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The Rally Point: we need to talk about overwatchThree shots to the wind
Three shots to the wind
Ordinarily with games, something grabs me, I become dangerously obsessed with it to the exclusion of all else, and then suddenly abandon it for no reason a fortnight later.
Firaxis’s XCOM is the perfect place to start, too, since it’s the game that popularised the term “overwatch” at all, as well as the version of it that most turn based games since have implemented in exactly the same way. You almost certainly know how it works: on your turn, instead of using your second action point to move or attack, you can instruct a soldier to enter overwatch. On the ensuing alien turn, if an enemy moves within that soldier’s line of sight, your soldier will take a potshot at it. It’s a system that’s been repeated endlessly since (and before, but let’s be real here, XCOM established the formula almost everyone works from), as I briefly complained when reviewingCorruption 2029.
Who would trust these fools with guns?
So what’s the problem? Well, the main one is that it entrusts shooting to your soldiers, who are invariably panicky idiots who’ll spaff all their ammo at the first sign of an irate wasp several miles in the distance, leaving your entire team helpless when a giant faceripper strolls up seconds later. Then there’s the irritation of having to enter overwatch manually, i.e. constantly tell your elite soldier dudes to shoot the enemy you muppets instead of standing there uselessly like the hollow robots they are. It’s a question of … gaminess. A wooly, terrible word, but hard to avoid in cases where you feel a game’s design obstructing the fantasy it’s supposed to be enabling. I don’t feel like a leader issuing orders or using my crew’s talents when a game uses overwatch like this; I feel like a player trying to work around their stupidity.
The problem predates XCOM of course. The original XCOM (which I’ll callUFOto make the distinction clear) instead used ‘opportunity fire’, which you might also know as ‘reaction fire’. In UFO, everyone was assumed to be on overwatch at all times, which at least removed the hassle of having to tell them. They could also shoot during the aliens' turn multiple times, provided they had enough action points and ammunition, which also hints at why this system couldn’t really work within the remake. UFO was just more complicated, and porting opportunity fire to XCOM would, and I imagine did, lead immediately to headaches about how you’d square multiple shots with the “two actions per turn” system, and how to account for speed differences between weapons.
Interrupts give Silent Storm more options. Should my sniper shoot the climbing man, or help her on the top left? Or take pistol shots at both and hope they retreat?
Which brings us to a better way: interrupts. The criminally overlookedSilent Storm, for one, gave each character who still had time units remaining to use them during the enemy’s turn if they were quick enough to react. UFO also based its reaction fire on a unit’s statistics, but Silent Storm went further, with certain circumstances granting improved odds, or even a guaranteed interrupt, as well as a class-based upgrade system offering skills that let certain characters specialise in getting the drop on enemies.
Some Wildermyth enemies can ambush too. Note the crosshair icons as the Dart on the left tries covers his boss.
I’d be the first to admit I lean more towards the interrupt system than the overwatch system. But my point isn’t that the former is better. Within the last year there have already been two games clearly built on the latter that improved upon it without sacrificing the simplicity that made it so popular. And those are just the ones I know about. I think a significant step forward for turn based tactical games lies exactly in the space between your turn and the other side’s. There’s room for compromise between extreme ends of the simulation/usability dial too. Perhaps a system of standing orders so you can have some interrupts but ignore others. Or a prediction system (maybe even one that somehow crosses over with the prediction and counter-acting that makes simultaneous turn games likePhantom Brigadecompelling) that gives you a higher chance of getting an interrupt, or guaranteed overwatch fire, but only if the enemy walks through a specific door or remains in cover, and puts you at a disadvantage if you get it wrong.
I’m tired of reminding my elite warriors to go into overwatch and then watching them waste it anyway. I’m also tired of setting up ambushes that perfectly anticipate an enemy’s approach, only to watch my team do nothing because some random numbers were bigger than some other numbers on a character sheet. There is a better way out there, and if I live through a full decade of XCOM derivates without seeing a game cross the T on this issue, I might just have to give up hope of the genre ever moving forward.
