X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread

[Space Satan]

It does, but that does not solve majority of problems with combat mechanics.

 

[ArchAngel]

It does, but that does not solve majority of problems with combat mechanics.

OK but why did you even bring this up now?! We were talking about supersoldiers and how will the expansion challenge them. To which Mazisky gave a solution that didn't work in last expansions where the player side got new and powerful weapons as well.

 

[Space Satan]

Supersoldiers tend to make game revolve around them. Like, ah, fuck this sergeant, I have to keep reaper from being wounded and stuff. I would rather welcome faction system as additional sources of missions, equipment, income, intel and recruits, than superunit to which your soldiers would serve as a supplement.

 

[Mazisky]

It does, but that does not solve majority of problems with combat mechanics.

OK but why did you even bring this up now?! We were talking about supersoldiers and how will the expansion challenge them. To which Mazisky gave a solution that didn't work in last expansions where the player side got new and powerful weapons as well.

Yeah, i'm worried too about unbalancing in favour of Xcom soldiers and even more cheese late game. I just hope the new chosen and enemies are strong enough. If not, i'll wait some mod who makes late better.

 

[Brinko]

Also revealed by the devs, you cannot change the head of the Skirmisher unit. You can only pick from a variety of fucked up scars to give the same head since these dudes are just assembly line troopers given freedom.

 

[Zombra]

Seems dumb to do all this stuff for cool character customization in the base game, so you can get all attached to your soldiers, and then have these late game ringers come in and be like sorry grunts, this game is about us now.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

almost every single gameplay design choice is dumb and you complain only now?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Falksi]

Another humanoid alien? Oh joy, they're really pushing the imagination boat out again.

Fucking yawn.

 

[Mazisky]

Another humanoid alien? Oh joy, they're really pushing the imagination boat out again.

Fucking yawn.

Can't disagree.

I like this expansion but they added a total of 7 enemies, ALL humanoids, that's disappointing. Like wtf, where are the weird aliens

 

[Space Satan]

Another humanoid alien? Oh joy, they're really pushing the imagination boat out again.

 

[Mazisky]

Another humanoid alien? Oh joy, they're really pushing the imagination boat out again.

Excluding the Muton and sectoid, all the others are a lot "alien" and "weird" than the Xcom 2 ones.

Theese are real alien design, these are humanoids but weird , the Xcom 2 expansion ones are just humans with different suits or skin tones.

Pretty different

 

[Falksi]

Wrong compa

Another humanoid alien? Oh joy, they're really pushing the imagination boat out again.

These were introduced 20 odd years ago.

The lack of imagination with the new aliens is shocking and boring.

 

[Grunker]

The lack of imagination with the new aliens is shocking and boring.

 

[Mazisky]

New exclusive gameplay video released now

Environments look pretty cool

 

[thesheeep]

6/9 look like a Japanese sex toy.

 

[Mazisky]

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/xcom-2-war-of-the-chosen-preview/

Battling hordes in XCOM 2: War of the Chosen's Lost and Abandoned mission
Hands on with The Lost and Abandoned, War of the Chosen's new intro mission.

Like the first XCOM's expansion, War of the Chosen is designed to inject a pile of additional content to experience over the course of a fresh playthrough. Among a long list of other stuff, the expansion brings new missions, enemies, and resistance factions you'll encounter in your fight against the alien menace. Last week at 2K Games' office I played The Lost and Abandoned, a new mission from War of the Chosen that introduces many of the expansion pack's new characters and mechanics.

Chronologically, The Lost and Abandoned takes place near the beginning of a new campaign. You have to facilitate a meeting between two of WotC's three new resistance factions: the Reapers, who specialize in stealth, snipers, and explosives, and the Skirmishers, a warrior faction of former Advent soldiers who get extra actions when enemies do stuff, and can attack without ending their turn. The two don't exactly see eye-to-eye—the Reapers take a hard-line stance on anything alien, and the Skirmishers are, well, alien.

