2K Games and Firaxis have announced the first downloadable content for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Entitled "Slingshot," the DLC packs in three new Council missions with a unique story arc. The story takes place in China and, says designer Ananda Gupta, revolves around a "badass Triad operative named Zhang." Said badass will be a playable character and, unlike other XCOM soldiers, will feature a pre-designed face and a unique voice.
We spoke with Gupta and Firaxis producer Garth DeAngelis to learn a little more about the Slingshot DLC and the developer's future plans for XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (10/9/12)
The first of two planned pieces of DLC, Slingshot features three new missions on three new maps, which promise to be visually distinct from the maps already available in XCOM (unfortunately, they won't be available in multiplayer). Triad operative Zhang has had "an attack of conscience regarding some interesting technology," says Gupta, "and he's offering it to XCOM." In addition to the new locales, the missions promise more varied objectives, which DeAngelis says are "riffs on some of the existing gameplay objectives," but with "new mechanics."
The missions will be offered via the shadowy Council in the single-player campaign. In fact, it will be the first Council mission offered in a new game, though players can choose to tackle it at any time once it is offered. Incidentally, starting a new game will be the only way to access the Slingshot missions, though the rewards may be worth it (more on that in a bit).
Why add missions instead of new aliens or weapons? Council missions are "a good way of offering new stuff to the player that doesn't distort the core experience," says Gupta. "If we add new weapons and new tech, then we're expanding the tech tree, and that adds research time and that's on a fairly finely balanced pinpoint right now." XCOM, he says, is unforgiving of players that fall behind in research, and adding even more options to the existing tech tree could be problematic.
Instead Firaxis decided to allow players to unlock an existing piece of tech much earlier in the game than would normally be possible. Specifically, the DLC offers early access to the incredibly powerful Blaster Launcher. Normally, players won't research the Blaster Launcher until very late in the game (if they research it at all), so completing Slingshot definitely comes with a concrete reward. Zhang himself is something of a reward, with Gupta referring to him as a "hero" character
As for the future of XCOM, Firaxis is open to the possibilities. Regarding the potential for mods and user-created content, DeAngelis notes that "it wasn't one of our core pillars when we started the project," but the team understands how important it is to the community. "It's something that we'd like to resolve going forward, but we still have quite a few things on our plate that have been planned for a while."
