XCOM: Chimera Squad - humans and aliens team up

It doesn't change my point. Still >2.000 negative reviews which points at writing and design decisions.

 

The design is entirely fine as an x-com lite, and for the price point ain't bad (compare with say Dungeon rats vs Age of Decadence).

The writing is real bad though. It's never been good in firaxcom, but it went from passable to negative impact on overall experience with this one (War of the chosen was also comical with the chosen dialogue, but it was a smaller part of the overall experience).

 

Well, I can make a guess, and it most certainly doesn't involve good, nuanced writing.

Anyway, I finished the game. It was a mixed bag all in all, but probably worth the money I didn't pay for it.

 

I think the only thing that bothers me is that I feel, until the WOTC expansion maybe, that the aliens were so conditioned that all they could do was fight. They were stripped down into being really only tools for their rulers. It's hard to picture a world where any of them would be able to blend , be accepted, or not fight to the last alien.

 

Playing XCOM 2 atm, so in addition:

...with such distinctive human features...
Nuff said.

 

I could buy if it'd been decades since their liberation from the ethereals and if they were written more competently. But not 5 years later, and definitely not as "generic action movie quipsters" as they were in the game.

 

I hear there's a mod out that changes the number 5 to the number 20 in the prologue text. Finally, 80% of the game's problems are fixed.

 

"Who's been mingling their genetic material with my vipers in the morgue again?"

 

It even works better with Kelly, the rookie from XCom 2's tutorial, being Chief of Police and starting to get gray haired. I can only assume they didn't want to progress the timeline too far in the spinoff so they'd have a freer hand for #3.

I think there are more references to it being only 5 years later than just in the prologue though.

 

Is there any gaming media outlet that is critical to this SJW/"progressive" agenda insertion in games?

 

No. They were all taken out back and shot.

For our protection, of course.

 

Even then it's bulshit. We're all humans on this world today but in every country, every nation where more then one culture exists these cultures clash. Be it capitalism vs. communist, be it SJWs vs. the mental healthy, be it western values vs. izzlam, even blacks vs. whites.

And now imagine not only several distinctive cultures clashing with each other but distinctive species with different mental faculties, physical differances maybe even moral world views. There can be no peace without heavy introctrination and brainwashing. There would be human natives remembering every horror, every genocidal attempt and every war crime the aliens did... Thinking that there would be peace on earth even 20 years later is absolutely ridiculous. There would be radical human supremicy groups forming world wide, even whole nations, fighting against the alien scum. And should the game by any chance be about that - the supremicists are right. Earth for Mankind, Aliens fuck the hell off!

 

Yeah, we're looking at more like, 100-150 years of integration. Even then its going to be a powder keg due to the sheer bad blood over the whole genocide thing. Because remember, that's what the Aliens were going to do to humanity - commit genocide and turn the human goop into material to make better alien-human hybrids for the Ethereals to inhabit. Any human who's fine with that after even 20 years is a bloody idiot with the survival instinct of a particularly depressed lemming.

Everyone is going on about how humans are going to oppress the aliens, but you'd think there'd be some die-hard Ethereal loyalists among the alien ranks too, or aliens who want their time in the sun now that the Ethereals are gone.

Again, if you want a better story about Alien-human integration serving as a thinly veiled allegory on race relations, go watch Alien Nation. This is just crap.

 

Even given a thousand years, I don't think I could look at this guy and say, "eh, I'm sure he's a nice guy."

 

Isnt the whole concept of the nuXCOM that alien races are enslaved and used as an army for the Elders?
If that was known, why is it hard to believe they would eventually be accepted if freed?
I didn't play Chimera btw yet so I don't know how they implemented the thing

 

Yes, they were enslaved by the Elders. However, just because they were enslaved doesn't mean they will be nice or grateful upon liberation.
The idea that 100% of all aliens will suddenly get an alignment shift just because you killed their boss, and that none of them liked being under the control of the Elders or that none of them have their own aspirations for conquest that were being suppressed by the Elders is wishy-washy drivel.

 

When Volk and the Reapers show up in WOTC, Volk's basically echoing that sentiment. Then XCOM and the Skirmishers are like, 'yeah, but we have these strong Chosen guys to deal with now.' And then Volk basically caves and agrees to help, no more questions asked. Even if he had been arm-twisted into joining up, the resentment and factional distrust between the Reapers and the Skirmishers would probably have made Bradford send them on separate missions. But in the game it's like all is forgiven and everyone joins the Rainbow Coalition. To say it strains the law of probability is an understatement.

It actually could have made for some interesting cloak-and-dagger type of missions and story paths. Mission gets borked, Reapers blame Skirmishers. Skirmishers disappear for some time and Reapers demand that XCOM investigates, something like that. But instead it's big happy family and everyone gets their new OP super kill DLC units. After that initial dust-up they are part of the game, but no longer part of the story.

 

Sure not everyone but after 100-150 years there will definetely be some integration in the society, at least for the ones that want to be integrated.

 

Imagine how interesting this could have been, XCOM: Otherside. You play as the newly liberated aliens fighting back against the vengeful, xenophobic (realistic) human groups in the wake of xcom's success. Your objective wouldn't be destruction or domination of humanity again, just achieve a specific goal in a short campaign like fight your way to an alien tech facility that has a vessel that can get your people off-world.

 

Well, yes, and that's when the game should have taken place. There'd still be a lot of tension though. Which would have made for an interesting premise, if Chimera squad's purpose wasn't to fight terrorists, but to stop a full blown race war from occurring, which just happens to involve fighting both human and alien terrorists. Could have introduced a series of mechanics where you have to do a bunch of shady shit (manipulate the media, censorship, etc) in order to keep the peace for the greater good, with increased discontent if such activities were revealed. That would require balls to implement though, and I don't think the developers have those.

Yeah, I really didn't like how the skirmishers were ex-advent. I always thought that was bad writing, and the fact that they exist through a deus-ex machina pretty much proves it.
Especially when XCOM isn't hesitant at all in recruiting them. It should have been a surprise reveal, at least, like after the Elders are overthrown its revealed that the Skirmishers are ex-advent, and such a revelation shocks the other factions to the point that they immediately cut ties or something.

 

Ah I thought it IS when the game takes place. If they made it immediately after the XCOM2 incidents, it's stupid

 

Yeah, its set 5 years after XCOM 2. Which is what we're griping about.

 

Very lazy of them writing wise. They wanted a mix of humans and aliens and they didn't even try to make it "work"

 

To call it lazy you have to presume that they didn't bother to push sjw agenda for any reasons (it's entirely possible even thought it crying out throught almost everything), and well, didn't bother with the writing in general. Just set some major points because it's a part of a big franchize and also they had to set up some premise before the XCOM 3 but left the rest at the mercy of some guys in that relatively small Chimera team.

As an example - before ITT was discuss about why they used designation "they" towards every damn squad member, not just hybrids, aliens, just everyone. Is it "progressive" or simply lazy approach? I cannot say for sure about the reasons but I can say that it's very off-puting.

I mean, don't get me wrong, they obviously did a horrible job either way but I'm kinda curious about their motives.

 

This they/them shit makes some of these descriptions really hard to follow.