At The Lost and Abandoned's mission prep screen, I formed two pairs of soldiers to each escort a Reaper and Skirmisher operative. The resulting three-man squads were formidable, as the resistance factions come with powerful new abilities. The Reaper faction, for example, utilizes stealth throughout the entire mission, thanks to "Reaper Shadow," a more powerful form of concealment that is both harder to see through and has a chance to not be broken when taking a shot at an enemy. Undoubtedly, advanced Reaper talents will allow their soldiers to get into and stay in stealth throughout several waves of combat.

In addition to stealth, Reapers carry a Claymore mine that can be thrown and later detonated, both without breaking concealment. I also encountered a talent that would let me remotely detonate environmental explosives like cars and gas tanks—again without breaking stealth. Finally, Reapers attack with the Vektor rifle, a sniper rifle that can shoot on the same turn as moving. Powerful stuff.

After reaching the rendezvous point with my Reaper team, control switched over to the Skirmisher soldier and his two escorts. The Skirmisher faction plays differently from the Reapers, employing an in-your-face surge of attacks rather than calculated strikes. Skirmishers are outfitted with a Bullpup rifle that can be fired without ending the turn, meaning that with the base two actions, Skirmishers can attack twice, or attack then move, reload, or enter overwatch. I didn't encounter it myself, but I was told that advanced Skirmisher talents grant them extra actions when enemies move, shoot, or do pretty much anything.

Skirmishers are also equipped with a grapple gauntlet that provides both offense and mobility. The grapple lets Skirmishers hookshot to higher terrain, as XCOM soldiers have sometimes been able to in the past—the new functionality is the ability to grapple enemies and pull them in close for a melee strike. It seems later talents will also unlock a ranged shock attack through the grapple wires.

Land of the lost
While escorting the two factions to the rendezvous point, my squads encountered one of War of the Chosen's new enemy types: the Lost, which are basically just zombies. The Lost appear in droves, are attracted to the sounds of combat, and individually can be dispatched relatively easily.

Unlike most XCOM enemy squads, which appear in groups of three or four at a time, the Lost would appear in groups of four to six or more, often in rapid succession. But they can be removed from the battlefield just as easily. Any weapon-based attack against the Lost is called Headshot, and securing a kill in this way grants the attacker an additional action.

This means you can chain together attacks on the Lost, so long as you secure a kill with each shot (the ones I encountered had, at most, four health). But when you're attacking multiple times, ammo becomes a factor. My sniper was able to cut down several Lost in a turn, but stopping to reload broke the free-action streak. And while The Lost and Abandoned never pitted me against both the Lost and other, more conventional enemies at the same time, I imagine fighting both in tandem will open up interesting new battlefield strategies.

Speaking of non-zombie enemies, let's talk about the newest big bad aliens: the Chosen. In our previous coverage, we talked about how the Chosen are Firaxis' take on Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system—smart enemies that adapt to your playstyle over a series of battles. In the Lost and Abandoned, I got to see the first of one of those encounters.

After reaching the rendezvous point and brokering a tenuous alliance, everything went to shit. The Assassin swooped in and abducted my Skirmisher. The resulting fight showed off the Assassin's skillset—stealth, a powerful melee strike, will-crushing psionic attacks, and immunity from reaction shots (so no abusing overwatch to set up an ambush). She's not without weaknesses, though—landing multiple hits in a single turn deals bonus damage to the Assassin's massive HP pool, and each Chosen takes additional damage from a corresponding resistance faction (in the Assassin's case, the Reapers). That second bit struck me as a bit odd, though—why should affiliation with one faction or another cause a soldier to do more damage to this particular alien? Maybe there's an in-universe explanation that I missed—otherwise, it's one of the few times I can think of that XCOM has implemented a 'gamey' mechanic without a logical reason.

