Join the XCOM 2 character pool today!

Man, everybody wants to be pals with Olli.

I need to hook up with some physical therapy, apparently. Looks like I threw my back out lifting that dude.

J-just like in real life?

Sure.

...

Uh, do you need pals to fight aliens with you?

I mean, who doesn't?

Mission 34: Tyrant Squad Rides Again


Welcome back, everybody! We may be finished with the, uh, good part of the game, but that doesn't mean I'm going to leave you hanging. It's time to get back to work, which means we're going to be taking on a STORY MISSION! The Advent Forge, you may recall, is a site that we found by researching the vial of mystery goo from the Blacksite. What mysteries could await us there?


Today we'll be sending in a mix of our best and our pretty dang good. This isn't what I consider a very hard mission, but I don't want the kids running around completely unsupervised.


We pull up outside the Forge and are greeted by what seems to be a squad of wargame miniatures on the world map. Could this be a clue pertaining to what's inside?


Our goal is to investigate a Big Building, but before we get there we have to deal with its brother Little Building. Lil' B has a couple archons holding the fort, along with a turret that we exploded with bluescreen rounds shortly before this screenshot was taken.


Sensenic opens up with Hail of Bullets, the better to hit that squirrely bird...


...then Eric and Gerad team up to take it down.


The second archon falls back a bit before firing at us, showing a flagrant disregard for company property in the process. That workstation costs more than your annual salary, Archie!


Flawgic voids and disorients the archon, but sadly doesn't pull off the mind control. Man, it would be fun to have control over an archon, we really need to upgrade our psi amps. Anyway, Eric shoots it dead and we move the squad up.


Our next speed bump is a trio of ADVENT soldiers.


The snipers take their shots...


...but Flawgic prefers a more intellectual sort of combat. She uses Fuse to explode this trooper's grenades while they're still carrying them; it's totally badass.


Not to be outdone by the whippersnappers, Sensenic scores a kill.


It isn't all fun and games, though, as the last of the ADVENT gets in a modest hit on Ted. He is quickly dealt with on the next turn.


Moving up, we get our first glimpse of the Forge proper. And guess what it's guarded by?


Our good buddy, Sectopod!


Eric happens to have shredder, so I start off by having him take out some of that pesky armor. His gun procs, granting him a free turn, so he shoots again and gets rid of the rest. Not a bad start!


Gerad's bluescreen rounds pack a whallop!


I got greedy and tried to finish the encounter off using Deadeye, a low-level sharpshooter skill that I tend to ignore in favor of the (generally superior) Lightning Hands. It's great when Deadeye pays off, but the hit that your accuracy takes is enough discouragement to keep me from busting it out very often.


Scorch (our new Templar, if you had forgotten) plinks away at the sectopod with her machine pistol before handing things over to Sensenic, who uses that sweet guaranteed damage to shut 'er down - permanently.


Just a few steps more and we come across an archon and an ADVENT soldier. Flawgic makes good use of the crossbow, which can't be evaded by slippery types like the archon or the specter. You either hit or you don't, and she did.


Scorch zaps the soldier, but they retreat into the Forge, forcing us to move up in pursuit.


Just inside, we come across yet another pod of enemies. I had forgotten just how many there are on this mission. That said, for the most part they're small fries.


But if I know one thing about fries, it's that you shouldn't eat poisoned ones! That's a little tip that's gotten me through some tough times, folks.


Scorch runs up and slices the ADVENT priest, who goes into stasis. However, it only has 1 HP left, meaning the poison finishes it off as soon as it wakes up again.


Scorch, on the other hand, is immune to all forms of poison, fire, and explosion! She crosses the poison cloud with impunity.


Now that we're inside, we can see that the Forge is filled with these capsules, one of which opens to reveal...a baby ADVENT! So this is where they've all been coming from. Now if you've played video games before, you might expect capsules like these to start opening up, spewing combatants out from all sides. That would be pretty cool, wouldn't it! But nope, nothing of the sort happens. It's good for keeping you on edge the first time you play this mission, watching over your shoulder the whole time as you wait for an ambush that never comes. But knowing that it won't happen, the whole fakeout honestly seems a little lazy. Gimme some encounter design, Firaxis!


While there are quite a few generic ADVENT tubes in the Forge, one in particular seems to be in a place of honor. More importantly, it's a different color than all the rest! Clearly, something very important must be inside. Clearly, we want to take, or at least destroy, whatever it is.


Looks like we won't get it without a fight, though.


Scorch uses her Lightning Hands to soften up this shieldbearer before slicing it across the grain and plating up over a red wine reduction.


Flawgic puts the andromedon on ice, so we can focus on...


...the archons, one of whom has decided they're going to blow this case building wide open! Dude, there has to be a better way to protect all this valuable ADVENT infrastructure, what is it with archons and property damage?


Thare are good snipers, and then there is Ted, who hits a flying target that he can't see through a roof. Don't get on that guy's bad side, I tell ya.


Flawgic crossbows another archon...


...which Scorch cuts into pieces as both our holosoldier and the andromedon look on in horror. Happy Halloween!


I was all geared up for a big fight with the andromedon when this happened.


I can't remember if we killed that first archon or not, but either way its pinions land, redecorating the forge. Gotta admit, the place feels very airy now.


Flawgic just keeps getting those hits in, doing a solid 12 damage to the andromedon shell. All you folks who turned your nose up at the crossbow must be feeling pretty silly now!


With the enemies disposed of, it's time to find out what's inside the capsule. And the answer is...an astronaut? More accurately, it's someone or something inside an ADVENT stasis suit, which is something that players of XCOM 2 might have seen in the game's tutorial mission. We didn't play that one, since it's optional (and boring), but it starts with a small squad of soldiers rescuing someone from an ADVENT facility. And the person inside the stasis suit turns out to be none other than YOU THE PLAYER!! It's a long story.


Anyway, whatever is inside this suit is unresponsive, so Scorch starts schlepping. We'll bring it home and let Tygan see what's inside.


The only thing standing between us and that are reinforcements. Lots and lots of reinforcements. A new group lands every turn until we evac - I think we dealt with three full pods' worth on our way back to the ship.


Nothing really scary ever shows up in an ADVENT dropship, though, so it's something of a turkey shoot for the team.


This one guy gets the full brunt of the shredstorm cannon, because I didn't find a better place to use it earlier in the mission. That's gonna sting in the morning!


I don't want to put in a dozen pictures of the team shooting enemies as they land, so suffice to say we made it to the evac point, hooray!


Not sure how we found the time to pose for a photo on the way out, though.


Eric makes Major, so I give him Guardian. This gives him a chance to chain together overwatch shots, which should go nicely with the huge clip size of the Warlock's Disruptor rifle.


And with that, we're done! Look at the goofy little oven mitts on that guy. Anyway, we get some money and the doomsday meter goes down two block for our efforts. We'll need to research this thing, which will take a few days, plus we have another story mission to unlock in the Shadow Chamber before we'll hit the endgame. Add in the generic missions that will come up while we do all that researching and we're probably looking at 3-4 more missions before we undertake our final operation. I do hope you'll join me as we mop up the remaining ADVENT forces and take our planet back!

MVP right here!

Mission 35: Hey Little Sister


Boy, everyone on the team is looking pretty tired. Not me, though, I'm doing great!


We're pretty comfortable at this point, so I'm starting to focus on covert ops that will give our top soldiers an edge. I'd love to hand this aim bonus to Gerad, but tired soldiers can't undertake ops, so VV gets the buff. Later on, I sent her on another mission to get a dodge buff, since rangers tend to be in the line of fire pretty frequently.


Once again, we have failed to produce the powered weapon that I want. Oh well, at least this is one I've never seen before. I'll give it a try while we take another stab at developing REDACTED.


We finished our Gatekeeper autopsy, which unlocks the Alien Psi Amp! With this, we can skip the tier 2 psi amp and go right to the best one. Score!


We saved Vermont to be the final region added to our resistance network, which just goes to show that I'm playing XCOM with my head and not my heart. Anyway, that's it, we caught 'em all! Now we can undertake missions across the entire globe. We also are pulling in a stonking ridiculous amount of money each month, something on the order of 700 supplies. Speaking of which...


...a new month is upon us. The only one of these dark projects that really has any bearing on us is the middle one, which I will endeavor to stop when I have the chance. Intel costs aren't much of a problem now that we have every region unlocked! And the Chosen won't be bothering us any time soon.


Yes, the Chosen are gone, but not forgotten. We finish research on the Assassin's weapons, which are going to go to ViolentVixen at the first opportunity.


