Shots We Never Take: XCOM's Double-Edged Influence

Has there ever been a game that both revived and redefined a genre to the extent that XCOM did? Prior to Firaxis’ 2012 reboot, the genre could be described without embellishment as an abandoned wasteland. In its wake, the revitalized genre seemed poised to thrive. Ubisoft and Nintendo even got in on the action with their own take, sending Mario and Peach into battle alongside the Rabbids. And every new game, or turn-based RPG that took some inspiration from XCOM’s design, was quickly described by its own creators and games media as “like XCOM.”

Which is embarrassing. Too rarely, it’s embarrassing because the game in question isn’t actually like XCOM at all. Far more often, it’s embarrassing because that description fits its subject perfectly. Here’s a Cold War espionage game. Here’s a 1930s adventurer archaeologist game. Here’s a post-apocalypse furry game. Here’s a cowboy game. They are all XCOM. With some twists and spins, sure. But they all start there.

XCOM’s influence is too great, its shadow too long. Instead of a thriving genre we have a thin slice of it crammed with variations on the same, limited model that XCOM itself already stretched. Tactics games should be more than this. They were more than this. And I think the proof lies in another game: X-COM.

Let's contextualise that.

From rise to fall, exile to return, the status of the X-COM series throughout its history makes it a strangely reliable barometer for the overall health of turn-based tactics.

The first entry, 1994's UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defense), was originally a sequel to Laser Squad, itself a descendent of the Rebelstar series stretching back to 1984. Like its remake, UFO was famously punishing, and built on a detailed strategy/management layer, and a premise inspired by a sometimes prescient, kinda dull TV series. 

But it wasn't about elite badasses posing in chunky combat armour, reliably unlocking the optimal perks. Its soldiers were very much just guys. Twitchy, jumpsuited grunts whose only hope was whatever you put in their hands, counting on superior numbers of semi-disposable bodies in the early days. They crept fearfully about, square by square, spending four of their 40-70 Action Points each time, hoping they weren't being watched by an alien who only needed them to spend three more AP to turn them into a soup-like homogenate.

The Action Point and the granularity it represented ruled the genre in the 90s, and brought UFO huge success even in North America, where fiddly, slower-paced strategy games sometimes struggled with pre-internet distribution. Its strategic side was comparably granular, requiring management down to every magazine, while the aliens actively operated in the world, unseen until your carefully-placed radar caught them out.

Its inevitable sequel was less interesting than the start of a similar series: 1995's Jagged Alliance. A mercenary management game that replaced the plasma fodder with unique premade characters with voices, personalities, and opinions. It was made redundant by a 1999 sequel, coincidentally named Jagged Alliance 2.

Both amped up the details. Mercs could sneak and crawl, the wounded bled at different rates, bandaged over multiple turns, and required a merc with medical skills and supplies to recover. Poorly maintained guns could jam. Stamina went from seldom relevant to crucial, as even non-penetrating shots drained it, and puffed out mercs did everything worse except complaining and collapsing (same). A high marksmanship or medical stat helped less if that merc's hands were shaky or aged. Their "interrupt" system is flat out better than UFO's "opportunity fire" (soldiers automatically use leftover AP to repeatedly shoot during the aliens’ turn) and XCOM's similar, worse overwatch. Interrupts grant full control of characters who catch the enemy out, letting you use their remaining AP however you want, not mindlessly blast the first thing that moves. It even took action points to raise a gun before firing (a varying number per weapon), which you could do in advance to gain that split second edge over an enemy.

This model showcases a different fundamental principle of design: characters aren’t able to do more because you gave them a perk, a special move they can fire off like magic. Anyone can attempt anything. Ability is a gradient, not an absolute, and possibilities derive primarily from systems interacting rather than unlocks and puzzling out the unstoppable combos.

JA2's complex simulation, colourful personality, and highly non-linear campaign map make it a peak of the genre even today. But with only 90s game distribution and publishing attitudes to rely on, its future was bleak.

By 1999, X-COM was also headed for trouble. The third game, X-COM: Apocalypse, escalated the series' destructible environments to exploit all its futuristic weapons. Missed shots in UFO might put a gap in a wall, but leave hovering rooftops. Apocalypse drained a building's owner cash for every wall you damaged, every incendiary round that burned away the stairs and brought the catwalk crashing down. Dropped munitions might ignite, and some aliens exploded on purpose, just to be like that. The strategy map became a simulated city, with dozens of organisations deploying vehicles, and potentially supporting or targeting the player. New recruits visibly travelled from slums (never antagonise the taxi firm), deliveries could be shot down, a stray missile bring down a bridge that prevented your APC from reaching a mission.

I love it for throwing in portable teleporters with building-sized terror beasts, evil bacteria, and what looked like killer baked beans. But Apocalypse was clearly rushed out, and most ideas like the city politics had few, dull consequences. An ambitious decision to include real-time and turned-based modes compromised both, and its easy detection and battle AI beelining for the player undermined much sense of lurking alien menace. Where JA2 jettisoned some of JA’s details (you no longer had to bury dead mercs, for example) to focus on others, Apoc was all new ideas, and had too little time and focus (same).

Rather than refine those ideas, the series began to tailspin with spin-offs like Interceptor ("What if X-COM had space dogfights?"), First Alien Invasion ("What if X-COM was a surprisingly good email game that nobody played?"), and Enforcer ("What if we just didn't give a shit?").

Interceptor was a fun idea, and porting the core design to other genres still has potential. But its middling action didn't inspire an innately niche audience. "Underdog space pilot" and "all-powerful administrator" are very different fantasies (and if you've ever been an underdog administrator, congrats on the burnout), and space combat games were about to vanish anyway. None of these experiments got a second chance.

The structure of the games industry at that time deserves an invective-laden article of its own. Between the rise of actually good 3D, the idiotic hardware dickwaving wars, shifts in the console market, and the doubling down on nurturing toxic gamer culture by the handful of corporate publishing behemoths who stood over all distribution like inbred colossi, suffice to say that once third-person shooter Enforcer was sharted out by Hasbro Interactive in 2001, X-COM was as good as dead. Turn-based tactics practically died with it. As the sectoid-bashing star waned, the whole genre collapsed into a malnourished ghetto considered radioactive by most publishers.

In 2003 the exceptional Silent Storm demonstrated how 3D physics could be more than just shiny. A shot fired in Jagged Alliance might hit the guy next to your target. A shot fired in Silent Storm might go through your target, ricochet off a cobblestone and blind his nearby friend, or go through a thin wall and hit an ammo crate that brings half the building down. And on the next turn, an enemy in the attic shoots down through the hole. This wasn't an arbitrary ultra-failed attack; it was possible because of the properties of every element involved. That's the key: these were simulationist games. Firing a gun creates a bullet that goes somewhere, where in XCOM you either succeed or nothing happens. A spray of bullets is multiple independent shots, not one agglutinated attack action.

Silent Storm got a decent expansion, but largely disappeared instead of inspiring the decade of successors it deserved. Even today, its robust engine, destruction of almost everything, and room to tactically exploit them remain impressive, but apart from a very obscure sequel in Hammer & Sickle, the ground it broke has been pretty much untouched since.