Still, if Firaxis choses to let both races work together permanently, that doesn’t have to spell the end of different factions, which in the past made the game stay fresh.
While it’s interesting to see what a future civilisation involving both aliens and humans could look like, it also feels decidedly less epic. This could be a good decision in the long run, as Chimera Squad does away with the theme of rebellion against an alien threat – an important mainstay of the series. XCOM 3 could thus ignore Chimera Squad entirely. While set after War of the Chosen, it’s not to be seen as a sequel, according to Firaxis. Since aliens and humans work together in Chimera Squad. Taking away player-made characters, however, retroactively removes a bit of player agency and an overall very enjoyable part of the overall XCOM experience. Generally, having a more story-centric approach to XCOM is a fine idea, as long as you always have the option to play random matches whenever you feel like it. In Chimera Squad, the option to replace wounded squad members with androids further emphasises that an XCOM with all-fixed characters isn’t really doable – you always need someone while members of your team are otherwise incapacitated. Over the years, XCOM has always had fixed heroes, but to have an entire fixed squad feels limiting, and takes away from the impact of permadeath. What that means is that you no longer customise your own squad, instead, you’re left with fixed characters to easier allow the game to tell its story. Additionally, the new factions came with their own leaders, who had fairly interesting motivations of their own.Ĭhimera Squad now fully leans into a story-based approach. In the expansion, squad members could form bonds, leading to many fond memories of environmental storytelling for players. Nothing in this is breaking the game's rules in any way: it's simply the ultimate outcome of piling all the wild skills on top of each other, and a deep understanding (built across dozens of hours of play) of how they combine.The War of the Chosen expansion played into a vital aspect of XCOM, namely becoming attached to your squad. Dozens of deaths at the hands of a single soldier, and one round that lasted the length of a standard mission. Slightly blowing my own murder-trumpet here, but when I think of WOTC I think of this insane first turn I pulled off with a high-level squad. Expansion pack War Of The Chosen throws all such caution to the wind, and embraces ridiculousness with wild aplomb, while also being satisfying complex and variable battles. Its rebels vs future utopia scenario was inconsistent, and it couldn't quite seem to make its mind up whether to be a gritty game of stealthy guerilla combat or cartoonish maxi-sci-fi. Naturally I poured hundreds of hours into XCOM 2 itself, but something about it never quite clicked in the same way XCOM had. My second-favourite XCOM is the polar opposite, XCOM 2 DLC War Of The Chosen, an absurd explosion of superheroics that throws internal logic to the wind. My favourite XCOM is XCOM: Enemy Unknown*, a pure and direct, no mess/no fuss modern-day remix of metagame-augmented turn-based tactics.
One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives.