First if all, your lengthy response doesn’t refer to the point I respoded to: design choices for FiraXCOM, specifically for two point movement, weren’t influenced by “dumbing the game down because consoles” but were concious design choices, based on designers intentions.
I think you are overastimating cultural impact UFO game had. It’s an IP that has been dead for years, and didn’t have legacy that would make it relevant and therefore make people aware of its existance. I am pretty sure that community, which facepalmed when FPS XCOM was annoyed, and rejoiced when Firaxis announced their game, was fairly small.
As I said: Firaxis and Gollop’s sensibilities are different. Even if one approach alligns more with your personal tastes none of them are fundamentally superior to each other. FiraXCOM was always marketed as “reimagening” not “remake”. It was never meant to replace the original. It takes borad strokes, ideas, structure and appeal of the original, but its focus and execution is different. And it’s fine and it’s good. It’s not about PP vs XCOM3. Both games and designs are good and I hope to play and enjoy both.
Sid Meier always mentioned how board games influences his design, and that approach is still present in Firaxis games. Board games are great - they achieve a lot with limited resources at their disposal - calculations have to be simple, amount of pieces limited, playtime managable. There is an elegance and efficiency in them that is so often lacking in unrestrained digital medium. Somewhat like films vs. theatre I suppose.
So yeah, straight up moving over systems from UFO to FiraXCOM didn’t work so well. And therefore, they went for something that fit better with their sensibilities and resulted in overall better game, then it would otherwise. What they show is a prototype, a vertical slice - something they built for testing in early development. Of course it lacks gameplay element that would make it fun. No single element in there is finished, and plenty that would have were not implimented. You don’t create a game immediately with all pieces in place. It’s only natural they that started figuring core mechanics (moving, shooting) before spicing it up with additional stuff.
If I were a betting man, I would be willing to wager, that it isn’t because technical or design reasons that we don’t see classic AP anymore, but because there haven’t been a game which have done them well in a long time.
When we see turn based games they straight up use two point movement, or something with lower values (or pretending to be lower values) because of XCOM. People like XCOM, therefore me want to be like XCOM-but-with-a-twist. Things happen in cicles. One game sets up a trend, others follow it because:
- people like it, so you don’t need to spend time convincing them it’s good.
- it’s modern, it’s polished and it works, so you can safely impliment the machanic into your game, while focusing on things that you want to stand out with.
I am somewhat worried that PP might not break away from the Firaxis mold enough, to succesfully flesh out their own ideas. But that’s all speculation - we will see in December.