Stark wrote:Given the game's story-based structure, I'm not sure how anyone could play it again. What would the point be? Farm more monster closets?
I guess people 'having fun' with a game that has a single correct approach says a lot about how captive the fans of this kind of game are.
Originally beating it was meant to unlock a NewGame+ mode with the "Second Wave" options added on, which would have changed things up in some interesting ways to add a challenge. Those got disabled pre-launch and 2K says it was just for internal fun and no plans are made to revisit it, which is either bullshit trying to hide On-Disc DLC or a very sad statement that they've got no concept of how easy it would be to patch it back in (as modders do) to upscale the replay value tenfold.
Honestly, the story-based structure isn't so bad. It basically acts as 'notable moments' in the playthrough but it doesn't restrict the player to doing them at a certain time or a certain way. I just experimented with the Overseer UFO and I can not only ignore it, and it comes back, but shoot it down and then ignore it. I guess they build another one and just tell the crew to stop driving it into the Ukraine.
In an ideal world there would have been some diverging elements to shake things up, and less of a bottleneck placed on things like Alien Bases. Just because the Hyperwave Device is Super Cool doesn't mean there only has to be one. It could just be like the Synonium Device, something you pick up on sensors and have to capture or destroy erry once n a whilly.
But I'd say, all things considered, once you get out of the woods and into the game proper the storyline bits don't FORCE you to do anything. In UFOD it was pretty sandboxy, but the developers could be pretty sure that on an average game players would:
1) Shoot down a UFO
2) Capture a downed UFO
3) Defend a city from a terror mission
4) Capture a psionic alien
5) Invade and destroy an enemy base
Not all of these are REQUIRED. I think you can get all the stuff you need without going into an enemy base or capturing a Psionic Alien, right? Maybe not, I forget who unlocks the final invasion mission in UFOD, in TFTD it involved Lolbstermen who didn't have Psionics (Molecular Control). But you could theoretically do it without responding to terror missions. Using these kinds of pretty assured moments in a game's progression to link bits of story is a smart idea and doesn't preclude you from telling your own story in your head. The only characters who seem to have a personality are Shen and Valen.
I think the real issue is that there's so very little that actually happens per-game. The overseer UFO was, for me, the 7th UFO I've seen. How sad is that? I bet I'm near the end (running out of research topics usually makes you feel that way) so having nearly "beaten" the game with only one base, 2 terror missions that I can remember, and only 7 UFOs spotted (probably like 3-4 council missions and a boatload of abductions to fill out the rest of the 25 missions I've been on)... it has been fun but it is also a very thin experience. I can see playing through again for the fun of it, especially to just derp around on Normal and laugh at how crappy the enemies are, but it is fair to say that you can expect things to go relatively the same.
UFOD wasn't so different. Play it on Superhuman, research things in the sensible order, and unless the enemies throw you a curveball by dropping Mutons on you Month 2 you can basically write the script of how it'll go. The strategic mode in both games is somewhat pre-scripted. The flaw in EU is pre-scripting the tactical mode too much. People would complain a lot less if they didn't see the same map 5 times in one playthrough.