[Eurogamer]XCOM:Enemy Within - new XCOM:EU expansion

"What we've been working on is a expansion pack for Enemy Unknown in the style of big Firaxis expansions like Gods and Kings," explains Ananda Gupta, who's been leading the XCOM team on the creation on Enemy Within - a project he's finally able to talk about. "So Enemy Unknown tells the story of the alien invasion and the Earth's defence. Enemy Within is the same invasion. You're starting from day one and then proceeding through the same arc. It's an overlay on the original. It's not the next episode, and it doesn't take place after the ending of the first game. It's the same storyline - but with lots, lots more stuff."

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"By researching alien autopsies, you can unlock genetic modifications and put your soldiers into a gene lab that will give them extra powers," explains Gupta. "Stuff like augmented leg muscles so you no longer need ladders and pipes to jump up onto roofs, or you can have a brain modification that reflects psi attacks back onto the caster of the psi attack. Or maybe you have super bone marrow that can heal you during battle without needing a medkit."

And if you choose the latter? If you choose the latter, you get mechs.

"We've added mechs," nods Gupta, with understandable pride. "We've added what we call mechanised exoskeletal cybersuits, in fact. These are giant robot suits. You put your soldiers through this horrifying cybernetic augmentation process, and then once they're in this cyborg state they can wear these huge combat skeletons.

"What's cool is that once you do those mech augmentations, they become a new class," he explains. "Your sniper or whoever will become a mech trooper, which is a new class with a new training tree straight from squaddie down to colonel. In addition, every time you upgrade a cybersuit, the suit itself has tactical systems that you can select. The mechs really have two families of abilities, then: the kind that the soldier has trained and then the kind that are on the mech. The mech has stuff like a flame thrower, it has a kinetic strike module, which is tech speak for a big fist that you use to pound things, and it has stuff like a proximity mine launcher, for the more subtle touch."

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