2K Marin re-imagining X-COM franchise

If you have been dying to get your hands on yet another game from an earlier era brought forth to the forefront of the current generation, 2K Marin has just the game for you: X-COM.

If Bethesda’s version of Fallout has taught this industry anything, it’s that isometric games being brought to the first-person viewpoint are automatic gold.

That’s what we learned from that, right?

Not only will they be reviving the series for PC and Xbox 360, they’ll be changing most of what made the series great in the first place. Instead of drawing from the roots of the original games in terms of gameplay, the newest installment of X-COM will be a “narrative-driven first-person shooter.” The developers will be working to merge the old aspects of the gameplay with a story that would make Heavy Rain blush. Of course, the plot will surely involve what games like this always involve: invading aliens and the removal of them.

In the original, the player led an international organization created after armies of aliens begin to invade Earth. Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or X-COM, research alien technology and work towards the goal of eradicating the alien threat. It consisted of two kinds of views, an isometric view during battle and a view of Earth from where you’d direct all your X-COM activities. The original still continues to rank highly on my lists attempting to gather the best of the medium.

Take-Two , the publisher behind 2K Games and all the studios involved therein, purchased the rights from Atari in 2005, which purchased them when Hasbro closed its gaming business, which got it from Micropose in 1997. It’s been a long road to the development of a new generation of the once-popular franchise so hopefully they will do the memories of many a gamer justice.

In no way does this mean that the game won’t be a good one. Fallout 3 is one of the most impressive open-world environments I’ve ever seen, for example. But it certainly won’t be too much like the games that many might remember.

Read [Gamasutra]