Either way, I finally managed to catch the Assassin out of stealth a few times and delivered enough damage to trigger a retreat. The difficulty was tuned to easy at this demo event, but the Assassin still was a formidable opponent. I can only imagine the nightmare she and the other Chosen will cause when they show up in missions on higher difficulty. I mopped up a few remaining Lost waves and made it to my extraction point, bringing the introductory Lost and Abandoned mission to a close. I didn't get my Skirmisher soldier back, but a rescue mission became soon available on the world map, granting a chance to bring him back into the fold. I was also met with a warning that most of the available map was under the protection of the Assassin, meaning she would be working to disrupt my progress and could show up at just about any time.

All told, the Lost and Abandoned offered a great introduction to the new mechanics and story of War of the Chosen, but it's just that—an introduction. Like vanilla XCOM 2's intro mission, you can choose to forego the mission altogether, which will be nice for players on their second or third WotC playthrough. Doing so also means you'll encounter the resistance factions and Chosen enemies in a possibly different order, whereas completing the Lost and Abandoned will always set you up with an alliance with the Reapers, a Skirmisher rescue mission, and the Assassin as your first Chosen enemy.

War of the Chosen adds a lot to make one of the best PC games even better, but more than anything I'm excited for all the personality it breathes into the alien conflict. The Chosen mock and taunt you at every turn, while the resistance factions—with their personal squabbles, individualized expertise, and unique outfits—add some nice variety to the hundreds of soldiers I've sent into battle before them.

http://www.pcgamer.com/12-new-things-in-xcom-2-expansion-war-of-the-chosen/

12 new features in XCOM 2 expansion War of the Chosen
Hero characters, new enemies, personality traits, and more.

I recently sat down with XCOM boss Jake Solomon and played through a mission from War of the Chosen. This expansion adds an enormous amount of new stuff—both frivolous and game-changing—to Firaxis’ brilliant sci-fi strategy game, to the point where it almost feels like a sequel.

And while I was taking notes on my laptop as Solomon explained the expansion’s new features, I noticed he seemed to be remembering something new every few minutes. So here are as many things as I managed to scribble down during my demo, between actually trying to play the thing.

If you want to read a thorough rundown of everything I got up to in my playthrough, diving deep into the new enemies and altered campaign structure, you can read all about it in the next issue of PC Gamer.

The Chosen are crazy powerful
These powerful new enemies aren’t just regular grunts. They have distinctive personalities, weapons, and powers. And they’ll even remember previous battles, similar to Shadow of Mordor’s nemesis system. You’ll fight them multiple times in a campaign, and they’ll get stronger as you do. You’ll come to hate these guys in the same way you grow to love your own soldiers.

The Assassin is a master of stealth, able to appear from nowhere and knock your soldiers out of a battle, temporarily, in a single action. Hunters are alien/human hybrids with a more cynical personality than you might expect from an XCOM enemy, and use long range rifles. And Warlocks can summon additional enemies to the battlefield using their psionic powers.

Assassins can kidnap your soldiers
Don’t get too attached to your soldiers in War of the Chosen. The Assassin can actually kidnap them directly from the battlefield, leaving you a man short in the middle of a fight. And if you want to get them back, you’ll need to secure intel to find out where they are and mount a potentially costly rescue operation. You’ll have to decide whether getting them back is worth the resources, or if you should just leave them in alien jail.

The Chosen have traits
The Assassin I fought in my demo had two positive and two negative traits, which will be different for every Chosen you encounter. This will determine how you fight them, and present weaknesses for you to exploit.

My Assassin had Blast Shield, which made her immune to explosions, and Shadowstep, which meant she could move around without triggering Overwatch. But to balance them out she had Bewildered, which means she takes additional damage if she’s attacked more than three times in a single turn, and Adversary, which makes her take extra damage from Reapers.

There are friendly heroes too
It wouldn’t be fair if you had to face The Chosen alone. You can recruit three hero classes from resistance factions that are similar to their alien counterparts, but with a few key differences. Reapers, the opposite of the Assassin, are nifty with a sniper rifle and can kill enemies from an incredible distance. And if they fire a shot while cloaked, there’s a chance they’ll remain hidden.

