First thing first: I have a question, or more if you want to be that way, but it is important.

“HOW GOOD will be the story?” And I mean “How in deep will we get? How much will we be able to learn about the aliens intentions and motives? What about the aliens themselves?” This should be a basic question if Angry Joe interviews the guy in charge BECAUSE what the initial X-Com lacked was, to my tastes, in the story.

It was hard: F*** yea, and I like it.

There were many alien species: Ooooh hell yea.

It could surprise you with how things turned out and IT HAD 3 PARTS IN TOTAL!: Heck, this is heaven.

The story is s***: Bummer.

Do not get me wrong here, and I mean it: This game, is golden. However I have been writing (Not a professional writer mind you) for thirteen years, since I was 10 to be exact. I got my first PC AND my first taste of the internet when I was around 13, a very special day, because this was one of the first games I ever got to play in the PC. To this day I still play it, even if I had to get them downloaded and play them in dosbox. HOWEVER, it irked me back then, and it does to this day, the fact that the story is… is… well… With what it could be… it is… inexistent! AND IT FRIGGIN GETS ME MAD!

If I had had the chance to talk to the creator of the games, this would’ve been my rant.

“You got the creatures (and aliens), you got the spaceships and technology, you even got three games that could have made a freaking good story… AND YOU DO NOT EXPLOIT THAT TO ITS FULLEST!? You sir, you made a masterpiece, but were a failure with the story”

However, the mechanics were good, the TU’s are a bitch to master, keeping your guys alive was hell (I mean it) and the game in general was a frigging masterpiece with enough difficulty to make your brain implode, grow back and then become a better machine to work each tactic out, making you enjoy each game and its challenges. The only thing that killed it for me is something that I see a lot in movies and in most modern games: The story SUCKS or is cared for way TOO little.

So you know what I did? With 13 years, and knowing just enough English (I am Spanish), I worked on one of my first fanfictions. Yea, it was crap, I mean, I have evolved my writing to a point where now I think it is decent (Or better, but I haven’t published anything yet, so I am not going to brag). This is the resume, and I ask for some patience to all of you whom read this:

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OVNIS had been visiting Earth for roughly ten or more years before the first one is caught, X-COM had been forming all those years to, someday, defend against the alien menace. However once the aliens finally made contact, it was a massacre. Agents dropped down in every mission, no nation would support the X-COM with soldiers and the men and women that joined were those that remained alive on the areas attacked or those that had seen too much.

This would lead to the sighting of the first hybrids, breed in a tank, as she crass landed the OVNI that was going to deliver her to one of the countries’ most important politicians. A young man would be the only human in the vicinity, saving her by chance before the operatives of X-COM showed up to sweep the place and take them away.

From there onwards the story would focus on understanding what the aliens came to do, learn about each of their societies, their objectives and rescue the hybrids that had been grown in tanks to adulthood during the last ten years, forming mixed groups and battling for survival until the end.

It also got mixed pairings between hybrids of most species and some humans, mostly because I wanted to show different perspectives, the usual ‘Look past the cover’ and some understanding of those that are different. Just roll with it, is how I like to write things.

HOWEVER, the story basically told the three games from the first one, to learning that the aliens had been testing humans for a long time in search of residual Micronoids and their lost city of T’Leth; a huge spaceship/station where, many years ago, a rift to the Micronoids’ home dimension had appeared as a byproduct of a failed test.

In the first story it would be revealed that humans, and most creatures, had been infected to some degree with these Micronoids, but after so long they would need an external source of fresh Micronoids to get controlled as the aliens in T’Leth had been. However the ship lied underwater, too deep for the space craft to conduct any search successfully, which lead to the plan B: Trying to get in contact with human life. It failed miserably as any attempt ended in fights and death that were masked as accidents. It brought plan C: Infiltrating the Earth and, if this objective was not possible, exterminate the danger the planet posed by bombing Earth.

Events would play out where the aliens had been unable to use their hybrids to hide within the human ranks successfully, with most of them now working against them alongside the humans. Destroying the world also was not viable as the ships required were too far away and the humans’ technology had far outgrown what they first had. The only thing they could do was to have ‘The Brain’ send a message to it’s would be killer, to be ready for when danger came from where they could not find it.

This would lead to the second game “Terror from the deep” where X-COM was now little more than an hybrid-human organization bent on making the hybrids have an use for society so they would not be wiped out. They would, however, be called back into action, sent funding once more, only to fight the aliens that had been genetically altered underwater to spread a chemical on the air and water, one that would, ultimately, react when T’Leth was destroyed at the end of the second alien war.

It not only polluted the air, this chemical forced most of humanity (as well as X-Com and almost all the tank born hybrids) away from the planet as only a few remained to construct Mega-Primus in a key location, one where the aliens infected with the Micronoids would send their dimensional gates to expand back inside this dimension, as their own home planet was dying by their own doing.

As changed as it is from the original, the result is the same: Humans won.
*

That took me two years of my life in my spare time, but I did it with 13 to 15 years (Which served for s*** as I lost it when I lost my first PC… but well, it was fun and good training). So if you sat all the way through THAT rant and all that little awkward exposition of one of my first (Crappy) writings, you should see where I am going with it:

The game will be great if the mechanics and difficulties are more or less the same, it will get the same or even more alien species. There are FEW WAYS they can screw this up, being as good as Firaxis is, however they can STILL screw it. My mayor concern, though, is what I already stated.

“Will the story be good? Will it be DEEP? Will the aliens have good reasons and enough of a background so we can either hate, like or whatever, them?”

For me a game is not about the graphics, I still play games that use bits of paint, what I care for, as one that wants to be a writer someday, is the story and how well it is executed. If that fails, I will lose hope on this franchise ever arising from its grave.

I hope that anyone that reads this feels it useful in any way, I just wanted to give my opinion and finally vent out after years of wishing for this game to return, hopefully with something that will give practically every fan, old and new, something to dream with. Games, comics and books have that as their main objective anyway: To make you dream, wish for adventure and create your own.

This one BETTER provide.