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

[Morgoth]

Looking better and better. Still won't pre-purchase though. I got burned through impatience too often.

 

[Cyberarmy]

5th class is psi operative.

 

[ArchAngel]

Ok, the improvements for PSI is a definite

 

[Silly Rabbit]

One hour video material from TB:

 

[ArchAngel]

Live Xcom2 stream from Beagle: http://www.twitch.tv/miss_jamball

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Welp, that's a thing.

It looks like an octopus fucked a cyberdisc.
I kind of like it.

 

[Jimmious]

Welp, that's a thing.

It looks like an octopus fucked a cyberdisc.
I kind of like it.

Sure you do

 

[Zombra]

"Operation Dragon Stank"?

 

[Zeriel]

What's the problem with it? You don't like the aesthetic of it? I find it kinda cool.

I didn't say anything about it, actually. In fact, it's my favorite alien so far. I love the "at first it looks beautiful, then it's horrifying" schtick this and the cyberdisc had going on.

 

[Infinitron]

More previews: http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/116615-xcom-2-previews-2.html

A deluge of new previews and gameplay info for XCOM 2 convinced us it was time for another round-up newspost on the turn-based strategy title, which is now less than a month away from its PC exclusive release.

First of all, IGN has published a short video that covers the game's revamped strategy layer. While it doesn't look like we're dealing with something hugely complex and the focus is still firmly on the tactical turn-based battles, it does look like the folks at Firaxis worked on improving the anaemic offering of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The folks at IGN also have a video and short write-up on the new Gatekeeper alien.

Shacknews has compiled a very lengthy and comprehensive feature on the title:

The world outside isn’t nearly as ravaged as it was in Enemy Unknown, though, and the missions are set up quite a bit differently. Send your squad out to take down alien facilities, raid UFO supplies, and even complete Guerrilla Ops missions. But be careful. If you make the aliens too angry, they’ll counterattack, and you’ll be forced to defend resistance bases from an onslaught of deadly enemies. XCOM 2 turns Enemy Unknown's “world savior” concept onto its head. Before it was the aliens threatening the system, but now, you're the upstart insurgent picking away at the social order. The aliens don’t take kindly to those who like to rock the boat.

Each and every mission map is procedurally generated in order to maximize replayability. This is a huge new addition to the series, and the team at Firaxis haven’t taken its implementation lightly. While many games with procedural maps often find themselves showing the seams, and cluttered beyond recognition. XCOM 2 doesn’t suffer from this failing. Honestly, I’d have never known the maps weren’t handmade if it hadn't been noted in so much of the promotional material.

The enemies have evolved as well, and they’re even scarier than before. Sectoids have been infused with human DNA, making them an even more formidable threat than they were when the aliens first landed. This isn’t the same war we were fighting in Enemy Unknown, and Firaxis wants to make sure we understand that.

Just thinking about the Faceless, I can’t help but relive the nightmare of my first encounter with them. One of the Resistance bases had been attacked, and I’d sent a squad out to find any survivors, and wipe out any Advent hanging around the area. I’d already saved three of the civilians left behind in the attacks, and as I readied for my next turn, I moved into position to pick up another citizen before a nearby Sectoid could take him out. My swift attack didn’t go as planned, however, as the human before me quickly transformed, turning what I assumed was someone who needed saving, into one of the most dangerous enemies I’d encountered in the game up to that point. It was a moment of adrenaline, as I scurried to pull my forces back together to take out the massive Faceless enemy before it could pulverize my squad leader.

PC Gamer delivers its preview in a "10 things" list form:

Cars and walls blow up, fire spreads and damages buildings

I find myself thinking about positioning and movement very differently in XCOM 2, primarily because now you can blast through walls. Prisoner trapped in a defended building? Don’t use the front door, make your own! Destrustribility has been scaled up to a large degree, and it significantly changes your relationship with the terrain. If you blow up a section of a building it will catch fire, and that fire will slowly spread each turn, destroying pieces of wall and floor along the way. The actions you take have more impact on the world around you, and it can be used as an advantage for both you and your enemies.