Skirmishers, equivalent of the Hunter, can use a grappling hook to reach high ground and get a large number of actions each turn, making them extremely mobile. And the Templar, like the Warlock, can use psionic powers. As they kill enemies they build up a resource called Focus, which makes them stronger.

Heroes have their own upgrade tree
Each of the three friendly champions have their own bespoke upgrade tree, containing some very useful, and powerful, abilities. But to balance things out, they don’t level up the same way as your regular old soldiers. They have to spend a new currency called Ability Points, which you earn during battles by playing tactically. Flanking, using cover effectively, etc.

Hero abilities include Banish, which is one of the last Assassin unlocks and sees them emptying their entire magazine into a single enemy in one turn. For the Skirmisher there’s Battlelord, which grants them an action every time the enemy moves. This should give you an idea of how helpful these characters will be when you reach the late stages of a campaign.

Your soldiers will have more personality
Personality traits are new too, adding more nuance to your soldiers, but also having a tactical impact. One guy might only be happy when his gun’s fully loaded, and so if he’s low on ammo and you go to take a shot, he might disobey your order and reload instead. Another soldier may be afraid of a particular type of enemy, making him flee in terror if they show up.

Soldiers can also get tired after especially long, gruelling missions, affecting their performance if you bring them on the next one. And if they’re shaken they can’t enter the battle at all, and need to rest up for a while. As a result of all this, soldiers in XCOM 2 feel more fragile and human, which will surely make their deaths even more heartbreaking.

Soldiers can form bonds
Soldiers who fight together can eventually become friends, unlocking new shared abilities. One example is a free action, which a bonded soldier can ‘gift’ to their partner. And the more they work together, the greater their compatibility will become, earning you further rewards. But you can bet that when one of them dies, the other will suffer the loss in a big way.

Sitreps make things more interesting
These modifiers affect missions in increasingly unpredictable, interesting ways. It could be a limit of three soldiers, or a level littered with dangerous explosives. These are designed to make campaigns feel more dynamic.

There’s a new enemy type called The Lost
These zombie-like enemies were once human, but now stalk the crumbling, infected cities—a new environment in War of the Chosen—attacking anyone who crosses their path. Hordes of zombies might sound tedious in a relatively slow turn-based game, but Firaxis has a clever, and satisfying, solution to dealing with large groups of these pale-skinned, skull-faced fiends, which clamber out of the shadows and charge towards you.

Hit percentages for the Lost are high, rarely dipping below 70%, and when you score a headshot you get a free action. So if you’re lucky, and as long as your soldier’s weapon has ammo, you can repeatedly chain kills, taking out dozens of them in one turn. This is an elegant solution to having to fight so many of them at once, which would otherwise be a real chore.

There are three kinds of Lost
There’s the regular, shambling kind, which behave much like traditional Hollywood zombies. Then there are the Dashers, which can move much more quickly and easily surround your troops. And the Brute is a bullet sponge, able to soak up a huge amount of damage. And it’s worth remembering that they’re attracted to the sound of explosions, so if you toss a grenade or blow a car up, more of them will emerge from the shadows.

The Lost are neutral
If there are any ADVENT nearby, The Lost will attack them as eagerly as they’ll attack you. And you can use this to your advantage. Try throwing a grenade near some entrenched ADVENT and watch as the Lost descend on them, providing a convenient distraction. Just about every new feature in War of the Chosen adds to the tactical richness of the game.

You can create your own propaganda
A new mode called Photobooth lets you create custom propaganda posters for your soldiers—including bonded pairs—which you’ll see plastered up in levels later on. I’m not sure if this has any benefit besides being fun, but that’s probably enough, to be honest. It’s a good way of celebrating your favourite troops, and the editor is surprisingly feature-packed.