But before that, uh, Match is just gonna borrow them for a little bit. You won't even notice they're gone!


There are important Shadow Chamber projects that we need to research if we ever want to finish this game, but I can't resist doing one more autopsy before we get into them: the Archon King. Autopsies of the three alien rulers are accompanied by audiologs dictated by Dr. Vahlen, the head scientist from XCOM: Enemy Unknown. She had a bit of a thing for taking extra terrestrials apart - and apparently putting them back together, too.


I'm going to build a radio relay in Oceania to unlock the continent bonus here. It gives us a chance to have an ADVENT soldier join the squad on any mission we run. They're somewhat useful and, more importantly, entirely expendable!


Spook learns Soul Steal (←→↘↓↙←→ + [ATTACK]) and then starts to work on his final psionic ability, Fuse. After that, he'll be a grandmaster magus! Then we'll stick Flawgic in the tank until the end of the game so she can power up.


We're sitting pretty comfortably at this point, not much risk of losing the campaign in the near future.


Is it that time already? This is going to be a milk run, there isn't a single Sectopod or Gatekeeper on the mission!


Just as well, since so many members of the A team are tired right now. Kurt's only 1 day away from a full recovery, so I take a chance on fielding him because I want to have a ranger on the mission to field test the new weapons.


Not a lot of noteworthy stuff happens on this mission, so I'll just show off a few highlights, like this shot of Ted doing serious damage to an elite spectre. Not enough to one-shot it, though, those guys have like 20 health.


Looking pretty sleek, there, Match!


This is one of those retaliation missions where the local resistance cell is armed and fights alongside the squad. They've clearly been upgrading their gear, because their shots hit for 6-8 damage most of the time. That's actually enough to be somewhat useful, even when the enemies are armored. It also makes this mission a piece of cake.


The mission is centered on a church, where a group of (mostly) unarmed resistance members is holed up. They're under siege by a large number of berserkers, codices and specters. A couple folks get squished, but that's how it goes.


Another berserker rushes in, this time flanked by a pair of chryssalids. But I have just the thing for these bugs.


A plasma cannon! As far as I can tell, it's functionally identical to the shredstorm gun, except with a smaller area of effect. According to the XCOM 2 wiki, it ignores armor rather than shredding it, so I guess it's useful if you're more interesting in straight up killing enemies than in weakening them? Whatever, I can't wait until I get my REDACTED.


The problem with codices on a mission like this is that resistance members keep shooting them, which causes them to split. Then they go and do annoying stuff like this. I would be mad...


...except that sometimes the resistance cleans after itself. Thanks!


Boosh!


If you think Match looks cool here, you should meet him in real life.


By now, we've made it to the church and Aqua's putting the hurt on the aliens, too.


Unfortunately, this puts him in harm's way and he gets shadowbound by an elite specter. But don't worry, we have a solution for that:


BOOSH


We clean up the last of the aliens and make a quick stop by the photo studio before heading home.


Aw man. Looks like we'll be down a ranger for the next little while. And he was only 1 day from retirement a full recovery!


We completed the Archon King autopsy! I have it on good authority that this will unlock a delightful set of armor for us, I'm really looking forward to trying it out.


There isn't anything else important for us to autopsy right now, so I'm finally going to start working on a Shadow Chamber project: deciphering the codex brain. I think that'll unlock our next story mission, although I could be mistaken. Anyway, the end is nigh! See you next mission.

Is that an upgrade for ?

"I'm interested in this."

YES I WILL DON'T TOUCH MY SWORDS

Mission 36: Like Best Buds

I promised you people some new friendships and it's high time I deliver!


First up, it's Sexy and Spook! Theirs is a torzel-BOND that can never be broken.


And then there's the one-two punch of Met Man and Mailman! I'm, uh, not entirely sure what these two are up to in this image. Hopefully everyone involved is a willing participant, in which case I won't kink-shame.


Back on the Avenger, we are continuing to fail to make the gosh-darned powered heavy weapon that I want. I've got cores to burn, though, so we're just going to keep trying. I can do this all day!


Not only does Spook have a new friend, but his psi op training is finally complete! With Fuse at the ready, he can now ascend to the rank of Magus. And since he's armed with an alien psi amp, the baddies will be shaking in their boots whenever he's around.


Now that the competition is out of the way, Flawgic has the psi chamber all to herself for the foreseeable future. What better way to celebrate than by learning NULL LANCE?


I finished building a radio array in Australia, unlocking the Double Agent bonus. What does it do? Stay tuned to find out!


We finish researching the codex brain, getting a screenful of lore for our trouble. It also unlocks a new mission for us!


That's right, folks, it's story (mission) time.


Here's our team for today - we've got one of our new sets of bondmates along for the ride. Note that Vixen has also regained possession of her precious weapons and is going to start making up for lost time. I'm also bringing Scorch along for a couple of reasons, one of which being that she's somewhat expendable.


But who is this I spy? Why, it's our very own ADVENT stun lancer! Yup, this is our reward for getting the Double Agent bonus: a chance to have a free enemy soldier on our team on any given mission. This stun lancer - let's call him Harvey - isn't exactly an ace combatant, but he's even more expendable than Scorch over there.


And that's very convenient, because this level is full of hidden chryssalids! We get a camera flyby of something like 6 of these bugs burrowing into the ground across the level. Whenever someone walks near one, our chitinous friends will pop up and get a surprise attack in on the unlucky soul. You can protect your troops with copious amounts of overwatch or, ideally, the blademaster Ranger skill. But the best defense of all is to have a disposable soldier on your team! Harvey here will be taking point for as long as he is physically able to do so.


Of course, there's more to life than a bunch of bugs. For example, here's a group of mutons and an andromedon! They're bunched up real tight, so Scorch tries to, you know, scorch them using Volt, which chains from target-to-target. When it feels like it. Which apparently isn't today. Because it didn't.


Big Sexy is rocking the venom rounds today, throwing a little poison into the mix.


Harvey here is no great shakes when it comes to shooting stuff, but at least he isn't actively trying to kill us.


Spook finally gets to test out his new alien psi amp! This started as a garden-variety void rift, but he got two followup attacks as a bonus. That muton is ruptured! It's also mind-controlled! It's also dead! So I guess we won't be acquiring any more ADVENT cast-offs today.


Oops, looks like there are more of them. Nothing too worrisome for a team of seasoned pros, but that's an awful lot of HP for us to chew through.


Then again, VV does have a new shotgun to break in.


We haven't fully dealt with that other squad of ADVENT, but Harvey seems to have more pressing problems. He pops this hidden chryssalid, taking a nasty stab wound in the process. Thank you for doing your civic duty, redshirt!


That said, we aren't going to leave him to hang (yet). Scorch and Sexy take care of the bug for Harv and then Aquadeo patches him up so he can continue serving as our human (?) canary.


Man, there's just so many HP on an Andromedon.


Scorch slices up an ADVENT MEC that Gerad had softened up for her previously. I'm trying to level her up, so I'm feeding her a lot of kills over the course of this mission.


Poor Harvey can't catch a break, but he does catch this Andromedon's mean left hook. Miraculously, he survives!


Unfortunately, he isn't so lucky the next time. Farewell, Harvey, you saved a bunch of more important people from taking all those hits!


Scorch avenges our fallen comrade, looking totally sweet in the process.


When chryssalids kill someone, the corpse turns into a chryssalid cocoon, which spawns weaker bugs every turn. I don't want to deal with that, so I get Big Sexy to bust out the old Chain Shot, which doesn't miss for once. It probably helps that the target is stationary.


Farther up we find - you guessed it! - more bugs.


Olli weakens them with a well-placed gas grenade...


...and Vixen finishes this one off as it crests the hill. Pretty cool shot, IMO.


Past those chryssalids, we find what we were looking for. It's Stargate: Atlantis! Tygan just has to have it, so we're going to clear out the map and bring it home. Surely nothing terrible could come from experimenting on this barely-understood alien teleportation device, right?


The last obstacle in our way is this Gatekeeper, which warped in through the gate as part of the cutscene. More like a Gateuser, amirite?


Spook softens it up with an EMP grenade...


...before Gerad really puts the hurt on. That was a pistol shot, folks. A pistol with bluescreen rounds that ignores armor, but still.


In fact, the pistol shot even does more damage than the rifle shot that follows it! To be fair, that's because Gerad has shredder, so rather than bypass the armor this time he is destroying it.


Aqua picks off the last straggler, and with that we're done.


Let's bring this thing home! Hopefully Lily has some kind of adapter for it so we can plug it into the Avenger's power supply.


Good job, team! Not a single injury and only one dead ADVENT guy


VV made colonel! We celebrate by buying her both of the top-level skills. Rapid fire is incredibly powerful, so long as you choose your shots - it lets you fire twice in a single turn with an aim penalty. Get your ranger close enough to the enemy and you're almost guaranteed to hit twice, doing massive damage. I also grabbed Serial, which lets you chain kills together to get free actions. I don't like it quite as much, but it's cheap and could come in handy.


Looks like we'll have to install the gate in our science lab and then research it. We're up to three incomplete Shadow Chamber projects, but those are all that stand between us and the final mission! I imagine we'll end up running a filler mission or two before I can get all that research over with.

But for now, we out! Stay healthy, everyone.

Looks like we'll have to install the gate in our science lab and then research it. We're up to three incomplete Shadow Chamber projects, but those are all that stand between us and the final mission! I imagine we'll end up running a filler mission or two before I can get all that research over with.

But for now, we out! Everybody stay healthy, now.

Gatekeepers are organic, despite all appearances.

Sexy and Spook - the bond so nice Mike mentioned it twice.

I will hit the weak point for massive damage... twice.

It actually counts as both! That’s why it took damage from the EMP grenade.

Huh! TMYK.

But the nice thing about them being organic: they make really nice Domination targets.

That’s a good point, I should really start using domination more now that we have good psi amps.

Fast Forward: Missions 37-40

Gotta say, folks, it feels like we've been stuck here for a while - and that's because we have. I had a look back through this thread and I realized that it has been fully NINE MONTHS since I declared that we were entering the XCOM Doldrums, that late-game period of time after you've finished all the interesting missions but before you can complete the campaign. I could go on about why I dislike this part of the game, but I think the Talking Heads put it best on their 1979 album Fear of Mutons:

When this mission's over
It will start again
Won't be any different
Will be exactly the same

Oh, XCOM
XCOM is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing never happens

They don't specifically clarify which part of XCOM they're talking about, but we all know. (Also, for as good as that album is, I personally prefer the followup, Remain in Cover.)

Anyway, we're stuck in the lifeless endgame and it's time to break free. Because everybody knows that when the wind won't fill your sails, the only solution is to strap a jet-engine to your boat. So this week, we're going to cover no fewer than SEVEN MISSIONS as we power our way to the final confrontation. Are you ready? Let's goooooooo!


Well that's inauspicious. We're now on the run from an aggressive UFO that's looking to track down the Avenger. In vanilla XCOM 2, this mission was triggered by one of the ADVENT Dark Events and can be prevented with careful play. In War of the Chosen, though, it seems to just pop up whenever it feels like it. To be fair, this usually happens way earlier in the campaign, when it's much more of a problem. The special mission that occurs when the UFO catches up with you is quite difficult in the early game, but with a ship full of high-level troops it will be little more than a speed bump. You can try to delay this mission by keeping the Avenger away from the UFO on the world map while scanning for stuff, but at some point the game just decides that it's gonna find you and there's nothing you can do about it. That won't happen for a little, however, so let's try not to let it get us down.


On the bright side, we now have this! Remember that Archon King that we took out? Well we, uh, made a suit of clothes out of its skin! It's extremely creepy, but also very useful and, honestly, pretty cool-looking. The Archon suit allows you to jump up and down from high ledges when moving, plus it grants you the ability to basically teleport twice per mission. These moves have a huge range and are free actions, which is kind of incredible. Also, any Archons that you meet have a chance of panicking because you're wearing the skin of their monarch as a suit.


It's GrOPs time! We don't really need any of the potential rewards at this point, so I tend to choose the missions based more on which Dark Events I want to avoid. Having a chance of capture on all covert ops is no bueno, so we're going with this one.


This mission's got zambies. They would barely register as cannon fodder by this point in the campaign, but now we've got the resistance order that turns any hit on a zombie into an instant kill, too. MetMan mows down the shamblers with impunity.


Here we see Gerad using one of the free Icarus Jump moves to fly into position...


...and completely wreck this gatekeeper's day with two consecutive crits. The Darklance free-action bonus seems to proc way more than one shot in five, but I'm sure as heck not complaining.


Olli plants the X4 charges on whatever our target was and we're out.


Mission accomplished. Next!


Gerad makes Colonel and we give him Fan Fire, a skill that lets him shoot his pistol three times at a single enemy. The Darkclaw ignores armor, so skill can be extremely effective against larger enemies.


Olli and T.Baum are now Level 2 Friends!


THERE IT IS. This is what we've been trying to build with our last 5 attempts: a Blaster Launcher! This heavy weapon is basically a drone-bomb that you can guide to any spot you want to do massive damage. It has fantastic range and you don't need line-of-sight on enemies to use it, so it's incredibly versatile. A scout can spot an enemy two floors below through a skylight and then your Grenadier can deliver this parcel directly to the target's feet from two timezones away. It serves as a great get out of jail free card, like a more destructive version of the decoy beacon.


We unlock one final continent bonus, which grants us a chance to have a resistance member accompany us on any mission. This is exactly like the ability we have that randomly assigns us ADVENT soldiers, except you feel kinda bad when these ones die. I believe it's possible to have both bonus soldiers on the same mission, which would give us an extra-large squad of eight soldiers!


Research on the recovered stasis suit is complete. TL;DR it's made from people but it's not alive. Yet.


Next up: Council Mission.


We start the mission with a group of Archons. Gerad shoots at their spectre buddy...


...and his costume causes one of the archons to panic. Again, that's a very rational reaction.


We mop them up and then proceed to the van where our VIP is waiting. Eric hacks the door, and unlocks this extremely valuable bonus in the process of doing so. Don't ask me why this one was guaranteed to succeed when you get stuff like "20 bonus intel" that has a 12% chance of success.


A little farther on, I stumble onto a Gatekeeper. Breaking with protocol, I don't manage to kill it on the first turn and it actually gets a chance to act. It opens up its shell and we finally get to see the cuddly tentacle monster that has been hiding inside all this time.


Shelled gatekeepers mostly tend to just shoot at you with their enormous (but thankfully inaccurate) cannons. But exposed gatekeepers are all about the psionics, which is generally bad news for us. This one emits a pulse of purple energy that kills a bunch of civilians...


...and then reanimates them all as psi-zombies. That's pretty gnarly, dude!


Thankfully, Nightwalker is on the case. Banish, along with his skill that lets him partially ignore armor, makes short work of ol' squiddy. The gatekeeper explodes and all the walking dead go back to being stationary dead.


We rescue the VIP and make a clean getaway. Two missions down, five to go!


At this point in the game, most of the covert ops I run are selected because they give permanent bonuses to valuable troops or else they earn AP...that I can use to apply permanent bonuses to valuable troops. This time, however, I also picked up a highly-valuable resistance order. Tactical Analysis basically removes an action point from any enemy that we stumble onto during our turn. That really takes the sting out of blundering into squad of baddies at the end of your turn, since it cuts the harm they can do during their turn in half. It's in the top tier of resistance orders, right next to the one that improves all of the weapon attachments.


We finish researching the codex brain in the Shadow Chamber and ugggggghhhhh now we have to skulljack a codex. That is not how I wanted to spend my Saturday.


Furthermore, we don't have enough Alien Alloys to undertake the next bit of Shadow Chamber research! I thought this was going to be a minor inconvenience but (spoiler alert) it wound up being an enormous pain in the ass. Because you don't get alien alloys from most missions. You can buy them at the black market...except the black market was closed by a Dark Event. For SIX WEEKS. You can pick them up by scanning or running covert ops, but none of the scanning spots and ops that we have available offer alloys as a reward.


Well, what about assaulting an alien facility? They've probably got to have some allows somewhere in there, right?

(wrong)


For this mission, I brought along as much of the A-team as I could, because I was expecting to have a final confrontation with either the Berserker Queen or the Viper King (since alien rulers often guard facilities like these). Sadly, neither of them decided to show their faces - potentially because they don't want to have said faces removed and worn by our squad. Still, bringing the heavy hitters was a good idea, as you shall soon see.


What we do find, right off the bat, is a codex-led patrol. We move the squad into position on an overlook and then I send Matchstick ahead to hack the CPU, as it were.


*hacker voice* I'm in.


With that, we have access to all the sensitive, gooey files of the Avatar Project. Man, who knew I'd be able to knock off that objective so quickly! And here I was expecting it to be a huge pain.

...

Except.


The first time we skulljacked an officer, a codex appeared; we traded an easy enemy for a decidedly nastier one. Hacking the codex produces this...person? It's basically Underwater Goku, but the official name is Avatar. Yup, this thing seems to be the reason why the aliens have been turning millions of people into soup. Naturally, we are going to kill it.


Except Kurt's little sprint across the badlands had the unfortunate effect of alerting some enemies to our presence. There are the two spectres who were patrolling with the codex, of course. There are also these ADVENT troops and the heavy turret on top of this nearby building. And the Avatar who just warped in.


And this Sectopod.

Now, good readers, I'm not going to lie to you: this is extremely bad. As happy as I was to have checked the skulljack-a-codex box, it seemed like I was going to be sacrificing some of our very best soldiers in exchange. We have something like 8 enemies facing us, including 2 of the nastiest in the game, and Kurt is completely exposed, far from the rest of the squad. I was preparing myself for the worst.

So how did it go?


Eh, you know, not too badly. *flex flex*


Ok, but seriously, how did we get out of this without so much as a scratch? By pulling out all the stops, for one. We start with a little Kill Zone from Gerad...


...then Sensenic busts out the BLASTER BOMB to soften up the Sectopod and the Avatar.


Avatars have an irritating habit of teleporting every time they take damage. They're actually less annoying than codices, because they don't clone themselves every time, but it's still a pain. Then again, you can also use it to your advantage if you're careful. Because every time they move, someone on your team is likely to have a good shot on them. If you chain together the shots with the best hit chances, you can sometimes ping-pong them back and forth until they're dead.

Or they can teleport to some out-of-the-way corner where nobody can even see them. That happens too, sometimes.


(Not today, thankfully.)


Nightwalker banishes the Sectopod, which lights up like a Christmas tree.


One of the spectres runs up and shadowbinds Sensenic. Inconvenient. Thankfully, it wastes its next turn shooting at our decoy hologram, as do a few of the ADVENT troops.


This stun lancer runs up on Matchstick and gets a facefull of Blademaster for his trouble. Then he tries to attack him, but - guess what! - Kurt is invincible! That's right: because he killed that codex with the skulljack earlier this turn, his Untouchable skill activated, protecting him from the first attack that came his way. Nice!


You could probably tell from all the purple, but Avatars are real big on brain powers. This one mind-controls Aquadeo, so now we're down two soldiers. This will not stand!


We start by having Gerad take out the nearest of the spectres.


This frees Sensenic from shadowbinding and destroys his evil clone. He then uses his newfound freedom to inflict a Hail of Bullets (can't miss) on the Avatar. Ignore the spectre corpse, it took up this pose earlier when Gerad killed it.


The Avatar teleports one final time and comes into range of Matchstick's blade. With that, it is no more. But don't worry, there's more where that one came from!

With that, and a couple of lucky misses, we manage to make it through the enemy turn unscathed. The team mops up the stragglers and we press on to actually, you know, finish the mission. There was definitely some luck involved, but I think this encounter shows just how formidable Tyrant Squad has become.


We make our way over to the base that we're supposed to destroy. It's guarded by a few more enemies, so we drop a poison grenade on them. Did you know that you can poison gatekeepers? It's true!


You can also use brain lasers on them.


We blow up the base and head back to the Avenger. Sadly, though, we don't manage to salvage any alien alloys from the wreckage.


That was definitely one for the books. Tyrant Squad's finest hour!


One thing we do bring home is this Avatar corpse. We'll have to examine it in the Shadow Chamber to unlock the final story missions...you know, once we've dealt with our alloy problem.


MOAR FRIENDZ


Aw geez, the chickens have come home to roost. Time to face the music. Gotta pay the piper. And other such metaphors.


The alien UFO chases the Avenger for a while before damaging the ship to the point where we are forced to land.


Somehow, it gets us to emergency-land right next to this weird beacon-thingy. This tower emits yellow energy that is somehow preventing us from restarting the Avenger's engines and getting the hell out of here. We need to take out this tower, and soon, because a horde of ADVENT are descending on the Avenger. This is a do-or-die situation, folks.


We deploy at the Avenger's access ramp with a group of six soldiers - you can even field wounded soldiers on this mission if you want. Every turn or two we'll get reinforcements from the ship, so it's possible to have a good 10 people on the field by the time the mission wraps. That's good! But if even one enemy makes it to the Avenger's ramp, you lose. That's bad.


As I mentioned earlier, this mission is quite difficult for a group of low-to-mid-level soldiers. At this point, though, we have some serious firepower on our side. It's still quite a brawl, though, as we have to carve our way through a horde of weaker enemies to make it to the beacon. Reinforcements arrive regularly, so there's some pressure to keep advancing. Of course, you also need to defend the ship, plus you have to run everyone back to the ramp after the beacon is destroyed so they can escape on the Avenger. I tend to wind up with a group of soldiers stationed around the ship and a smaller forward squad pushing toward the beacon.


Somewhere along the way, Scorch made colonel! Here, she's using a top-level Templar ability to transform a dead ADVENT soldier into a being of pure energy. This psi-clone has the same abilities as Scorch and will stick around until it uses up all its focus. It's a pretty good ability TBH, but you can only do it once per mission.


After fighting through a bunch of chryssalids, mutons, MECs and ADVENT, we arrive at the beacon. I'm trying to go pretty quickly with these recaps, but we're a good distance away from the ship at this point.


Spoony drops a Blaster Bomb on the beacon, Scorch takes a shot with her pistol...


...and Joe finishes it off from all the way back by the Avenger. Now we've gotta book it back to the ship, because once the beacon is destroyed you start to get enemy reinforcements every single turn. The trick is to run the farthest soldiers back as quickly as possible while the ones in the mid-field cover them, moving as much as they can while still shooting. Once your forward squad has consolidated and retreated a bit, they should hopefully be close enough to the ship that the reserves can cover the rest of their retreat. You have to balance moving and shooting so as to not get shot in the back but also not take too long, since the odds against you grow steadily with every turn.


We send the psionic Templar clone in the other direction to distract the enemies that were guarding the beacon. Thank you for your service, Purple Scorch.


Meanwhile our defenders are doing their best to keep the path clear for the soldiers returning from the front. I don't know who this handsome Canadian is, but he's doing a great job!


More reinforcements keep on coming, however. The priests in particular put me on edge; in a past life, Aquadeo had a very bad experience with one on this very mission. The priest put him into stasis right as everyone else had boarded and the Avenger was about to take off. I couldn't risk waiting another two whole turns for the stasis to wear off, so we had to leave him there. He was captured by ADVENT, but later rescued on a council mission where he was the VIP! Of couse, he missed like three months of action and was completely underleveled compared to everyone else, so he spent the rest of that campaign sitting at the bar telling war stories. But still, we got him back, and now his (identical) great-great-grandson is fighting for Tyrant Squad!


There sure are a lot of enemies in this mission.


But we prevailed! Everyone is back at the Avenger, and we hightail it out of there without looking back.

This concludes part one of our XCOM Fast Forward, but stay tuned - we'll be covering the last three missions in the very near future. Maybe even today, but by the end of the week at the very latest. Zoom!

So close to the end!

The beacon mission is some great design. Very tense, even for a squad that can kill an Avatar and a Sectopod on the same turn without taking a scratch.

Fast Forward: Missions 41-43


The Avenger is back in the air, but we're still treading water as we don't have enough alien alloys to complete our next story objective. While I'm waiting for some to materialize, this Guerrilla Op shows up. A lot of our heavy hitters are fatigued right now, from the one-two combo of base assault and Avenger defense, so today we're fielding Team Red + Ted (in the Archon suit). Even so, Scorch and Flawgic are both tired and will likely become Shaken after this mission, requiring some downtime. But I don't feel comfortable sending in the C-team, so we'll just have to deal with that when it happens.


We start this mission in stealth, but Scorch immediately gets ratted out by a CIVILIAN COLLABORATOR. How's that boot taste, turncoat??


Our mission today is to intercept (ie kill) an ADVENT Commander before they can evacuate in 5 turns. I like these missions in general, because engaging with the enemy is, theoretically, secondary to finding your target before they escape. Sometimes you can carefully scout out most of the map, waiting to strike until the enemy VIP is in your sights. No such luck today, though; with our cover blown, the Commander starts making their way to the extraction point. On the bright side, the evac zone is marked on our map, so we know where to look for them now.


After blaster bombing that group of ADVENT in the previous shot, the codex splits in two. One of the halves meets its end at MetMan's Metal Blade.


Esha Dominates an Archon! This guy is on our team until the end of the mission, since this type of mind control never wears off.


The other half of that codex from earlier drops this stupid energy field on us, which is probably the single thing I hate the most about that enemy type. These three soldiers won't be able to fire without reloading their weapons first, plus they have to waste one move each because this area is going to explode next turn. It basically nullifies half the squad for a turn, which is a real pain on a timed mission like this one.

In the meantime, I use our newly-acquired Archon to scout ahead, figuring Sniper Ted can take some potshots on whoever we spot from relative safety.


Well, folks, I didn't count on this possibility.


The Sectopod walks through the building wall, quickly closing the distance. I had figured any enemies would attack the Archon, since it was much closer, but a Sectopod with its legs extended has an aim bonus that basically negates low cover. The AI in XCOM 2 will almost always take the highest percent shot it can get, and because of the Archon's natural squirreliness (airborne enemies are harder to hit), the easiest target actually turns out to be...Ted. Ted takes a solid hit from the Sectopod, which then causes his buddy Esha to Shatter, meaning she spends her turn either hiding behind cover of hunkering down.


Esha's Shattering then forces Scorch to roll against panicking herself! Thankfully, she comes through and keeps her cool. But unfortunately, we still have a problem:


TED TED, NO!!

Sectopods get three actions per turn, which means the hulking mech was able to take a second shot at poor old Mailman, putting him in the ground. Farewell, Ted Teodoro, you were as good a third sniper as any commander could have asked for.


Oh and guess what: losing Ted causes MetMan to go berserk. Holy cow, this mission has gone completely mams up. I have to be honest, I was really blindsided by this one. I thought scouting ahead with our expendable Archon would be a safe way to trigger any dangerous enemies on the map. Well, consider that a lesson learned.


Speaking of expendable, we also have an ADVENT Stun Lancer on our team. With half our squad dead or panicking, it's their time to shine!


We finally get eyes on the ADVENT commander, who is trying to make their way up to the roof of this building. We have three turns to take them out, plus we have a Sectopod at full health to deal with. Let's get to it.


The upgraded EMP Bomb is very helpful here, since it does solid damage to the 'Pod and it stuns it for a turn or two. I use this time to chip away at its health with part of the squad...


...while Scorch runs forward to deal with our mark. Templars are good in these situations because they can move twice and still attack for decent damage. Plus, after attacking Scorch can Parry, which will nullify one attack directed at her. With the Sectopod locked down, I'm confident that she'll be able to survive out in front of the team. The Commander is accompanied by a trooper, but neither of them poses a huge threat.

Also, just to keep the panic train rolling, the commander grazes Scorch, which triggers her to become Obsessed.


Big mistake.


The commander starts climbing, but there is no escape from an angry Templar.


I've gotta say, Scorch has really come into her own. Between the solid melee attacks and the extremely cool psionic clone ability that she has, she's a force to be reckoned with. I've always liked the Templar class, but I find their damage output flags a bit in the late game. But for missions like this that require mobility, they're as flexible as they are deadly. I haven't even used their Invert ability in this campaign, which switches places between the Templar and an enemy of their choosing, but there are some really cool tricks you can pull off with it. My ideal squad is still basically one of each of the four standard soldier types plus a psi operative and a Reaper (for scouting + banish), but a Templar is almost good enough to be top tier too.


And just to prove that it can do something aside from getting Ted killed, here's a shot of our domesticated Archon shooting, uh, something. Nice work, pal.


Farewell, Ted. We're, uh, gonna keep using your armor though. Hope that's cool.


For all the harm it did, that Sectopod will still be of some use to the team. I'm not sure why this is the first one that dropped a wreck, but we can finally tear one down to get the best Gremlins for our specialists. That means more healing and higher damage whenever we use their abilities. Pretty cool!


At long last, after three consecutive filler missions, this is what we need! A supply raid should yield some alien alloys, assuming we manage to actually tag a few of the crates. Let's do it!


This is both a supply raid and a zombie mission. You may recall that we have the resistance order that turns any hit on a zombie into an instant kill, so at this point we can pretty much discount the crawlers entirely. Case in point, I decided to blaster bomb these ADVENT goons, despite the fact that doing so would attract a horde of the Lost. But I've got something special to deal with them:


And that something is named Joe. Joey here has an ability called Faceoff that lets him shoot every enemy he can see with his pistol in a single action. And right now he can see quite a few enemies! So he starts shooting...


...and he keeps shooting. Every shot that hits a zombie is a kill, so by the time he has finished he's racked up 8 kills in a single action, 7 Lost and one ADVENT. That's a record that I think is going to stand for a little while!


Later on we find a gatekeeper, and by now you all know what we do to gatekeepers. We don't even empty the clip on Banish because the repeater procs and the alien is executed halfway through. This has me thinking that I should maybe get Nightwalker the Reaper skill that lets you use your remaining Banish shots on different targets. It's very spendy, but it might get you a bonus kill or two depending on how the dice go. Hmm.


All right, that mission went significantly better. We pick up some alien alloys and we can finally start researching the psionic gate that we grabbed a while back! After that there's one more Shadow Chamber project, which is to autopsy the Avatar we killed two missions ago. Once those are complete, we'll be on our way to the final showdown.


The end of the month arrives, which gives us an opportunity to finally slot in the Tactical Analysis resistance order. If only we'd had that a month earlier, poor Ted might have survived his run-in with the Sectopod =(


Amazingly, no missions pop up while we research the warp gate. Time to start our final project!


Since it's generally been a pretty hard time for everyone lately, I decide to add a little happiness to the world by christening a new friendship. Let's take a photo to celebrate!


Uh...guys? You OK there?


Oh geez, whatever they have is spreading. Is it too late to quarantine the barracks?

In truth, what actually happened is that I got a new hard drive for my computer and I used Steam's migration function to copy the XCOM 2 directory over to it. Unfortunately, doing so seems to have broken all the mods that I had installed and I have yet to figure out how to restore them. Turns out that our troops are built using quite a few mods! So the squad's going to look a little...abnormal for this next mission. Hopefully I'll find some way to get everyone back to their old selves before the next update.


Because this is, frankly, unacceptable.


Anyway, this is your bog standard Guerrilla Op, what with the exception that Spoony has been replaced by Bob Ross.


Thankfully, he's still the same old Spoony on the inside, as this Andromedon can attest.


Joe's rocking the Archon armor today. Sorry about the stains, Joe, we cleaned it up as best we could.


Here's our Tactical Analysis in action! We stumbled onto this group, led by a gatekeeper, but they won't be able to get up to much on their first turn. As abilities go, it's a literal lifesaver.


This is a pretty easy mission, but what are we gonna do, not make a psionic energy ghost assassin?


As promised, I tried to Dominate this Gatekeeper. They're pretty fun to have under your control, especially if you're willing to blow up some civilians to create yourself a zombie army. Unfortunately, they're pretty tough to control, what with them being masters of the psionic themselves.


So we just get our energy ghost to blow it up.


One last shot of Esha working the crossbow, because why not?


Weirdly, nobody seems to be missing any body parts in this shot. A lot of them have the wrong armor or are missing their cool accessories, but the models in-mission seem to have been patched up in a way that they aren't on the Avenger. Weird.


We finish researching the Avatar corpse! Feel free to read all about it, but I'm not gonna.


Completing our last research project triggers a cutscene where we get a call from Agent 47. He has some bad news for us: apparently we've done such a good job that we've spooked the aliens. They are going to "accelerate" the Avatar project.


Which, unfortunately, involves turning an even larger number of people into goo to make their psionic troll dolls. Oops.


But a plan has been hatched! We're going to take control of the ADVENT network tower, which we will use to both disrupt their operations and also broadcast some important video evidence of ADVENT's crimes against humanity. Lots of regular people still think the aliens are doing an OK job of running things on Earth, so the hope is that we can remove their blinders and cause a revolt against those who would put humanity into a Vitamix and set it to high. Personally, I find this idea to be wildly optimistic, but I guess it's worth giving it a try?

With that, we have arrived at our destination: there are only two missions left in the campaign! We'll be putting together a team of 3 B-tier operatives for the first of them, saving the A-team for the final assault as part of a 7+ (!!) person crew. For as much as I've played this game, the last mission is still something of a challenge, so we'd better not get overconfident. Look forward to the beginning of the end next time on Join the XCOM 2 Character Pool Today!

man I really need a better title for this series

Oh no! Has everyone been training with jpfriction?

After playing Chimera Squad I can certainly agree with you (except there it can affect most or all of your squad). The codex enemy sure does give you a lot of reasons to hate it.

My bad, guys, doctor said it probably wasn’t contagious.

Not enough Falselogic in any of these updates...

Man, you fired a crossbow AND got shattered, what more do you want?

Not to get shattered for one =P

Penultimate Mission: The Spirit of Radio


Folks, we are at the threshold of no return. It's time to commit ourselves to action and end the menace of ADVENT once and for all!

