In the second part of my X-Com 2 review, I’m going to be addressing the most important aspect of the game: it’s story.

That’s a lie. Not that I’m going to talk about the story, because you can bet your alien plasma grenade I’ll get upwards of 2,000 words out of this thing, but that the story is really all that important. There’s a reason I speak very little about it in the first part and that’s because the draw of X-Com is, first and foremost, it’s game play. The story itself is the innocuous window dressing on a candy store. You’re here for the sugar, you can’t really be bothered that there’s a few tears in the curtain and what might be a mustard stain.

As with any discussion about a recently released piece of media and its story and narrative components, there are going to be massive spoilers detailed within. If you care about story (I know I do!) then please don’t read until you have finished. If you don’t care about story, well you could probably read the first half and know all you need to know. But I’ll give a quick summary here just for convenience:

Buy X-Com 2. It’s fantastic.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s discuss plot.

X-Com 2’s plot is awful. There’s no other way to put it. This is amateur hour at a sci-fi convention. And no, I’m not just basing this on the fact that there’s really not much too it because it’s a systems based game and not a narrative driven one. This is acknowledging that there really wasn’t going to be more words dedicated to its plot than a 10,000 word script that I could pump out in a day given sufficient motivation. No, the biggest issue is that X-Com 2 is pretty much a reskin of X-Com: Enemy Unknown. But what works wonders for game systems is a detriment to narrative structure.

One of the things I was really excited about with the announcement of X-Com 2 was this whole rebellion vibe. I thought it was a really clever idea to not only separate the reboot from its original source material (and if you aren’t a regular to this site, I loathe blind reboots over aspiring for novelty and creativity) but that it opened up far more interesting themes and ideas to explore. There could be many interesting questions asked by placing the player in essentially a terrorist role: a guerilla combat position where your foe is significantly more advanced, more established and more supplied than you are. It would be like examining The Heart of Darkness but not from some enlightened British Imperialist but from the perspective of the oppressed natives themselves.  It would be easy to paint the conquerors as blood thirsty monsters but more interesting to ask to what lengths and the appropriateness of fighting back against an imperialistic force would be.

To make the questions even more topical would be to have X-Com perform missions that are, essentially, little more than outright terrorism. We’re talking about (potentially) suicidal missions sent to destroy alien centres or monuments in an effort to undermine their authority and power. You could create situations where the player stops and wonders if perhaps in the zealousness that X-Com doesn’t occasionally slip into the role of the creature it’s looking to slay. Do you put in the extra effort to save civilians that may be innocent or unaware of the machinations you struggle against? Are you willing to compromise the mission to preserve your ideology or are sacrifices important to make for the greater picture? That you could ask these questions and not have to frame it around specific game elements like your own soldiers lives could have been really interesting. In fact, one of the best small details they added was to give a name for each civilian that’s killed.

The only problem is that civilians are typically only killed by the aliens themselves.

Outside of restructuring the flow of the game, there’s very little actually gained by spinning the balance of power on its head. It never really feels like you’re “exposing the alien plot” during the course of the game nor is there really any plot to expose. As I said, this is basically Enemy Within all over again. The aliens are here “for reasons” that are never explained because they’re probably not figured out by the creators. They’re looking to mass genocide humanity “for reasons” that make even less sense now that the game has established that they went through enormous amount of work and compromise in the last twenty years to create the world you’re fighting in now.

Seriously, the whole alien plot is that they’re making Avatars for their decaying bodies. Ok, that’s fine. Ancient race dying out is a bit of trope that’s over played but it’s an understandable motivation. What doesn’t make sense is that they need to process enormous amounts of human genetic material in order to accomplish this. And when I mean process, I’m talking about Soylent Green sort of industrial work. So, the aliens come to Earth, negotiate a truce for whatever reason, go to great lengths to create massive city centres created, staffed and policed by painstakingly genetically fabricated creatures all so they can open up a bunch of “gene clinics” that are used to trick people into voluntarily entering the sci-fi equivalent of Cargill Meat Processing? Why the hell didn’t they just point their giant ass weapons at everyone and tell them to line up for the meat grinder. Or just shot them and toss them into the meat grinder?

