We’ll also see more tactical information (such as detailed explanations of why your chance to hit is increased or decreased) displayed on the tactical interface, since Firaxis can now count on players sitting closer to their PC monitors and being able to read smaller text. “It will certainly be recognizable, but there isn't one UI widget that's the same,” said Solomon. “We talk about ‘What is the experience like on PC? What does the mouse feel like in this experience?’” The most obvious change resulting from those conversations is how the team is optimizing the interface to be mouse-and-keyboard friendly, moving UI elements and grouping them logically so that buttons we’re likely to press one after the other aren’t placed on opposite sides of the screen. ““When we have our meetings, when we talk about stuff, we only talk about PC,” said Solomon.

it just made a lot of sense, and that's how we wanted to dedicate our time.” XCOM 2 runs on a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 3.5 (Firaxis’ customizations are too extensive to easily move to Unreal 4), which in some ways has been rewritten to the point of being “unrecognizable,” and it’s much simpler to make that work on one platform than three or more at once. “Internally, with a relatively small team for the size of the game that we are, to be able to say we can focus on our platform that the studio has a pedigree for, and that X-COM: UFO Defense has a pedigree for, as PC-only. That's our home, and that's where we're really comfortable.” Focusing all of Firaxis’ efforts on the PC made logistical sense to DeAngelis, too. “To do that, we had to use all of our studio expertise … and our expertise here is PC. On his must-have list were high-fidelity characters and environments, better-looking destruction, physically based rendering, and the crown jewel he’d wanted to get into Enemy Unknown but couldn’t: procedurally generated maps. “When we looked at what we wanted to do with the sequel, we had all these very, very ambitious goals,” said Solomon. “A focus on PC was the only way to make the XCOM 2 that Creative Director Jake Solomon and his team envisioned when they sat down to talk after completing Enemy Unknown.

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