Here's 48 minutes of delicious XCOM 2 gameplay, with the developers themselves (Firaxis) sitting in the hot seat. Lots of character creation in the beginning, but they launch a mission near the 22-minute mark.
They deploy from Russia to India. They go over their weapon loadouts one more time. Then land in a small town in ADVENT Patrol Zone 10, somewhere on the outskirts of Mumbai. Now, I don't have a homegrown concept of what Mumbai, India, looks like, but the in-game maps look like they're designed for strategy and not for artchitectural aesthetics, so don't expect a need to familiarize yourself with Indian urban planning. These maps will likely look similar, anywhere and everywhere you go on the globe.
Couple other things in this video that the devs point out. Civilians are not neccesarily friendly toward XCOM. Civilians may panic. They may pull out guns of their own. Vipers are "super dangerous." Every single one of their moves is a "game changer." Yikes. But, as XCOM vets will know, good placement and good overwatch can solve a lot of problems. Also, they reiterate how much of the map is procedurally generated. If they'd dropped down onto the map at any other time, checkpoints could be different, civilian placement could be different, parked cars could be different. Also, watch as the roof starts caving in on a church they set on fire with grenades.
After all's said and done, though, there are still dice rolling behind the scenes. Even the devs have to watch their high-percentage-chance shots just miss sometimes. Just completely whiff it.
Don't care. Game looks brilliant as ever. Do want.
XCOM 2 will be out on Windows, OS X, and Linux on February 5, 2016.