I mean, thank god for Hitler and Genghis Khan. These two individuals have been the easiest villain scapegoats for most of fictional human history. They operate on such simplistic “good vs bad” dynamics that it’s not only brain dead, it’s creatively bankrupt to boot. It makes so the thrilling final mission where the player leads their crack squad of highly trained troopers through the alien secret facility so ludicrous as the villains attempt to vainly discourage you from murdering their asses as they attempt to explain that they’re not killing you, they’re saving you. By literally killing you.

It’s intellectually and philosophically dishonest and contradictory. It makes everything leading up to that point so painfully incoherent.

First, why didn’t the aliens simply tell us their plan? Clearly they don’t need to murder all of humanity to make new bodies for themselves. Also, clearly, they aren’t strong enough to just come in and take what they need hence the twenty years of pointless infrastructure building and propaganda spinning (unless these were just “create work” programs). They attempt to paint their actions as being of benefit to humanity, so clearly some mutual co-operation would be far more successful for both sides. Unless they’re lying about trying to save humanity in which case why bother with the last ditch misdirection? Or maybe they didn’t consider mankind evolved enough to hold a conversation with though that makes their feeble attempt to beg for their life in the final mission all the more bizarre.

Look, I get that they’re trying to set up Terror from the Deep with these games–and that Terror from the Deep is essentially X-Com fights Cthulu. However, trying to force some sort of greater continuity or franchise establishment is a self-defeating purpose. We know they’re going to make sequels for as long as they sell but you’re not going to get any coherent narrative out of all that. You can’t keep running into “bigger fish” in the universe that every enemy you face is desperately trying to beat or ward off. Just pick one motivation for the aliens and stick with it. Either the aliens are here for Imperialistic reasons, viewing humanity as little more than savages and not worthy of their time or consideration while they hide behind their technological advancements as “enlightenment” and the “right to subjugate as they see fit.” Or, they are wardens trying desperately to deal with some greater threat all the while attempting to save their stewards through their own misguided and alien “methods” that are simply misunderstood.

You either have the aliens constantly trying to talk to humanity but failing because of the huge cultural and biological differences or you have them not speaking at all. The alien representative then is either a erstwhile speaker who simply can’t seem to find the words to properly communicate the goals and desires of his creators or is just a lie used as a means of mindless pacification.

Personally, I prefer this sort of misunderstood steward angle. It creates a more complex situation and introduces greater shades of grey into the conflict. Whereas everyone basically agrees now that Imperialism is bad (and thus is probably what they were going for because of low hanging fruit and all that), I think the alternative works far better with this X-Com as rebels motif. Sure, they are justified in their violent response to the alien occupation and the actions taken by them. In this direction, humans aren’t kidnapped when “desirable genetic sequences” are identified. Instead, the humans that disappear from the gene clinics could be the ones that are simply untreatable through their medicine. Instead of that individual dying to their terminal disease or whatnot, they are then put through the alien’s Forge facility that, yes, splices their bodies with other genes to create the hybrid Advent but the individual is kept alive both individual and genetically as they are used in these cloning vats.

And, sure, you can add more fuel for X-Com’s actions by having them legitimately kidnap anyone with psychic capabilities in order to undergo procedures for the Avatar Project. That could be construed as the price of this beneficial arrangement. The Elders see that humanity is served through their more enlightened ways–their diseases are cured, peace is established and cities created to raises the standard of living of the native species well beyond that of what they found when they first arrived. The only downside is that every now and then a member or two will need to be “sacrificed” to the gods in order for them to continue to seek a biological form capable of sustaining their psychic minds or whatever. The aliens are both flawed but understandable. They are still antagonistic, especially since they would probably still see themselves above the need to explain themselves to humanity in the first place.

