Remember X-COM’s rotatable 3D globe? It’s back, and still called a “Geoscape,” per the original. From here, you can speed up, slow down or pause the real-time strategy layer…and intercept alien bogeys, of course. According to design lead Jake Solomon, the development team plans to play up the “juggle multiple events” angle, too.
“In fact the aliens sometimes will run missions in parallel just to make it even more explicit,” says Solomon. “Like the original, this is not a linear game, so what missions appear and where and what the rewards are, those are all different every time you play. But yeah, you’ll still get those events where the aliens are forcing you to choose who you’re going to protect, and that has a pretty big impact on both short term and long term strategy because different countries may offer you different rewards to help out. And then of course over the long term, countries are going to remember what choices you made and as a result of that … you can lose countries, countries can pull out of the XCOM project.”