimera Squad that wasnt my cup of tea. Read it was a game I purchased purley based on the ip, but later regretted it. Not bad perhaps, but not my thing atleast. there is other games in the genre that is promesing or good. But Xcom was literally the first game I purchased with my own money for my pc back when the ip was held by the French brothers. So I've been invested in the ip for some time. I still fire up Xcom 2 and play that frequently, just a mission here and there for some quick and fun times. One of the few games I never uninstall..

Do we rally want it? -Yes! Will we ever get Xcom-3 -Probably no

We will and we do.

They shouldn't reboot it, they should make an actual sequel to the original XCOM where the aliens are invading again and they continue the story, instead of giving a middle finger to the players and running with their stupid "the world was taken over because everybody's first run was a failure" BS. Nobody wanted an x-com game where you've already lost.

Sorry, not sorry, but any ascended XCOM fan treats their game and crew as a life/dating sim in as much as a turn based strat wargame, that's just the natural progression of what happens. Jake is simply doing for real as an actual product what we've been doing to our games for years, treating it as. Mod dude wouldn't spend years and years developing X-Piratez if he just wanted a pure wargame about fighting ayyys. I wouldn't be pushing 1000 mods in XC2 if I wasn't making it a life sim of earth under alien occupation. Also, what would they even do with XCOM 3 anyways? 2's ending implied at best a sort of retelling of Terror From The Deep. There's nothing or nowhere to really take the story, they could have had something like Apocalypse maybe, in that reuniting Earth is a far harder goal than they thought, but Chimera Squad already did the Earth is healing thing, so there's really nowhere else to take the story imo. Also friendship and relations aren't new or "Jake's big thing", relations were a thing early as Apocalypse

What about Phoenix point?

YOU WANT X COM3 PLAY PHOENIX POINT.

you think you want it, but you don't? :D

i dont wish for an xcom 3, i wish xcom 2 simply wrapped up the story. if you cant 100 percent commit to finishing a story, dont end it on a cliffhanger for fucks sakes.

So Sad jake left firaxis i fear if they ever release xcom3 it will be some cartoony type game, or worse something like Chimera Squad, and as for midnight sun totaly hate it

I love xcom but Im not hoping for a 3rd game

After Chimera Squad, I don't know. Too infected by Sweet Baby. Diverse squad you couldn't even customize? Systems that made little sense, like research. And of course Sectoids are cool now? They even speak with no voice changers and use clothes? Complete disregard for the lore. Nope. If that the direction, let's play Long War and put an end to the aliens for good.

I wish they would make one along the lines of xcom apocalypse but that's not going to happen.

I just started playing Long War of the Chosen so I'm not at all interested in a sequel. Tbh I was expecting another expansion after WOTC since the wnding was such a cliffhanger

Their won't be a 3 until the current microtrans and live service culture dies. Xcom can't make the type of money companies want. Moddershall are the best we can hope for 😢

it's the story line and all of the non gameplay BS that ruined the Marvel game. most people want to play the game and hope that it has good gameplay not sit thru cut scenes and dialogue 1/2 the game. I feel most of that is fluff but they put a lot of time into it because some gamers seem to focus on the lore and fluff detail put into games. Obviously with the Marvel game in particular they were trying to cater to the comic book fans with the relationships but it was just a waste. When it is overdone or when the gameplay is not most of the focus the games become boring having to sit thru generic storyline pauses in between the action/engagement. It just becomes too tiring at some point to sit or wade thru. I definitely do not want to see more of that in XCOM. I want more maps, enemies, weapons, base building, etc. that adds to the actual gameplay not the fluff.

Card system and the entire combat revolving around repositioning to get one more action was atrocious in Midnight Suns, rest of it was great except the overdone base exploration. Jake Solomon's design never was that good, he kept spewing "that's XCOM baby" for all the stupid flaws he invented himself. Nothing of value lost there really with how bad Chimera Squad was. The best thing that could happen is someone else going back to the original granular AP system. Till then I'll be on games that keep it going like Xenonauts 2.

If they just stuck to the formula of XCOM it would work, and people would love it, but we all know the greed is too strong, they can't resist putting in bullshit nickel and diming-mechanics. Honestly, I didn't enjoy Chimera Squad all that much BECAUSE of the character personalities. There are elements I enjoyed, but they mostly felt all the same, in a hipster LA vegan type of way. Annoying, not strong, disciplined, just snarky assholes who have to banter all the damn time. To me, they felt mostly the same, all of them. I much more wished they would've perhaps added a personality type to a character creation, where I could make my own dudes, and they could all be given whatever personalities I wanted on my team, or make a TON more pre-made characters that weren't all "diverse". XENOS GO HOME.

Zoomers don't have the attention span for an X-Com like game.

If it happens, it's going to be trash. The heart and soul of this franchise left. In fact... what is left of firaxis studios? The furniture?