In this way, I’d restructure the final mission so you aren’t having the Elders blather to you in a desperate plea for their life. Instead, have X-Com traverse the facility while your experts monitoring the mission on commentating on what they see. They could come to understand that these genetic storage containers contain the life and genetic information of dozens (or even hundreds) of other worlds, stored and collected like some sort of galactic museum. The varied troops in their armies are the dominant species from their respective planets, cured and “uplifted” by the Elders to assist them in their universal search to protect and save all life they come across. Then, you could stumble upon the laboratories where it’s clear that this philanthropic endeavour isn’t just misguided benevolence but also a pressing need for them to cure their own biological failings. You could have some interesting “boss fights” here where X-Com can kill some of their failed attempts at creating a suitable form to hold them. Think psychic chryssalids and the possibilities start to open up immediately. After killing several Avatars and the facility is collapsing, maybe then one Elder would reach out and tragically explain their hubris and misguided attempts as their work crumbles around them.

You have a better narrative that can explore a specific contained theme that way. Also, it doesn’t beholden you to any sort of power creep in your franchise. The next X-Com game can be something entirely different. Instead of being invaded by these arrogant Elders, you could reset the world have it be Cthulu monsters or whatever else imaginable. In this way, each instalment would be a self contained story and the varied game play changes can easily be explained that way. As it is now, I don’t know how Firaxis will address the fact that you’ve already researched tons of advanced technologies which you won’t have in the sequel. They skirted that issue this time by declaring the first one “didn’t actually occur.”

But unless they plan on doing that every time (and given their obvious foreshadowing at the end indicates otherwise), they’re going to have to come up with ever increasingly contrived explanations or completely rework a significant portion of the game. And I don’t envy either of those options.

Also, I’d really like for one to have a story that didn’t completely suck. Not that it’s super important. But it’d be nice.

Here’s something exciting and new. An actually timely review! What a novelty.

So, I’ve been following Derek’s lead in not purchasing games new any more. Video games occupy an odd place in the entertainment industry. They’re one of the most expensive compared to a movie, concert or book. On the other hand, you’re going to get more time out of them and their cost/hour ratio is a lot better than a film. However, unlike the other mediums, video games have a very short shelf life. Basically, the industry really only cares about a game’s first three month release window. After that, it’s essentially dead to them.

This typically translates into enormous price drops before the game is even a year old. By the time a movie is releasing to video and looking to extract almost double the cost of a ticket from its audience, games are racing to the bottom in terms of price trying desperately to make a few last minute sales. This “wait to purchase” mentality is only reinforced by the fact that companies will release expansions or additional content at a premium that, after a year or two, will be bundled then discounted for less than the original game will discount (I hate you Bethesda).

So, if you’re patient, you can generally get a product which the creator and publisher values around $110 for less than $10. Thus, I have a tendency for viewing things late for the obvious cost effectiveness reasons. Also, by the time I actually get around to many games, I’ll have upgraded my computer to be able to run them at max settings and the gaming community usually has added additional modifications and add-ons themselves to drastically increase the enjoyment of the product.

Well, this time I broke the trend. I bought X-Com 2 new. And I don’t regret it one bit.

I knew lead up to its release I was going to get X-Com 2 on release. All the press and announcements from Firaxis were pressing all the right buttons. Their prior release, a reboot of the UFO Defence game that I never played but Derek loved so he vowed never to touch anything so pure and blessed that had been soiled by AAA hands, I enjoyed immensely. Their expansion pack–Enemy Within–was even more fantastic. The problem with the game wasn’t in its gameplay but in its maps. Due to a number of unfortunate reasons, X-Com: Enemy Unknown released with about twenty or so pre-fabricated maps on which every tactical, squad-based battle took place. After several playthroughs of the game, each map became incredibly predictable and the game itself grew rather dry.

So what was Firaxis’ plan? They announced that not only would the sequel feature procedurally generated maps but they would also release a bunch of development tools to the community to allow easy modifying of the game’s content. This would allow ambitious modders the opportunity to add their own “cells” to the map generator for a even greater variety of locations and zones in which to murder a bunch of invading aliens.

They could have just done that for the X-Com formula and I would have been there Day 1 for the game.

They didn’t, however, and I haven’t seen this much care put into a sequel since… well… the last Civilization game was released. And, when compared to Firaxis’ other headlining franchise, I can’t help but feel that X-Com 2 somehow comes out the better.

But before we get into the meat and potatoes, let’s discuss what X-Com is.