 

[Mazisky]

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/xcom-2/xcom-2-war-of-the-chosen-gameplay-preview

In XCOM 2: War of the Chosen I punched a flamethrower dude until he exploded

How do you expand a game like XCOM 2? Its many systems are already delicately balanced; as the aliens progress from Sectoids to Sectopods, you have to juggle research, squad training, base building, and the strategic map in a frantic effort to keep up.

It’s not easy to see the gaps where new content can fit without throwing off the pace. Yet that’s what Firaxis say they’ve done with War of the Chosen – an expansion so huge it was almost XCOM 3. We’ve taken a look at how it comes together.

“You’re basically looking for holes,” game director Jake Solomon says, speaking with us at E3 this year. But War of the Chosen’s size also means an average playthrough of XCOM 2 is considerably longer “to accommodate all its new content.” The original’s three DLC packs have also been redesigned.

That content includes three new boss enemies, the Chosen, who will torment you throughout the campaign and develop new strengths – and weaknesses – each time you fight. Many other new enemies are added, notably the zombie-like Lost, and three new factions enliven your campaign on the strategic map. Win their allegiance, and you can use their powerful Hero soldiers. But that’s just scratching the surface.

XCOM's latest zombies
We got our first look at how it all comes together when Solomon swung by the PCGamesN offices to let us play the third mission in War of the Chosen’s campaign. Our task is to broker peace between two of the new factions, and for some reason, we’ve picked a Lost-infested city for the meeting. In a neatly fitting extension of XCOM’s lore, the Lost are what happen when you get covered in the green goo from XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Hence, you’ll mainly encounter them in the now-ruined cities that suffered the brunt of the first war with the aliens.

The Lost waste no time, and I’m soon fighting off a small wave. It’s no sweat so far, though: the basic Lost have only two hit points, and whenever your soldiers kill one they get another shot. Since Lost aggressors don’t bother taking cover, a soldier can easily kill two or three in a single turn. It’s a breeze – at least until your weapons run dry.

Previously, you’d run out of ammo once or twice in a mission, and reloading was more of an inconvenience than anything else. Against the Lost, it’s a central consideration – they’re a neat addition because they pressurise a mechanic that had been a little underused; fighting them feels new. And if you think they sound like ideal grenade fodder, think again – while effective, explosions will attract more Lost, so that’s strictly a last resort.

Indeed, it sounds like the Lost never stop coming. XCOM 2’s use of turn-based timers to discourage overcautious play was divisive (Solomon says he loves them, everyone else says the opposite), but the Lost achieve a similar result with more elegance. “The Lost function as a soft timer,” Solomon says. “They pressure the player to move forward because they never stop swarming, never stop coming. You can’t just camp there, or they’ll overwhelm you.”

On the wisdom of punching fuel canisters
Fortunately, the Lost hate Advent as much as you, and will even prioritise attacking them over XCOM. Advent have a strong response, though: the Purifier, a new soldier armed with a flamethrower. I speak from experience when I say don’t kill them in melee; they like to explode, as my Skirmisher learned to his detriment.

That’s one of the new faction hero soldiers, by the way – the Skirmishers are Advent defectors who get a grapple hook, and a number of abilities that enable them to take more actions in a turn. Like grapple-wielding XCOM troops, they can get around the map easily, but they also get a sweet attack called Justice in which they pull enemies toward them and batter them with a claw (just don't do it to Purifiers). I also get to play with a Reaper, whose huge sight radius and powerful concealment abilities make her an excellent scout.

“We wanted them to feel heroic,” Solomon says, “so we gave them some very, very powerful abilities at the high end.” Faction heroes also level up differently than XCOM soldiers – rather than be locked into a binary choice at each rank, you’ll purchase their abilities with points earned in missions. In theory, you could unlock every ability in a hero’s skill tree, and there are loads. Presumably, enemies have been rebalanced to match, then? “We’ve made the late-game enemies a lot harder,” Solomon nods in response. “And we’ve added very difficult new enemies, like the Chosen and the Spectre.”