...

Uh, almost. We've actually got a couple of things to take care of on the Avenger before setting out. First off, I've taken some time to rest everyone up, so our A-team is in perfect shape. Second, just as the final missions opened up I got a research breakthrough to improve the damage on our grenadier's cannons by one point, and since there wasn't much risk in doing so I ran the clock for 5 days until that unlocked. During this time, I also ran a covert op with some of our third-stringers that gave us...


...our very own Skirmisher! We will never be using him. However, as a fan of the dearly-departed Waypoint XCOM 2 YouTube series, I am tickled that we pulled a Mort for our team.


Another very important thing that needs to be done before starting the final missions is spending all of our accumulated AP! We go on a shopping spree, outfitting the A-team with the abilities that I think will be most helpful on the final mission:

• Nightwalker gets target definition (all enemies remain visible forever once spotted) and blood trail (extra damage to any enemy that has already taken damage this turn)
• Aquadeo gets guardian (50% chance of another overwatch shot after a successful one, works very well with the huge clip in his Disruptor Rifle) and haywire protocol (hack enemy robots)
• Sensenic gets holo targeting (aim bonuses for the squad on any enemy that he shoots at) and also guardian IIRC
• ViolentVixn gets conceal (go into stealth once per mission)
• Gerad gets run and gun
• Spook doesn't get nuthin' 'cause he already has 14 abilities and I don't think you can train psi ops at the training center and it's not like he needs any more anyway

In the process of doing this, I realized that Sensenic somehow never made colonel? In fact, we don't have a single colonel-rank grenadier, which came as quite a surprise. I typically use grenadiers to start off encounters, either by exploding a group of patrolling ADVENT or by firing at an armored target to shred away some of its protection, so I guess maybe my heavies don't get as many kills as the other classes? It's too bad I didn't spot this earlier, I could easily have stuck him on a covert op to get a guaranteed promotion. But I don't want to delay the final missions any further, so we'll just have to make due with Major del Castillo as he is.


Ok, with that all sorted out, let's get going! This second-to-last mission offers us a chance to spend our leftover intel for some bonuses. I take the one that improves everyone's aim and the one that starts us off concealed.


Deploy the B-team! We only get three soldiers for this mission, so I tried to pick a group that would be pretty self-sufficient. Everyone here is versatile and experienced; they're really more of an A- team IMO. Match and False are both feeling a little tired, but that shouldn't be an issue since this is going to be their last mission - one way or the other. To tilt the odds as much as possible, I'm letting them use all the best gear (sorry VV). Esha, of course, will be rocking her trusty plasma crossbow.


As we approach the dropsite, we get a glimpse of our target: the ADVENT radio signal. Which is, of course, a bright purple laser beam shooting into the sky. The way radio signals are.


This is a pretty short mission, but it's still somewhat risky due to the small squad size. This andromedon poses more of a threat, since we don't have six people ready to whittle down its huge HP reservoir.


That being the case, we aren't stingy with our resources. Kaboom!


Kurt lets 'em know we're here by doing 4x the remaining HP on this Codex in a single shot. That's why we keep the Rangers around, folks.


Spoony finishes off the Andromedon wreck with a chain shot. I mostly included this picture just to prove that chain shot can actually hit once in a while (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary).


Next up we find an archon and a viper. Match runs up to katana the snake lady...


...revealing another andromedon and a sectoid in the process. Oh bother.


The archon get in a hit on False, who has to roll a willpower check (presumably because she was a little tired coming into the mission). Thankfully, she keeps her cool.


The andromedon takes a shot at Match, but thankfully he is protected by the power of murder. Untouchable is such a great skill, y'all.


Spoony and Match take down the andromedon's first life bar. For her next trick, Esha decides to use Domination on the archon. Now, you may recall that last time I tried that trick, I only really succeeded in getting Ted killed.


But Ted's dead, baby, and this time our archon is going to pull its weight and then some. Note that the andromedon shell decided to retreat, for whatever reason. We get this shot in, but it escapes across the bridge and into the next building.


I send Archie after it and discover our last group of enemies, a couple more archons and a spectre.


Esha drops a void rift into the building, since you can never have enough purple in your life. Archie gets caught in the rift, but them's the breaks.


This time, my plan of sending the mind-controlled archon ahead of the team is working perfectly. All the enemies are focusing on Archie, while the team takes potshots at them from relative safety.


Archie isn't just a training dummy, either, he puts some serious work in!


We eventually end up with a lineup of three archons in a row. And if I've learned anything from puzzle games, its that when you line three things up in a row, they tend to disappear.


With a little help from Kurt, in this case. Unfortunately, he gets a little overzealous and ends up shooting Archie in the process. Oh well, it's not like we were going to bring him back to the Avenger with us.


Esha finishes off the andromedon shell with her trusty crossbow, because I know False will complain if I don't give her enough to do on her last mission.


With the baddies taken care of, we are free to hack the radio tower. This is a story hack, so of course we're guaranteed to succeed. So what happens once we control the airwaves?


As the team starts to make their escape, they are set upon by another round of ADVENT forces.


But suddenly, the ADVENT radio signal changes color, sending a brilliant pulse of yellow light through the sky!


The signal weakens the aliens' telepathic control over the ADVENT soldiers, incapacitating them...


...and shutting down their mechanized defenses for good measure. Sounds like part one of our plan was a success! But what about part 2: the deprogramming of the oppressed humans of Earth?


We next cut to an ADVENT news broadcast, where humanity is being promised an end to all disease if they only stop by their local gene therapy clinics. Of course, we know that the plan is to liquify anyone foolish enough to submit themselves to these "upgrades". This putz here is basically ADVENT's press secretary, if I cared more about the story we would have seen him earlier.


While he's espousing the greatness of ADVENT's new medical techniques, the images behind him change to show the genetically-modified ADVENT soldiers and scenes of ADVENT attacking human settlements.


The people watching his speech are justifiably upset.


Douchebro isn't getting the reception he expected from his speech, so he turns around to see what everyone is looking at on the screen behind him. Mob justice is quickly dispensed and this silicon-valley looking loser is no more.


And with that, our second-to-last mission is complete! Great job, team, you're almost the best XCOM has to offer!


As a retirement bonus, Matchstick makes Colonel from his last mission! That'll be a nice bump to his pension. Of course, he also develops a fear of archons, which is a little weird, since he killed three of them last mission and didn't get a scratch in the process. Not like it matters, he's heading to the bar for a nice glass of ginger beer.


Now there's only one thing left to do: invade the enemy stronghold and destroy the source of their power! Uh, somehow? Feels like there are maybe a couple of steps that we're glossing over here.


It's time to assemble the A-team! But before we do that, I just wanted to show off Sensenic's incredible 58 dodge skill. He's spent the whole campaign turning himself into an unkillable being of pure energy, and it's really paid off.


Here it is, the roster for our final mission. Everyone is in peak condition, equipped with our best weapons and armor. You'll notice a lot of mindshields in the loadout - that's because we're going to be facing more of those Avatar creatures in this mission. They can mind-control your squad pretty effectively and they have a habit of teleporting way out of range, so I'd rather nip that problem in the bud as much as possible. The only exceptions are Nightwalker, who will be spending almost the entire mission invisible, and Sensenic, because I really need those grenades. If either of them gets controlled we'll be in a bit of trouble, but hopefully that won't happen. (NOTE: I haven't played this mission to completion yet, so I really don't know if it's going to happen! This isn't foreshadowing).

But wait a second, you didn't think we'd go into the final mission without at least one surprise, right?


Remember this thing? We found it at the ADVENT cloning facility. It's basically an Avatar that hasn't finished baking yet. Well crank up the oven, folks, because we're gonna...frost it? Help me out here, I've got nothing.


Over here in the red suit, we have your standard garden-variety human being.


Through the magic of ♫science♫, the person inside this suit is going to take control over the Avatar body to pilot it remotely. Just like in that famous movie, Surrogates! Starring Bruce Willis!


But who could the mysterious person in the red space suit be? The answer is...me! Not the XCOM soldier who bears my name and callsign, but like, ACTUALLY me. The guy writing this post! Yes, the game literally self-inserts you into the final mission, where you get to control psychic Goku alongside your squad. Is that cool? I'm not really sure, but it means we get to have seven soldiers instead of six, so I'm all for it.


We're treated to a little cutscene of everyone saluting as you (me) walk down the hallway. And at the end, we arrive at our destination:


The Warp Gate! What awaits us on the other side? Find out next time, in the thrilling conclusion to Join the XCOM 2 character pool today! Coming soon to one of two possible forums near you!