GameSpot:

The increased number of possibilities on the humans' side, however, helped me in my fight. The Specialist class has the ability to hack alien alien networks, augmenting the Resistance soldiers with increased critical hit chance, or increased armor for the mission. The Ranger, the more mobile class, has a blade for close-quarters combat and high-damage kills.

XCOM 2's newest class, the Psi Operative, however, is also the game's most unique. While other soldiers level up through combat, the Psi Operative does so through studying. Its abilities also unlock at random--lucky players may even unlock the best of the 14 options right off the bat, granting their operative an energy beam that travels through cover, the ability to remotely detonate enemy explosives, or a stasis shield that renders enemies temporarily helpless.

This new character class is only one of the changes I witnessed during my time with XCOM 2, and led to a variety of emergent scenarios in the squad-based skirmishes.

GameInformer also employs the same formula as PC Gamer's writer:

Character Pool

Tired of re-creating your friends every time you start a new game just to send them off to slaughter? Don’t worry! There’s help!

The new Character Pool feature allows you to create your friends, family, loved ones, and that one guy who stole your lunch from the work fridge without hassle. Just customize the soldiers once and save them.

As you’re playing, you’ll start to see your creations pop up in your game as recruits. You’ll also be able to share with other players via an import and export feature.

The Aliens Have A Win Condition

In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, players had the opportunity to take their time before defeating the aliens. That changes in XCOM 2. Throughout the game, the aliens will be progressing something called the “Avatar Project.” Should they complete it, it’s game over.

Thankfully, you can slow down their progress on it and other agendas (like hunting XCOM or equipping Advent soldiers with better gear) by taking on some missions. Successful completion sabotages the aliens and gives you a bit of breathing room.

The win condition is a meta-expression of the oppressive clock that exists in tactical missions. There is no time to rest in XCOM 2. But you’ll find that out for yourself on February 5 when it arrives on PC.

 

[Jimmious]

Guys after watching the TB video, I'm pretty sure there's an enemy called.... Codex

 

[Zeriel]

Guys after watching the TB video, I'm pretty sure there's an enemy called.... Codex

And of course there is already fan art of it.

Spoiler

This is truly the waifu age.

 

[The Fish]

A positive preview:

 

[Mozg]

I watched some of Beagle's streaming (Beagle being a player than can play impossible Long War competently - he's playing on legendary and has already started adding difficulty shit in the ini) and he's passive as hell as soon as there's any real threat and takes like 20 turns on a regular map to finish 4-man early missions, so take the "It's so much more naturally aggressive!" stuff lightly.

 

[Mozg]

Yeah, but the point is that people playing "aggressive" is mostly about them doing whatever they feel like doing when the difficulty level is low enough that there is a lot of slack to play suboptimally, not apparently any internal consequence of new rules. You could dash everyone into the FoW every turn in XCOM 2012 on normal difficulty and get by, too.

 

[Zeriel]

I watched some of Beagle's streaming (Beagle being a player than can play impossible Long War competently - he's playing on legendary and has already started adding difficulty shit in the ini) and he's passive as hell as soon as there's any real threat and takes like 20 turns on a regular map to finish 4-man early missions, so take the "It's so much more naturally aggressive!" stuff lightly.

That's only for missions without hard turn limits, because of his powergamer insistence on using concealment optimally by setting up the reveal on enemy turn, and activating only one pod at a time, and setting up on the most dangerous pod.

The man is as professional as it gets, though. He streamed X2 for 10 hours straight today, and he says he's going to stream it every day. How's that for dedication

It slays me there are people so casual at XCOM they think Beags is particularly good. He's an average player who people watch because he's neither completely atrocious nor so good that watching his gameplay is boringly perfect.

Yeah, but the point is that people playing "aggressive" is mostly about them doing whatever they feel like doing when the difficulty level is low enough that there is a lot of slack to play suboptimally, not apparently any internal consequence of new rules. You could dash everyone into the FoW every turn in XCOM 2012 on normal difficulty and get by, too.