X-Com is a strategy game that sees the player leading a clandestine organization tasked with safeguarding earth from the machinations of an invading alien force. The game plays over several strategic layers. Primarily, the player must lead his forces in battle against the aliens in covert missions. In the first game, these manifest as rescue missions where X-Com had to escort certain individuals to safety, defuse bombs or thwart abductions the aliens were conducting or protect cities being ravaged by outright genocide missions the aliens pursued in order to sow fear and confusion. At this level, the player leads his troops over a grid based map alternating turns between her and the aliens trying to wipe the other out first or complete objectives.

In order to match the alien’s superior technology, the second layer of the game is managing X-Com’s resources and deciding where and how to prepare your troops for bloody conflict. The primary method of this resource management is directing your science department’s research as you develop more advanced weaponry and armour. However, research is not conducted in isolation and the player needs to develop their base in order to accelerate research times or put into practice laboratories and other specialized rooms unlocked by new discoveries.

However, none of this development is cheap and we arrive at the final strategic layer of X-Com. Here, the player needs to manage and safeguard his income. In the first game, the world (represented by about twelve prominent countries) provided funding for the X-Com project. However, as the alien invasion wore on, these participating countries would start to lose faith in the project. Should the player not protect each nation to a satisfactory degree, the participating member could withdraw his support and finances, turning the world map into an ominous expanding cloud of red pixalated doom. To prevent this, the player had to maintain satellite coverage and fend off any invading UFOs.

So, there were a number of different interconnected systems that asked the player to juggle a lot of decisions. Should you send your troops on this very difficult abduction mission? You haven’t researched the next tier of weapons so your damage is low against the projected enemy forces. However, the country being threatened is in danger of withdrawing their support and they’re currently providing you scientists at the end of every month that help speed up the research for those very weapons that you desperately need. A decision at one strategic layer can have a cascading impact across all others that puts a tax on your resources and makes difficult each following decision the player faces.

It was a wonderful blend, so much so that the reboot X-Com game did far better than the first person shooter version–which was the project that 2k Games originally obtained the IP to make. X-Com: Enemy Unknown was quite the surprise at the time of release. It was hard and uncompromising when games were still being pushed to be accessible and instantly gratifying. It was a turn based strategy in an era where most companies still saw shooters as the only genre worth pursuing. And against expectations, X-Com: Enemy Unknown succeeded.

X-Com 2, thankfully, stays pretty close to form. It is a refinement of the first game. It adds several quality of life changes while still being recognizable in its tri-layered play. However, the developers were clever in creating the sequel. Instead of setting the game immediately after the events of the first, they brazenly announced that X-Com 2 would occur in a future where the player had failed and the aliens took over. This would be a world unrecognizable to X-Com: Enemy Unknown players. Here, the X-Com project is little more than a resistance cell, unfunded and scrambling from country to country trying to avoid capture and detainment from the alien force in charge. This Advent organization runs earth, congregating humanity into concentrated city centres and violently detaining any and all who oppose their directives.

With a change in position came important changes in play. Now, instead of protecting countries from the aliens, the player must convince far flung rebel cells to assist in overthrowing the tyrannical regime. The player must build radio lines to connect with different areas, contact resistance cells and then defend these places when Advent invariably locates and tries to hunt them down. In return, X-Com is awarded the ubiquitous “supplies” that can be used to purchase just about anything though are far more controlled in generation.

Instead of having a stationary base which the player is excavating further and further into the ground, X-Com now operates from a mobile flying fortress. There’s still a building component to it but this time the layout is far less relevant than figuring out how to staff all your rooms and prioritizing what needs to be be constructed in what order. It feels more like a worker management section as you juggle engineers between clearing wreckage, building rooms and manning stations. Unfortunately, the research portion is a little bare bones. Scientists basically reduce research time which is lacklustre compared to all the things you can do with engineers. I definitely find myself scouring the map for engineers and being disappointed whenever I’m awarded with some four-eyed nerd to just sit around with Dr. Tygan.

