I believe
this is the interview you're referring to? And I believe you are talking about this statement.
Is there anything about X-COM you'd like to see being addressed in this remake?
Yeah, of course. Mainly in the realm of accessibility, which some people might call 'dumbing down' In the early 90s of course you didn't have in-game tutorials or help, because it was all in the big thick manual. Today people do not read manuals, they expect the game to teach them how to play it. Which is fair enough. In Shadow Wars we put a fair amount of effort into making the game accessible, teaching the systems as you're playing the game, hopefully keeping the player interested as they're learning.
This is the major thing, but it doesn't mean you have to dumb anything down in the sense that the full complexity of the game would be eventually revealed to the player as he learns all the systems. That was one thing that was difficult about the original UFO [X-COM was known as UFO in the UK]. It put you there and forced you to make decisions straight away without much idea of what you were supposed to be doing!
You massively misinterpreted his line of thinking. There wasn't anything wrong with the fundamentals. The game just wasn't transparent enough to the player. Everything is in the manual, no tutorial, stats that lied to you like hit chance since it doesn't account for obstacles, hidden stats, poor UI. What he really wanted is to give players more information, a better UI and more direct control over character development(Mentions Skill trees later). Of course he would make a very different game now as technology has advanced greatly not only in power, but concepts and expectations.
With Shadow Wars he went a little too far.
If you have some boring turns where you're just moving guys around without any real interesting decision-making then turn-based games can get very dull very quickly. It's difficult to get right. We had this issue with Shadow Wars - although I tried to minimise it by stressing it to the level design team, but it's not easy to do. But the temptation is to make things big and complex and therefore ultimately a bit dull.
When you entered a new level you instantly knew how the level designer wanted you to play the level for the most optimal result. They over engineered the levels to eliminate one problem only to create another. It became less about tactics and more I have to go here and there, oh look, there is some convenient cover, I so wonder what's going to happen. To make up for it, instead of exploiting the one weakness you have which is numbers, they threw robots at you and upped the stats of the mooks +1(If you have played SW, you will know what I mean). At no time do you ever come to a situation that says, "Hey there are too many to take on, lets tactically retreat". It also meant there was one way to play a level and having an overpowered team was only partially to blame. Still a neat game, but I wish there was more to it.
FE:SS could have done with more modernising as seen with the other games in the series, but one of the great things about it is that it is tactically diverse something GR:SW doesn't really have. It means as your team increases in size, you have more options as how to go about a level. With just chapter 6, there are multiple ways to achieve victory. You can do a fighting retreat right, hold a defensive position at start, send the flyer with/out a bodyguard for the civilians, airdrop the lord to assassinate the boss, choose not to save the villagers, use Seth or god forbid, use Zerg tactics or some combination. The only thing that is mandatory about the map is the victory condition (Kill Boss) and have something to clear the fog of war, whether it's by scouting or more efficiently, use of torches (You get given one from last level) and staffs from a shop you can go back to before the battle.
I just can't see how you have managed to reload 20 times and not figured out a play style that suits you. Bosses never move and will only engage if attacked, even then they don't move. The AI is very predicable, always takes the bait and is suicidal. Any more abusable, and it becomes a puzzle game if not for the stats and the random number god.
Post chapter 6 completion note:
Saving all the villagers gets you an Orions Belt for your archer so you can upgrade on level 10+, but for best result upgrade at level 20