Uh okay sure. That's bizarre.

The tutorial mission, if you don't skip it, has your soldiers rescue You from the aliens' clutches. The story is that the first game is a series of simulations that they played in Your head in order to win the war (because You are such an awesome tactician). Because You were part of the psychic network once already, You are the ideal candidate to become the avatar and restore peace to the four nations.

A side effect of the backstory is that playing the first game means you're secretly helping the enemy.

[Please note that this post will go up on the old and new forums simultaneously. The new forums allow for larger in-line images, so I personally think it looks better over there, but you're all grownups so I won't tell you what to do.]

Final Mission: Avatars in Waterland

And so we come to Tyrant Squad's final mission. What awaits us on the other side of the warp gate? Who will live to tell the tale and who will be the subject of a commemorative poster? What was the story of this game anyway? Only one way to find out!



Welcome to the Elders' secret ocean base, affectionately (?) known as Waterworld. So just who are these Elders, anyway? In a nutshell, they're the head honchos who control the invading alien empire: tall, skinny, four-armed aliens that are very good with psionics. They're a late-game enemy in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but they are conspicuously absent in the XCOM 2 campaign. Turns out that they're suffering from some sort of degenerative disease and their bodies are wasting away. The solution: make a bunch of Super Saiyan Avatars out of mulched up humans to be their new bodies!


Just like this one here that we commandeered for this mission.


As the team steps into the chamber, the Elders (AKA Ethereals) start a propaganda reel about how we're really messing everything up and they totally have our best interests at heart so maybe don't kill them, OK?


But we didn't come all this way to NOT solve our problems with violence. It's worked so far! This is a long mission and it's full of different enemy groups, starting with these hapless Mutons. At this point they don't stand a chance against us.


Farther up we find some ADVENT patrolling with a Sectopod. Here you can see Nightwalker's new ability in action - since he scouted this group of enemies, they are now permanently visible even when no one is in visible range of them. It's a handy skill, but I didn't wind up using it all that much on this mission in the end.


Even a Sectopod doesn't represent that much of a danger to the team, so long as we get the drop on it. That said, this is a very long mission and I'm trying to save our most powerful items and limited-use abilities for the end, so we are slightly limited in which of our tools we can deploy here. Normally, a Sectopod would be the nastiest enemy on a given mission and I would at least hit it with an EMP bomb or something. But for now we'll have to settle for recharging abilities like Vixen's Rapid Fire...


...and the Commander's Dimensional Rift, a souped-up version of Void Rift that does more damage in a much bigger radius. We can't risk losing the Commander on this mission because I am very important, but thankfully the Avatar's abilities all have super huge range and you can generally keep it out of harm's way while still being very effective. Its other skill is Null Lance, same as any other Psi Operative. Note that Dimensional Rift is great from a pure damage standpoint, but it doesn't come with the knock-on effects that you sometimes get from Void Rift, like bonus Mind Control. Also note that, next turn, that rift will collapse, taking basically every piece of the environment with it. This can create huge zones where no cover is available, so you should be a little selective about where you deploy these things.


Next up: four very unfortunate Sectoids.


Gerad gets two of them with Kill Zone and the squad mops up the rest.


A little farther on we find this group with no fewer than FOUR Codices, plus a pair of Archons for good measure. This would be another great spot to bust out Kill Zone, but that skill is currently recharging. So what's a sniper to do?


Serial is what! For the rest of the turn, any time Gerad makes a kill he will get a bonus action. As long as every shot is a kill shot, he can go indefinitely! He starts by popping a Codex for us. Note that we aren't obligated to take all of his actions in a row, we can switch to other team members and come back to him later so long as it's in the same turn.


The enemies scatter, taking up defensive positions inside this room. Normally they'd be safe from any area-of-effect attacks, but they didn't count on the enormity of Dimensional Rift. Look at the size of that thing! That said, it was a bad call to use DR on a group of Codices, because it doesn't do enough damage to kill them. And any attack that doesn't kill a Codex tends to cause it to clone itself, meaning that we now have 6 weakened Codices to take care of scattered across the map.


Of course, that isn't a huge problem, since Gerad is currently at the all-you-can-shoot buffet. He takes another 2-3 of them out for us and seriously wounds one of the Archons with his last shot. The rest of the team manages to clean the up enemy squad without letting them get a turn in. So far, so flawless.


Here's a shot of the Dimensional Rift collapsing and exploding everything inside its radius. I don't know who is taking the 9 damage that you see in the screenshot, because it isn't VV. Mysterious!


More Mutons! I guess they didn't see what happened to the last group.


Sensenic's self-preservation skills are so honed that he has even learned how to shoot at enemies without leaving cover! Walls are no impediment for Joan of the Castle.


Spook uses the delightful Fuse ability to explode this Muton's grenades while he's still carrying them. It's like a fireworks show!


Here come the robbits.


Man, look at the damage Gerad can do with just a pistol shot, these robots are fucked.


Done and dusted.


Moving on, we find a pod that's a little more our speed - two Codices and DOUBLE GATEKEEPER. This is one group that we'll have to take seriously.


The map starts to get a little strange at this point, too. Until now, we've been in a pretty generic-looking alien facility. Lots of curved walls and science-fiction-looking machinery. But at this point we enter what appears to be a suburban home, complete with a backyard and a swingset? Obviously the Elders have been up to some weird stuff, but I don't quite understand what the purpose of this place is. Are they raising humans here? If so, where are they now?


Double Gatekeeper is a problem worth expending some resources on. We start by having Nightwalker stick one of his augmented claymores onto a Gatekeeper. This can be done from extremely far away, which is nice, and it will explode as soon as the enemy takes damage...


...which happens immediately, thanks to an EMP bomb fired by Sensenic. The combined double explosion instantly vaporizes the two Codices and does massive damage to the golf balls.


Gerad takes out the first Gatekeeper, who then explodes, further damaging the second one.


And finally, we send VV up to finish off the straggler. Expertly-done, crew!


Beating the last Gatekeeper triggers a change of locale, taking us to the inner sanctum of the Elders. They start giving us a big spiel about how they're fighting some sort of larger battle and how everything they've done so far was to ensure the survival of all the races of the galaxy. Hah, as if I'd fall for that one!


No, folks, the time for talk is over. This is the final showdown! The main event! The big cheese! The battle of the pointy-haired Avatars!


For the final confrontation, our task is to defeat three more Avatar enemies, along with an endless (?) supply of reinforcements. At the start of the battle, however, only the first of the Avatars is deployed, along with two Archons. Once an Avatar falls, the next one will spawn, generally in the next group of reinforcements. I guess I don't know what happens if you take too long dealing with them, maybe you'd have to face all three at once? That would suuuuuuuuuck.


The map for the final confrontation is roughly diamond-shaped; our team warps in at the southern tip and the enemies appear in the north, east and west. The first Avatar's squad is directly north of us, but we are separated from them by a large wall running east-west. This is where the huge range of psionic attacks can really come in handy, we can drop Dimensional Rift on the enemy group without putting our own Avatar in harm's way.


Remember, every time you injure an Avatar, it teleports to a random location on the map. This is actually more of a help than a hindrance, because there really doesn't seem to be a lot of thought behind the places they choose to go. So what I typically do is focus on attacks that I know will hit, regardless of their damage potential, until the Avatar pops up in a spot where I can do some serious hurting. Spook uses Soulfire, which can't miss, to force the Avatar to move again.


It then hops closer to the squad, where we can flank it for an easy kill. Sensenic is first to notch an Avatar!


We still have to deal with those two Archons, however...


...along with this fourtet of mudmen that appears on the east side. None of these enemies are especially dangerous, but it's going to get crowded in here if we don't keep the population down.


VV is more than happy to oblige!


One of the Archons fire off a blazing pinions and then flies closer to the squad...


...where it catches site of Gerad's armor and panics. This causes it to flee, taking another move that just happens to pass right next to Nightwalker, revealing him. That's kind of cruddy, I'm really counting on him to scout out the enemy Avatar locations and I only have one charge of stealth left for the entire mission. Plus, using Banish will reveal him if he is hidden, which means I might need to do that before sending him back into stealth mode. Not ideal.


A group of vipers shows up on the west side. They're really far away from us, but I need to keep them in mind in case things drag out long enough for them to arrive.


In case you were wondering, the Commander's Avatar does indeed know how to shoot things. The damage is nothing special, but it does have a unique weapon type and animation, for what that's worth.


We've cleared out most of the mud men. The free turns that you sometimes get from the Chosen weapons really help with culling the herds.