But, wow, is the combat good. Which is important because you do a lot of it. The classes feel very defined and the skill trees present two distinct archetypes. I find it really hard to field my operatives in missions. I just want to take everyone. Invariably the skill builds I tend towards lean on effectiveness over fun. For instance, the gunslinger sharpshooter is amazingly entertaining being able to throw out three or more pistol shots in a turn. Unfortunately, the short range on his shots means I either rush him up with the rest of my force than use him as long range ordinance. And if I’m going to be up in the grills of my enemies, the damage output of the pistol doesn’t compare to a critical build on my ranger. I also find that having a fifth (or sixth) soldier fighting for good cover on the front line just doesn’t compare to a camped sniper in a tower far from retaliation and laying down round after round of precision shooting.

The ranger is my least favourite class. The sword is great at the start of the game when enemies are few and accuracy on your soldiers is terrible. But soon the shotgun gets pretty deadly and the sword falls pretty fast in regards to damage. The enemies begin to accrue high health pools and armour values which criticals can offset but swords just kind of… fail. And the scout tree gives a lot of utility towards… well… scouting. It’s not the sexiest of roles but it helps to locate where the aliens are and, in a pinch, the ranger can serve as a quick assassin who runs up and loads a stupid digital glitchy woman in the face with a whole payload of lead.

Grenadiers are just as good as ever. I want to run a support grenadier with all the suppression and holo-targeting of the X-Com of old but suppression seems to do all of nothing and holo-targeting pales in comparison to all the destruction of a fully ordinance based grenadier. For another major change in X-Com 2 is not only fun and dynamic but really important. Environmental destruction has been ramped up to where just about anything can be destroyed. Need a quick escape from a heavily armed Advent complex? Lob a grenade at the closest wall and book it as fast as you can. And there’s something very rewarding about bombing the roof out beneath the feet (tail?) of an enemy viper and watching their dodging nonsense break every bone in their miserable, scaly body on the landing.

Then there’s the specialist. It’s the old support class ramped up by a thousand. The gremlin let’s the specialist not only hack at a distance (really important at the start where you might end up wasting a lot of turns trying to get to the enemy and running dangerously close to losing the objective) but also gives the ability to zap foes or heal allies at a distance. Both the assured damage from a gremlin charge and the long distance triage can save lives. With only six slots and five very useful classes, it’s tough deciding who to double up. An additional grenadier gives a lot of area damage and cover destruction but I almost always end up taking both my medic and combat hacker.

Then there’s the psionic operative. They’re a little different in that you don’t level them up by killing aliens but by shoving them in a tube and having them do push-ups. On one hand, it’s nice that you can level up a soldier without fighting over alien experience but I find it hard to justify their place on my roster since any kills they get is lost experience to my other troops and any injury they incur is time they aren’t training. On the other hand, their abilities are incredible. They have a slew of abilities that do damage regardless of armour or cover. And they have really strong support abilities that can give your troops additional attacks or immunity to mind control.

But classes aren’t the only tough decision. Your engineers can create a slew of really powerful weapons that are really hard to leave behind. And yet, you’re limited in what you can take with you. Between skull jacks, med kits, a host of varied by powerful grenades and armours and it’s tough outfitting your guys for battle. Not to mention you have to develop these weapons which requires time and engineers. It’s a lot of good choices without any seeming outright better than others. And I really like how the game puts pressure on you to prioritize through the Avatar project instead of dragging your heels to get everything you want. I’ll also really quickly say that, while some don’t like the turn limit on missions, I’m a huge fan of them and how they change up your tactics and priorities.

It’s not all good news, however. I should comment on the performance issues. The game requires some fiddling with settings to get it running decently (read: turn off vsync), the loading times are pretty lengthy and there’s a bunch of bugs. I wouldn’t dare try an ironman run. I’ve had two crashes to desktop and a handful of other smaller bugs: ruined cars exploding, hackers taking damage from successful hacks or hacks by other specialists, that sort of thing. If those things are deal breakers then it’s probably best to hold off for several months until this gets ironed out. The game is still playable with these issues and still fantastic regardless.

Finally, the choice to place this after a failed defence in the future was brilliant. That they can use a single, unified tile set for every city explained through their story is genius. The redesigns for the alien forces not only unifies them better but makes them far more visually intimidating as well. Incorporating EXALT essentially as the low level grunts who can scale later in the game with better weapons and armour was also very clever. It’s impressive how one concept can bleed through the rest of the design and make everything stronger for it.

It’s a pity, then, how they ended it all…