'XCOM 2' At PAX South: Firaxis Says 'We’re Giving Them Everything'

Eager XCOM 2 fans who followed today’s PAX South 2016 Firaxis Megapanel were not disappointed, as they got a sneak peak at the game’s intro. But those fans who love modding have the most to talk about. XCOM 2 modders will now stand at the ready for mods so robust they promise to enable the creation of co-op mode. The partnership between the newly-formed Long War Studios, creators of XCOM’s most enduring mod, and Firaxis Studios has led to great expectations. Today’s panel addressed those expectations and delivered a blistering amount of details about what’s coming to the XCOM 2 release on February 5.

Mods were part of the discussion from day one, according to Foertsch. “It seemed like everybody wanted more, and we wanted to figure out how we could provide more, and part of that is our community,” he said. “That’s how the collaboration between Firaxis and Long War Studios began.”

There will be three mods available on release day for free on the Steam Workshop. “Throw a whole bunch more problems at the player but also more tools,” said Lumpkin. “There’s a lot of choices that the player can make to get to the endgame.” The three inaugural mods are new weapons, modded enemies, and a modded soldier class.

Lumpkin also said that his team provided advice on how to make XCOM 2 itself more moddable without the need for changing game code itself by providing more “hooks,” making mods from different groups compatible. Lumpkin said “the sky’s the limit” when it comes to mods. The team itself has yet to encounter a hard ceiling on constraints.

As for mod tools, McFall said “the barrier for entry has been lowered quite a bit because you don’t need to be able to read machine code.” Modders can approach the game from almost any level, from rebuilding code to simply inserting new assets.

The front end for the mod tools uses the Firaxis ModBuddy framework, which enables modders to copy/paste script from the game itself as needed. Localization files are provided. Modders can debug their mod in the ModBuddy framework and publish it directly to Steam, but modders aren’t limited to only Steam. The framework will allow modders to zip up the folder for manual distribution or simply drop their mod in XCOM 2 ’s directories to be automatically found when their game next loads.

The XCOM 2 editor provides mounds of XCOM 2 assets accessible through an easy-to-use content browser. While the game itself ships in a compact format, the mod editor will be a 45 GB separate download. New stories, cinematic scenes, maps, and even soldier personalities can be added in. Lumpkin had a modest recommendation for fledgling modders. “You can start by changing game constants, in ini files. It changes the power of a gun, or a perk, or something like that. You can make a significantly different game just doing that.”

Firaxis has also taken pains to make the dev console and a slew of debug modes very easily accessible, from a Tactical Quick Launch that allows you to build a quick custom map to a Hotseat mode that allows you to control even the aliens’ turns. “What makes life easier for the modders is going to make life easier for us,” Foerstch commented. Now, “modders… don’t have to fight the game to figure out what’s happening.”

This extends to Replay mode, the core framework that will enable modders to create co-op mode. Using Replay mode, modders should be able to make a move, send it to another computer, have that computer replay that move, and so on.

What mod is the team most looking forward to? Foertsch said, “I wanna see a pigeon gun February 6th.” (Animals are a particle effect, so this is perfectly possible.)

Next the panel moved onto a detailed discussion of how maps will work in XCOM 2 . Hess said one of Firaxis’ goals was to improve replayability by making “a procedural system to assemble levels out of many smaller parts,” as opposed to the static maps of the first XCOM. “You can make new levels with unique layouts by rearranging the content Firaxis has built without making anything new yourself,” said Hess.

There are three types of maps: plots, parcels, and PCPs.

A plot is a container map that tells the game which other maps to load to assemble the layout. Plots determine the layout of the level, where the player starts and where his destination is.

Parcels are the “meat and potatoes” of an XCOM 2 level. They come in three sizes: small, medium and large. “They’re the most visually interesting and complicated spaces and are usually buildings. Parcels are the most difficult of our maps to build,” said Foerstch. Hess added that the design of vertical space was as important as the floor plan due to the tactical advantages of height.

Finally, there’s PCP: Plot-cover parcel. Hess explained them as “small sections of road networks that run in between parcels. They’re built in sets, usually between a dozen or two dozen maps.” If you build a plot such that all the pieces are lined up, it will work seamlessly, Hess said.

“In its crudest form of the procedural system it was parcels and plots,” said Foertsch. “As we started finding needs to add more stuff, [Hess] came up with a system where not only are the parcels changing, all the things that provide cover on the street is changing, so the combinations get really insane.”

Maps can be either as procedural or as static as you like, with a percentage in between.

Then there are Plot types, which are how the content is divided up in the game. Each plot type has its own set of maps, plots, PCPs and parcels. There are 5 major Plot types : City Center, Shanty Town , Small Town, Slums, and Wilderness. Certain missions in the game are restricted to certain plot types, helping to space content evenly and giving each plot type its own identity. “But as a mod there’s a lot of flexibility in what occurs where,” Hess said.

Biomes provide even more variety to Plot types. Without building anything entirely new, Biomes can entirely change the look of any given map by converting cabins to be arid, or tundra. “This was a huge win for us, just managing content,” said Foertsch. New Biomes can also be added in to make a planet look more or less alien, for example. Real time lighting offers the capability to mod in nightstalker-type weapon abilities, a pipeline the team confirmed had been tested.

Finally, the team revealed their PAX South exclusive: the cinematic intro to XCOM 2 .

You can place your pre-order for XCOM 2 on the game's Steam page here . XCOM 2 is available to play Feb. 5.