X-COM Franchise Retrospective (Part Six)

By Patrick S. Baker

 Part Four, 

War of the Chosen

War of the Chosen was a Downloadable Content (DLC) expansion pack for XCOM 2 released August 2017 for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Chosen follows the same narrative as XCOM 2, but introduces a number of new elements to the game.

Chosen introduced three new enemy aliens called The Chosen, which were elite alien-human hybrid warriors: the Assassin, the Hunter and the Warlock. The Chosen had the mission to defeat XCOM and recapture the Commander.

The Chosen gained new abilities over time, and eventually work up to launching a direct attack on the Avenger. The Chosen would sporadically reappear during missions even after being defeated. They were only permanently killed when their base was destroyed.

Chosen also introduced three new rebel groups: Reapers, Templars, and Skirmishers. These three cabals were were at odds with each other, but could be induced to form alliances with XCOM. Alliances gave access to XCOM to soldiers from groups with special abilities. Alliances also offer a variety of covert ops missions in which soldiers could be deployed and get a variety of benefits. The expansion pack added the neutral zombified enemy called The Lost, which will attack both ADVENT and XCOM forces. Other new aspects include a renovated strategic layer with a re-imagined research module.

There was so much new content in the War of the Chosen DLC, that there was some discussion among the developers of making it a standalone game and calling it  XCOM 3. But that idea was ultimately rejected because a true sequel would have required an entirely new narrative.

The PC version of Chosen has an 88/100 score on the review aggregator website Metacritic. IGN’s review praised the variety of new missions and the new classes of XCOM soldiers and aliens. Game Informer’s review also commended the variety of new elements.  Eurogamer ranked the game 46th on their list of the “Top 50 Games of 2017”. Polygon ranked it 17th on their top 50 games of 2017.  Chosen took the award for “Best Expansion” in PC Gamer’s 2017 Game of the Year Awards.

XCOM: Chimera Squad

XCOM: Chimera Squad was released for Microsoft Windows on 24 April 2020. Chimera Squad was a direct sequel to XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It was set five years after XCOM defeated the aliens and the ADVENT. The game was set in City 31, a prototype city where humans and aliens try to live together.

The player takes control of the Chimera Squad, a Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team made up eleven alien and human characters. Each team member had distinctive abilities. The game was split between turn-based tactical combat level and strategic level. In the strategic level, the player manages activities, such as the training of characters and conducting non-combat missions.

As the player started a combat mission, they selected which of the playable characters would take part. Each mission could have numerous separate combat sections. Missions started in a planning segment called breach mode. Breach mode allowed the player to place their units at selected points, where they entered the combat area. Different breach points gave diverse bonuses and challenges, and a player could split their units among multiple entry points.

When combat started, the Chimera Squad and the AI-controlled enemies took interleaved turns based on their position through a mixed turn order, where the player would go than the enemy would move. Characters that were injured during combat, required another character to stabilize them with a medi-kit. However, if the injured character was not revived in time and died, the whole mission failed and had to be started over. There was no permadeath in regular play mode, but it did happen in Iron Man mode.

Chimera Squad’s lead designer was Mark Nauta, who was a designer on XCOM 2. Jake Solomon, XCOM 2’s lead developer, was not part of the project, but several designers that worked on XCOM 2 also worked on Chimera Squad.

Chimera Squad generally got positive reviews. It has an average score of 77 out of 100 at Metacritic. Many reviewers praised the interleaved turns structure of the combat, but found the level of difficulty disappointing, as the game was significantly easier than previous entries in the franchise. Still, the game was nominated for the category of Best Sim/Strategy game at the 2020 Game Awards.

Chimera Squad was released at a price point of just $20.00 US Dollars. this low price was designed to get new players interested in the game series at a minimal cost and acted as a sort of backdoor introduction to the franchise.

However, make no mistake, Chimera Squad was not the long-anticipated XCOM 3 game.

Conclusion:

XCOM-like, as a game genre may be defined by having two distinct, but interconnected layers. First, the strategic layer in which the player manages and deploys resources, researches new technology and the enemy, while developing their soldiers’ skills and abilities.  Second, the tactical layer where the player directs their squad of soldiers is a series of detailed combat scenarios. Just a partial list of the “spiritual successors” of the game, like the UFO Aftermath Series, Xenonauts, and UFO: AI gives proof to “XCOM-like” being a game genre all its own.

For the last 27 years, games which have hewed closely to the above structure have been highly successful. However, games such as X-COM: Enforcer and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, which have not hewed closely, despite carrying the XCOM name, have been far less successful.    .

Fans of the franchise are, as of this writing, anticipating XCOM 3 which will, hopefully, move the genre forward without forgetting its roots.

Patrick S. Baker is a former US Army Field Artillery officer and retired Department of Defense employee. He has degrees in History, Political Science and Education.  He has been writing history, game reviews and science-fiction professionally since 2013. Some of his other work can find some at , and Armchair General.