The blazing pinions land, destroying most of the cover near our starting location. I started moving the squad up and to the east, since you can't really hide behind the big wall forever if you don't want to get ridiculously outnumbered.


Here comes our second Avatar on the east side, along with its honor guard. Man, two Andromedons is nothing to sneeze at. The Sectoids aren't much of a threat, though, since almost everyone in the squad is psi-shielded.


Since we're down our usual scout, I decide to put Vixen into concealment so she can go scout the location of Avatar 2 (coming to a theatre near you in 2035).


Turns out the Avatar is a good ways up, hidden behind cover. No-one has a good shot on it, so I have Sensenic use Demolition to destroy its cover.


And then I kind of panic and have Nightwalker use Banish. This was a bad move and I honestly knew it was at the time, because to-his hit percentage was just a hair over 50% and his rifle wasn't even fully loaded at the time. But I was getting antsy because I wanted to put him back into stealth mode and I was hoping to get lucky with a Repeater proc that would instantly finish the second Avatar off. No suck luck, sadly, Nightwalker gets about 3 hits in but does minimal damage in the process.


The Avatar appears on our left and Spook uses Null Lance for some reasonable guaranteed damage. Unfortunately, we're out of moves, so we can't finish it off before our turn ends.


The Avatar responds by using mind control on Nightwalker, which is just, like, a worst-case scenario for me. Nightwalker doesn't have a psi shield because he was SUPPOSED to be invisible for the entire duration of the mission! Thankfully, the mind control failed, which was a really lucky break. I mean, we could probably have killed the Avatar before it had a chance to use him to ill effect, but it's pretty stressful having someone under mind control from an enemy that can teleport to the other side of the map on a whim. Whichis more or less the same reason why the Warlock sucks, come to think of it.


We're not out of the woods yet, though. The two Andromedons take shots on the team, injuring Spook and Aquadeo despite the fact that both were in high cover a long distance away. Just bad luck, I guess.


Well, when the going gets tough, the tough get Blasting. The explosion kills the Sectoid, softens up one of the Andromedons and sends the Avatar teleporting out to a location...


...where ViolentVixen has eyes on him. VV also has Hail of Bullets, which, you may recall, cannot miss. Avatar 2 is down! Take that, James Cameron.


Aquadeo has a really powerful skill that can heal everyone on the team in a single move...but I don't actually need to use it right now. Healing doesn't end your turn, so you can do it twice in a row. Aqua patches up Spook and then tends to his own wounds, and everyone is back in fighting form.


I had only meant to do a bit of damage to this Andromedon, who was behind cover, but we get a free Mind Control in the bargain! The Andromedon only has a single HP left, but it's still a nice bonus. This mind control is a temporary dealie, so we'll have to make the best use of it we can before it wears off.


On the west side of the map, the final Avatar squad warps in. Look at all those HP!


With three Andromedons now on the map (plus the one in our control), I decide to deploy our mimic beacon. It sacrifices itself one last time so that Tyrant Squad may live. *salutes*


It may surprise you to learn that one of my favorite things to do with mind-controlled enemies is use up their explosives so they can't use them on me later. I thought this acid bomb would finish off my mind-controlled Andromedon while damaging the two other enemies, but it turns out that Andromedons are acid-proof.


We take the first life bar down on the enemy Andromedon and then Sensenic gets our only repeater proc for the whole mission on its shell. The dice were pretty stingy today, I tells ya. At least this is a nice enemy to get an instant kill on.


Yikes, two Berserkers and a Gatekeeper join the fray. Bear in mind that we still have the final Avatar's squad plus that group of Vipers running around out there. It's getting kind of hot in here!


Uh, and that one Andromedon that was formerly mind-controlled. Which wakes up and lands a hit on Gerad. Oopsy.


I just can't deal with all of these guys right now, so Sensenic puts them on ice. But then I have another idea:


DOMINATE THE GATEKEEPER!


As much fun as that is, we don't actually do a lot with our great white orb. Nightwalker locates the final Avatar, to which he applies his last claymore mine. Gerad does the honors of detonating it for him.


And then the Avatar makes the galaxy-brain decision to teleport...right next to a Colonel-ranked Ranger with the best shotgun in the game.


GG, ADVENT.


As soon as the last Avatar is dead, the mission ends. We weren't doing too badly, but there are times when you're completely surrounded and on the ropes and you can shoot the moon by ignoring all the regular enemies and just trying to kill the Avatar to end the mission. That's definitely worked for me in the past!

Now, though, it's time to evacuate as the emergency self-destruct activates.


But wait, the portal is unstable! How will our brave troops make it back home?


Thanks to the Commander's (AKA me's) super brain powers! We (I) single-handedly stabilize the portal, allowing the squad to return safely to the Avenger.


BUT WAIT. The Elders aren't finished, they want this Avatar with its precious, human brain. Because the Commander (again: me) is the single greatest military mind in the history of the galaxy and whoever has them (me) on their side is guaranteed to win any conflicts they take part in. And look, I can't argue with the facts, I totally get where they're coming from.


However, after a short moment of head-clutching, the Commander rallies and draws upon the never-before-seen blue brain power to combat the traditional purple brain power used by the Elders.


There's even a traditional Beam-O-War battle where the blue slowly overwhelms the purple. God the writing in this game is so bad.


We get another cryptic hint that there may be some sort of worse creature in the universe, hunting for...something? The Elders have apparently been worrying about this thing for some time, but the Commander don't give a fig.


They (I) beat back the Elders' psionic energies and send them packing. Presumably that means they're all dead? I haven't played enough Chimera Squad to know whether there are any signs left of the Ethereals after the end of this game.


And with that, the Commander's consciousness returns to his regular human body. Bradford makes bedroom eyes at us as we wake up again on the Avenger.

Will you two just make out already?


We then get a series of different scenes, showing how the civilian population is faring against the rudderless ADVENT. The answer is: surprisingly well! I wouldn't expect a mostly-unarmed populace to stand a chance against a fascist military regime, but ADVENT were all being controlled psionically by the Elders, so maybe they don't know what to do now that they have free will?


After a couple of news reports and pirate TV messages about the uprising, we get a scene of this super dumbass walking up to an ADVENT checkpoint with a baseball bat. I would normally expect them to shoot him on sight, but for some reason they don't...


...which gives his resistance backup to show up. After 20 years of occupation, it looks like humanity is free once more!


But under the surface (get it), not all is well. The camera takes us deep under the ocean, to the wreckage of the secret Elder facility.


There we find some sort of glowy fissure in the ocean floor, oozing what appear to be psionic tentacles. X-COM historians will immediately realize that this is an oblique reference to Terror From the Deep, the second of the classic X-COM games, where war was waged against ocean-dwelling aliens. In the old game, these ocean enemies (anemonies?) were sleeper agents working for the same force that you were fighting in the first game. Here, though, it seems to be some kind of enigmatic force from beyond space and time. Sequel hook!

If we were playing vanilla XCOM 2, that would be the final scene. In War of the Chosen, however, we get three little vignettes to wrap up each of the factions' stories.


First up we have Riker the Reaper, leading his people back into humanity's embrace now that the aliens have fallen.


Then there's a group of ADVENT soldiers, who approach the skirmisher leader Betos before kneeling and removing their helmets.


And finally, we have a group of Templars walking through the woods, having a very serious-sounding discussion. God, these guys are a bunch of clowns, just look at them.


They stop at a scenic overlook, from which they can see a halo of light rising out of the ocean. Things are definitely pointing to some sort of psionic creatures living underwater, which I assume will figure into XCOM 3 whenever that game is released. Again, I haven't played enough Chimera Squad to know if they actually follow through on this line in that game, but I imagine we'll learn more when they finally announce the next major game in the series.

And finally, we are left with our stats for the campaign! I'll post these for anyone who is curious about them, but the only thing I really have to say here is that I'm pretty sure a lot of PC players cheat at XCOM 2. That was even more obvious in Enemy Unknown, where you'd see people earning 10x more money than you over the course of the campaign. Anyway, have a look and see how we did!











And with that, our campaign draws to a close. Thank you to everyone who was a part of our team! Whether you killed a hundred aliens or were gunned down on your very first mission, you were the very best of eggs and I couldn't have made this omelette without you. This will be my last LP on this incarnation of Talking Time and it has been the longest to complete by far, but XCOM 2 is my favorite game and I'm glad I got to take you all on this whirlwind tour of it with me. Don't forget that you can still download Tyrant Squad from the link in the first post of this thread - if you ever feel like trying your hand at this game, I know just the people to get you through your campaign! Or to die horribly by the end of the first month. That's XCOM, baby!