In one of the video interviews out currently a developer says that he won't talk about missions later on in their demo because he did not want to reveal the story. Does that mean this game is very linear? I had the impression that it was more of a open world type strategy game where you always had options of what to prioritize and where to send your troops. If something say always happens, like a scripted event, after you do UFO mission D, doesn't it lose some of its replayability value?

I was hoping there wasn't a huge deal of story based missions, just randomized action until you eventually get to the root of the invasion.

@Funkydupe: This is from what I've heard. There are overall objectives, and the game has specific story moments, including story missions when you reach certain milestones. The game itself is extremely open, you can build you base how you want, you can prioritize research how you want to the detriment of other things, you can choose what battles you want to fight and which nations to help. I'd imagine something like a story beat when you get powerful enough that reveals a new enemy, or something to help tutorialize when you first get psi powers, something like that.

@Funkydupe:

I think it's similar to a structure like Jagged Alliance 2. There are milestones, missions or locations you hit within the game that trigger certain progress in the story. But surrounding that is a very open world. Since they're seemingly on-track with keeping the design philosophy of the original at the core, and the 90ish minute twitch stream showed the global map briefly, I think it's safe to assume that it won't simply be Mission A, B, C and Done.

I'm obviously just speculating, but I think it's safe to assume that it will be very open with milestones just to progress the story.

EDIT: Yeah, what @wh1terav3n said.

I think you're looking into it too much, I have no idea about this game, but all games have stories, even completely open-world ones.

Well the deeper into the game you get the more crazier the missions come up. I'd rather he didn't say something like "Wait till later on when you go in missions where the aliens were able to clone humans!" or something to that effect. You can't just go do near endgame missions right out of the gate with your low level army, stuff is going to be locked away until you progress.

@Grimhild said:

@Funkydupe:

I think it's similar to a structure like Jagged Alliance 2. There are milestones, missions or locations you hit within the game that trigger certain progress in the story. But surrounding that is a very open world. Since they're seemingly on-track with keeping the design philosophy of the original at the core, and the 90ish minute twitch stream showed the global map briefly, I think it's safe to assume that it won't simply be Mission A, B, C and Done.

I'm obviously just speculating, but I think it's safe to assume that it will be very open with milestones just to progress the story.

EDIT: Yeah, what @wh1terav3n said.

There was a stream? And I missed it?

Goddamn sleep schedule! You've ruined me for the last time!

You do get to decide what missions to do and which to ignore. But it seems there are specific story beats from time to time. Aliens will invade. You probably will fight some sort of alien boss. From what i understand it's a mix of the 2. However i am not 100% sure on any of that.

Re-playability seems to mostly come from MP and from trying to finish the game on Hardcore mode (no in mission save so live with the consequences) on Insanity difficulty. Which is said to be absolutely brutal to the point of no one having done it yet internally so they are eagerly anticipating for first people to do that when game comes out.

Also during one of the interviews someone asked them if you could keep playing after the game end and the developers said yes. So take that as you will. They might have been referring to a mission end not the campaign end it was a bit confusing.

@Terramagi:

http://www.twitch.tv/2k/b/330155062

Actual video starts 4 minutes in.

Thanks guys and girls, and yes milestones make more sense for story progression in a game such as this one. Although I do feel more calm about the replayability now, I know for an eventual second playthrough I'll probably be wary of researching that specific tech or going to a specific mission, knowing it'll trigger the next step in the story. Especially on harder difficulty settings. I'd like some possibilities for branching in the story based on player choices too, as it'd make the whole macro gameplay experience less predictable.

Personally i am looking forward to the Hardcore mode + Insanity.

As someone who did Fallout Tactics on Ironman + Hard, with a solo character. This seems like it will be actually more difficult.

Its not going to be Sim City. But I also dont think its going to be MW4

To be fair, the original game had story events. Kind of. There was one event right before the endgame that served as that game's point-of-no-return. I'm hoping for more in the new game, but I read the thread's title with a smirk because, if you've played the original game or seen it played, you know what happens at the end. And you know that the story is pretty much nonexistent outside of technology and alien autopsy descriptions, and that point-of-no-return event.

On a related note, I'm really interested in seeing how the new game handles the endgame.

@Funkydupe said:

In one of the video interviews out currently a developer says that he won't talk about missions later on in their demo because he did not want to reveal the story. Does that mean this game is very linear? I had the impression that it was more of a open world type strategy game where you always had options of what to prioritize and where to send your troops. If something say always happens, like a scripted event, after you do UFO mission D, doesn't it lose some of its replayability value?

I was hoping there wasn't a huge deal of story based missions, just randomized action until you eventually get to the root of the invasion.

The first 20 levels is about your personal story choices from character creation, the rest is about Orr and the Zhaitan - the Undead Elder Dragon. You make loads of major decisions - the most important one is chosing which one of the three Anti-Undead Orders you want to join - which determines your general perspective on the things to come. You can chose between two or more story branches/quests at pretty much every turn regardless - so really, other than the core gameplay eventually getting stale - replayability is nigh endless regarding story quests. The later parts are full of amazing setpieces. Pure awesome - albeit always a bit on the tougher side difficulty-wise. You got to bring your A-game, or some friends.

Edit: Oh lol - I thought you was talking about Guild Wars 2... dunno how I ended up here from that forum section. Damn you lazy skim-reading!

It means Sherlock Holmes dies in the middle.

He's obviously talking about the romance options you have with the alien invaders.

@Seppli: Haha, I was reading your post going like wtf. :D

Well there was definitely a progression in the original games, even if it wasn't traditionally linear.

You'd start by taking out a few scout UFO's, do a few terror missions, then you'd begin taking out enemy bases and terror ships, and it would always end with a mission to mars. So yeah, I'm sure this game will follow a similar progression.

I'm so excited for this.

@yinstarrunner said:

Well there was definitely a progression in the original games, even if it wasn't traditionally linear.

You'd start by taking out a few scout UFO's, do a few terror missions, then you'd begin taking out enemy bases and terror ships, and it would always end with a mission to mars. So yeah, I'm sure this game will follow a similar progression.

I'm so excited for this.

Pretty much this. There is no "mission 1", "mission 2" etc, but as the game moves along the missions evolve into bigger and bigger escalation (which has traditionally ended up with taking the fight to the aliens). While there might be a few specific missions that will always pop up your normal run-of-the-mill missions are somewhat random as the game mixes up what kind of UFO spawns and what kind of aliens they contain. The locations are also "random" as they are based on where you actually shoot down the UFO. At least that's how the former games have worked.

There's also the element of how well you're doing. If you're shooting down every UFO and responding quickly you'll get a lot of crash site missions where you're clearing out a UFO packed with aliens, while if you fail at shooting them down you'll get more "alien sighting" missions where you're picking off aliens in urban settings (or even worse you get a lot of base invasion missions).

Also, Jake Solomon (lead designed) said that even tho there was that open progression present, you could always do your own thing, and play infinitely without "finishing" the game/

So I guess he mean delaying that final mission.

To be fair, the original game(s) had a very linear story as well. Just that it was padded with a great deal of randomly generated missions, which gave you the resources you needed to progress the story, which was very closely linked to Research progress.

... there just wasn't a whole lot of story missions.