The majority of missions have a time element now, Beagle ran up against the limit and lost soldiers because of his conservative play multiple times.

 

[Mozg]

AFAIK compared to the median Tuber that has gotten this preview build he is Bobby Fischer

Edit - the post I started talking about "natural aggressiveness" was a link to a tuber talking about the game being inherently more aggressive as opposed to artificially time pressured by meld or countdowns.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, that's basically how it goes with streaming. People want to watch someone who makes real casuals look bad, but not the actually autistic players who never make any mistakes.

 

[Zeriel]

It slays me there are people so casual at XCOM they think Beags is particularly good.

It's more that everyone else is terrible. I've watched 10-20 different journalists/bloggers/whatever play X2 over the past two months. Almost all of them have no idea what they are doing, and they are playing on the lowest difficulty.

This guy is okay (other than the HUGE fucking 3 pod mistake in the middle where he thought drones work differently than they actually do), but I agree. That's just press, though. I'm a little worried that even Beag's edited .ini to put more aliens in pods has Legend looking pretty easy compared to Impossible. I guess there will always be modding.

 

[Average Manatee]

I watched some of Beagle's streaming (Beagle being a player than can play impossible Long War competently - he's playing on legendary and has already started adding difficulty shit in the ini) and he's passive as hell as soon as there's any real threat and takes like 20 turns on a regular map to finish 4-man early missions, so take the "It's so much more naturally aggressive!" stuff lightly.

That's only for missions without hard turn limits, because of his powergamer insistence on using concealment optimally by setting up the reveal on enemy turn, and activating only one pod at a time, and setting up on the most dangerous pod.

Haven't watched youtube videos because my ADHD prevents me from watching games and people talking about games rather than playing them, but this sounds like XC2 is taking the worst parts of Long War and making them worse. Needing to engineer the opening turn to gain advantage by surprising the enemy rather than the other way around is the opposite of what X-Com is supposed to be about.

 

[Zeriel]

I watched some of Beagle's streaming (Beagle being a player than can play impossible Long War competently - he's playing on legendary and has already started adding difficulty shit in the ini) and he's passive as hell as soon as there's any real threat and takes like 20 turns on a regular map to finish 4-man early missions, so take the "It's so much more naturally aggressive!" stuff lightly.

That's only for missions without hard turn limits, because of his powergamer insistence on using concealment optimally by setting up the reveal on enemy turn, and activating only one pod at a time, and setting up on the most dangerous pod.

Haven't watched youtube videos because my ADHD prevents me from watching games and people talking about games rather than playing them, but this sounds like XC2 is taking the worst parts of Long War and making them worse. Needing to engineer the opening turn to gain advantage by surprising the enemy rather than the other way around is the opposite of what X-Com is supposed to be about.

He doesn't need to do it, hence the criticism in that very post you quoted. The guy decided to mod a game he's never played through, I wouldn't make any judgments of the design based on his experience.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah... but I'm a powergamer too and I'll need to insist on doing it if its possible

Though I didn't catch that he was literally modding the game to make it harder already, thought the post was talking about second war options or something on first read.

From what I've seen of Beagle he's pretty good at the tactical side but absolutely horrendous at prioritizing strategic gameplay. Probably the ideal for a youtuber of X-Com, at the point where he should have been completely outgunning the aliens in LW he's instead like 2 months behind the tech curve and barely hanging on by running good missions.

 

[Zeriel]

Apparently the .ini has lots of data exposed by default this time, he used it to add an extra alien to every pod.

 

[Space Satan]

Majority of aliens now have either AOE attack or ignore cover completely. Firaxis seem to be fixed on the idea of reducing cover importance or focring players to move around the map.
X-COM EU had too many aliens to deal with and moving around was a suicide, maybe they plan less but more powerful aliens for X-COM 2...

 

[Space Satan]

The fuk?