Even more information about the Chosen!You should probably read it yourself, but here's a """summary""":
In this, Solomon explicitly states that Shadow of Mordor was the inspiration for the Chosen.
Allowed to run free, the Chosen will level up over time, gaining randomly selected strengths and weaknesses as they go. They might acquire Shadow Step, making them immune to reaction fire, or be able to spot any concealed unit in their line of sight, or a weakness to psionics or start taking double damage from explosives. Some are more elaborate, says Solomon. “One of the interesting ones is that if you miss a shot against them they have a chance to return fire immediately. So now you have to be like ‘Oh, I shouldn’t take any low-percentage shots against this one.’ Or, when their turn ends, they go into Overwatch immediately. What they’re really supposed to do is modify how you approach that Chosen, and then they change because they pick up a new strength.” Notably, those traits are exposed to you, so you’re never going to find out the hard way that the characters you brought aren’t going to be effective against the potential Chosen threat.
Also, they apparently have some more unique personalities:
Beyond progression, the Chosen inject personality by talking to you (one of whom is voiced by Nolan North, because he’s contractually obligated to participate in every video game). They’ll pipe up on the strategy layer or in combat to talk about things that happened on the last mission, such as gloating about capturing a soldier or stating they won’t be as easy to defeat as their sibling. “That’s not influencing gameplay, but I’ve found that something I’ve missed in XCOM is that the strategy layer can feel a little cold,” says Solomon. “Especially mid-game when you get on a role, it’s nice to have the Chosen commenting on things.”
And on that note, we're also getting a "Resistance Radio" among other things. The ADVENT Speaker and the leaders of the rebel factions will make comments and the like in the strategy layer.
But they’re not the only new voices we’ll hear in War of the Chosen. The new resistance faction leaders will comment as well, and we’ll get an earful of spin on our actions from both the Resistance Radio (hosted by Jacob Busey) and the Advent Speaker as we’re returning from missions. “It adds a lot of life to the game,” promises Solomon.
The Chosen also compete against each other and have a territory mechanic. In addition to this, they each have a rival resistance faction which can be used to help hunt down the Chosen. That, and supposedly the final mission to eliminate one of the Chosen is similar to a Base Assault from Enemy Unknown.
In order to hunt down a Chosen, you’ll need to work with your targeted Chosen’s rival resistance faction, which is randomly paired each game. You’ll need to spend some of your Covert Action efforts with either the Reapers, the Templars, or the Skirmishers to pinpoint the location of the associated Chosen’s stronghold (and the Chosen will take more damage from that faction). Solomon says you don’t have to and probably won’t hunt down all the Chosen before you beat a game.
On the Lost:
Finally, there’s an entirely new enemy faction, the Lost. Yes, they’re zombies - hordes of former humans, transformed into mindlessly aggressive husks by the green gas-spewing pods we first saw in Enemy Unknown. They come in numbers and are attracted by the sound of explosions, which discourages the use of everybody’s favorite area-of-effect attacks. However, they also have what Solomon calls a headshot effect. “There are a lot of Lost - so many that you couldn’t kill them in a single turn without headshots. If you kill one, that’s a free action.” Basically, if you target the low-health zombies first and have a fair amount of ammo loaded into your guns, you can mow down a lot of them before they reach you, but it requires some thought in what order to take your shots. Also notable: if the Lost are on fire they’ll panic and run around, lighting other Lost on fire. The Advent know this too; hence the Purifier.
Emphasis mine. That sounds legitimately amazing.
And some examples of SITREPs, which is the new system they have to add random modifiers to some/most missions to change up gameplay.
High explosives - The map is littered with explosives that you or the AI can target
Surgical - You’re limited to just three soldiers (and the enemy is ramped down to compensate).
Lost - There are lost here. They’re on all Abandoned City maps, but can also be on others. Every couple of turns these things are going to swarm you, and with every explosion that turn counter drops down. You don’t want to use explosives against Lost.
Horde - It’s all Lost - no Advent. You’re trying to reach an objective like destroy relay, but the map is flooded with zombies.
Shadow Squad - Every member of your squad has the conceal ability.
Savage - All beast enemies like transformed Faceless and Cryssalids
Now the Hero units:
Starting with the simple thing, SPARK units will be tougher, more accurate, and can add mods to their guns. But even so, they’re lightweights compared to the “hero” units we’ll get from the three resistance factions, the Scrappers, the Templars, and the Reapers. Because of their wide range of powerful abilities, these units are hard to come by in numbers, but sound like they’ll be more than capable of turning the tide. You’ll get quick access to one (fully customizable) hero unit to start with, but signing on more won’t be easy or cheap (though if you lose one, replacing them won’t break the bank).
I'm slightly disappointed about the fact that they're basically just better than your actual soldiers, but other than that they seem really cool.
And Ability Points:
All of these soldiers have access to more abilities than the standard XCOM soldier, plus some of the same ones. The catch is that you have to buy them using skill points that come both from leveling up your heroes and from a shared pool of ability points that come from executing certain maneuvers in combat, such as flanking or killing from an elevated position. “Every time you do that, there’s a chance to earn points,” says Solomon. Core soldiers can use ability points as well in the new Training Center facility - they can purchase from both branches of their tree or from other classes.
