XCOM: Enemy Unknown alien designs inspired by X-Files, Men in Black

XCOM is readying itself for a return. Lead game designer Jake Solomon has been speaking about the game’s inspirations, focusing on the designs of each alien.

”The first UFOs are disc-shaped, because we wanted it to start in the same place where the original game did, which came from a very campy sense of UFO mythology—The X-Files was very popular when the first games were made,” he told Killscreen.

“One of the new aliens we’ve shown off is this tall, slender man in a suit. He’s really bizarre—he’s incredibly flexible, he can leap really high—it’s a very creepy thing to see the human form extended and twisted. That came from the same place of UFO mythology—we looked at Men in Black, the infiltrator in a black suit.”

Solomon indicated there is a reason these designs were produced.

”Again it’s not necessarily campy, or campy in a bad way, but the player already has a back-story about aliens in their minds, so we wanted to take advantage of that.”

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is heading to PC and consoles in North America on October 9th. It reaches Europe and Australia on October 12th.