Civilization V: Brave New World due early July; Firaxis teases "big" new project

Brace yourself for an influx of exciting Firaxis news from PAX East. Are you braced? Good good. In addition to revealing the release date for the recently announced Civilization V expansion Brave New World - it's July 9th in the US, and July 12th elsewhere - the team also teased a distinctly XCOM-like new project (thanks, Kotaku ), which Firaxis are describing as a "big" release. The only clues lie in a leaked teaser trailer - oh and the very XCOM-like font displayed at the end.

The brief trailer consists of a shadowy military type saying the following stuff. "Hello, Commander. The war continues at great cost. We now believe another force is at work against us. If not dealt with swiftly, it could destroy us. What we are able to tell you…" - and that's where he's cut off by a giant 'SIGNAL LOST' message, which appears to be written in the XCOM font. So - XCOM2? A new expansion pack? Well, whatever it is, Firaxis are "not going to be able to talk about it for a while". The big teases.

In further XCOM news, it also emerged at the Expo that Civ V's Brave New World will feature XCOM squads as late-game units, delivered via (what else?) Skyranger. XCOM is also set to get a Mac release on April 25th.

And that's it - I've exhausted today's quota of the word 'XCOM'. Still, this is all very exciting - we'll bring you more news as soon as we have it.

Cheers, Joystiq .

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.