The Spectre is a kind of natural counter to powerful soldiers, in that it can cloak itself, sneak up behind your squad, and clone any one of them. This “dark copy” will then be able to use all the abilities of the soldier it’s based on.

No Spectres in the early part of the game I'm playing, though; they’re something to look forward to. We resurrect our mission-critical Skirmisher through the magic of reloading, and are soon attacked by our first Chosen: the Assassin. At this early stage, she has two strengths (immune to explosions, and doesn’t trigger Overwatch fire) and two weaknesses (she’ll take extra damage if she suffers three or more attacks a turn, and extra damage from Reapers). When you encounter her later in the campaign, she’ll have more traits, which will be accrued randomly.

The Chosen

She’s tough. She has 15 points of health when the toughest of my soldiers have six, and is extremely mobile. She runs blithely past half of XCOM’s finest to slap a squaddie with her sword, then scampers off into the darkness again. That’s right: she can move after attacking. Each attack also ‘dazes’ her target, knocking them prone. They’ll stay that way until one of your soldiers moves next to them and uses a free ‘revive’ ability, and every turn you don’t, you risk the Chosen turning up and abducting them. We’re not sure what the aliens will do with abducted soldiers, but it’s probably nothing you want.

With no idea where she is and Overwatch useless, I’m forced to double-dash blindly in the vague direction she ran away. I’m feeling pretty vulnerable. Next turn, the Assassin unleashes a psionic blast that dazes two of my guys. This is good though; as it’s an ability rather than a normal attack, she can’t run away this time, and my mad dashes in the previous turn have given my Reaper a flanking shot. She lands a critical hit, and all 15 of the Assassin’s hit points vanish in a cloud of yellow blood.

Not so scary after all, but I think I got lucky. With threats like the Chosen, a few early losses feel more likely than ever, but that seems to be intentional and accounted for. Between the new soldier bonds and fatigue systems (see our E3 interview above), Solomon says there are both more carrots and more sticks to make you develop your squad’s strength-in-depth, and the extended campaign should give you the necessary time.

A skirmish not a war

We fight off a much bigger wave of Lost (two dozen, easily) en route to the evac zone, and that’s a wrap. Exciting as it was to hear of the expansion’s features individually at E3, it’s a different thing to see them work together holistically. We’ve yet to see their impact on the strategic map, or on the long-term pacing of the campaign, but nothing I’ve seen from this first battle has shaken my confidence. At a tactical level at least, War of the Chosen shows promising signs of being a meaty, meaningful addition to XCOM 2.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen launches on August 29. You can check out its Steam page here.

 

[Fedora Master]

These modifiers affect missions in increasingly unpredictable, interesting ways. It could be a limit of three soldiers, or a level littered with dangerous explosives. These are designed to make campaigns feel more dynamic.

In other words: More "THAT'S XCOM BABY xD xD xD" RNG difficulty.

 

[Space Satan]

These were introduced 20 odd years ago.

The lack of imagination with the new aliens is shocking and boring.

It is quite ironic that you presented Apocalypse as a model for innovation, given how it was the lowest point of X-Com series (aside interceptor).

 

[thesheeep]

These were introduced 20 odd years ago.

The lack of imagination with the new aliens is shocking and boring.

It is quite ironic that you presented Apocalypse as a model for innovation, given how it was the lowest point of X-Com series (aside interceptor).

Nonsense.
It was the highest point of the series for innovation. It has everything its predecessors had and then some. The faction system alone is worth gold.

The only reason it can still be considered the worst installment is because of the many bugs and obviously rushed implementations of some systems, due to far too little time on the devs' hands.
A version of Apocalypse that was bug-free and with its systems thought to the end and implemented well would blow all other versions of X-Com out of the water.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

innovation was there. it was the actual realization which sucked. a map with 4 buildings, 4 floors, like 300 rooms and a single alien hiding in the last closet you're going to check.
so much fun.

 

[A horse of course]

behead those who insult Apocalypse