New X-Com Shooter Coming From BioShock 2 Studio

It's official: 2K Marin, the team that brought you BioShock 2, is working on a new FPS based on the classic X-Com franchise.

Described as a "reimagining" of the series that was created by MicroProse in the mid-90s, players in the new XCom game (that's right, XCom, not X-Com) will take on the role of an FBI agent in charge of identifying and eliminating a deadly threat posed by "an unknown and faceless enemy that is violent probing and plotting its way into our world." The game will maintain the "strategic core" of the original X-Com games, combining it with the natural intensity of a first-person experience.

"With XCom, 2K Marin will re-imagine and expand the rich lore of this revered franchise," said 2K Games President Christoph Hartmann. "Players will explore the world of XCom from an immersive new perspective and experience firsthand the fear and tension of this gripping narrative ride."

The timing of the announcement is a bit interesting: Original BioShock creator Ken Levine has long been rumored to be working on a new X-Com title, but in an L.A. Times interview yesterday, Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick claimed he had been "freed" from working on BioShock 2 so he could produce "an original title that could become another franchise." Levine is the creative director at Irrational Games, formerly 2K Boston, which developed BioShock but was uninvolved in the sequel.

And for the record: My heart is aflutter.

XCom is currently in development for the PC and Xbox 360, and no release date has been set. For more information (in the future, because there's not much there right now), keep an eye on XCom.com.