We're nine years removed from turn-based strategy game. One of its lead developers has shared part of the pitch document for what became Enemy Unknown, revealing some potentially massive changes.
On Twitter, Jake Solomon, the lead designer on Enemy Unknown, put up an image of the front page of his vision for bringing back the classic war game back in 2005. A lot of what's described, like the suspenseful, squad-based combat, doing research, and managing the panic levels around the world, made it into the final game, but a few elements are distinctly different.
In the 'action' section, you can see "real-time 3D battlefields", suggesting the plan initially was to make more of a real-time XCOM 2, where humanity has ultimately surrendered to the aliens.
Solomon remarks that some of his phrases shows why this first pitch didn't make it. XCOM: Enemy Unknown was eventually greenlit in 2008, and the rest is history.
Here's the very original pitch doc for my first swing at XCOM, likely 2005 or so. Found it cleaning out old work junk. I use the phrase "Esprit de corps" in the doc so no wonder this version got canned. pic.twitter.com/dCIIDkw5DD
— Jake Solomon (@SolomonJake) February 6, 2021
The last XCOM game was 2020's everything we'd like to see from XCOM 3.