The part where "core soldiers" (assuming that means your regular non-hero soldiers) can also use the ability points in the Training Center is interesting. So it isn't just limited to hero soldiers, which is great.
And on the note of the Training Center (and more on the AP):
That facility, in combination with the new Infirmary, replaces the Advanced Warfare Center (RIP). The main difference is that now instead of every soldier having a secret ability that’s uncovered at the AWC, everyone has a set of four possible abilities that you can unlock using ability points. If you want to put all your eggs in one basket, you can pour points into one soldier and unlock them all - though some will be more expensive than others. If you want to put Rapid Fire on a sniper, for example, it’s going to cost you.
So the AWC has been replaced by the Training Center. The quote is pretty self explanatory. But I will miss the AWC.
There's also more to the Rebel Factions than just hero units. They can give you perks that'll help in the tactical and strategy layers:
Cozying up to the three factions can bring you other extremely powerful perks. You have a limited number of slots to fill, but you’re presented with randomly available options like instant kills every time you hit a Lost, having Advent units defect to your side, reducing the Advent’s progress bar by one every month, doubling the resource rewards from investigating a rumor, and many more. Each faction has a completely different set, so there’s a lot to think about when choosing where to spend your resources.
Also, there'll be some missions where you'll have allied Resistance soldiers taking turns independently of you.
Which is awesome.
It’s important to note that these factions don’t operate against Advent independently, and only enter combat when you take them with you, so they’re not competing with you for control of territory or attacking Advent on their own. However, Solomon says there are missions where you’ll have Resistance Soldiers on your side who will take a turn independently of yours.
And now, Covert Actions!
Now might be a good time to discuss Covert Actions, which are huge. They’re similar to what we saw in XCOM: Enemy Within with dispatching agents on time-based missions to hunt down Exalt bases. But here we’re sending them off in pairs, with an option to attach an extra resource like a third soldier, an engineer or a scientist or a piece of equipment or some Intel to mitigate a hazard the covert team might face. (“But a lot of the time, as a player, I’m like, eh, they’ll be fine,” Solomon adds.) If you don’t spend the extra resource and your team has bad luck, they could be captured outright or it could trigger an Ambush mission in which you have to control them in a mission to try to sneak them out of danger from both Lost and Advent pursuers. From the sound of it there will be a lot of opportunities for Covert Actions, since they’ll be used to improve your relationship with the three other resistance factions. “You’re constantly juggling what you should be doing with Covert Actions,” says Solomon. He adds that the Resistance Ring is a new facility that helps do Covert Actions faster
Basically a whole new version of Enemy Within's covert ops with a lot of additional features.
And the Bonding system:
Every soldier has randomly assigned compatibility with every other soldier, from low to very high. Sending them on tactical or covert missions together builds that relationship until you’re given the opportunity to level it up. (First one’s free, but increasing it requires a trip to the Training Center.) Solomon describes the process: “After the mission you’ll see a flyover on the soldiers, and the camera will zoom in and you’ll see those two soldiers having a beer together, or looking at a computer together, or at the rifle range shooting guns together, and Bradford will say ‘these two have enough compatibility to form a bond.’”
So soldiers have random compatibilities with others. As they go on missions together, their relationship will be built until you can level it up in the Training Center (1st one's free but others cost you). You'll also get a little overview of the soldiers' relations after you come back from a mission.
The abilities you can get from this is pretty cool.
At the lowest level you’ll see abilities like this: once per mission you can give up one soldier’s action to give the bondmate another action (this will work anywhere on the map). At bond level three, Solomon says, you can do that twice. Also at bond level three, there’s something called Dual Strike where you both shoot the same target at the same time and it doesn’t cost the bondmate an action. There are abilities where all you have to do is run up next to your bondmate and it cleanses them of all negative mental effects, so it would be like a revive. Bondmates can also complete Covert Actions faster.
But I'm not
reaaally sure I'm fond of the term "bondmate".
Will has been completely overhauled. In addition to affecting Psionic soldiers, it's also the basis for the new Fatigue system:
The most basic are that as a soldier’s Will drops (which is accelerated by injury or exposure to large numbers of enemies) they’ll be more susceptible to mind control, stuns, and panic. It’s important enough that you’ll now see Will on a bar in the Tactical UI.
Worse are the consequences of sending a soldier who’s already tired in for another round of combat. You can do it if you need to, but if you do they’ll could potentially pick up negative traits such as Aggressive, where telling them to go on Overwatch might cause them to attack immediately. Another one causes the to want their weapon to be fully loaded, so sometimes when you move them they’ll automatically use their next move to reload their weapon. Others are more straightforward, like a fear of certain enemy types that cause them to go berserk and attack that unit or hunker down on sight of that enemy. Those traits only trigger a max of once per mission, and can be cured at the Infirmary.
Will decreases as a soldier does more missions and decreases even more when the soldier's injured or is exposed to a lot of enemies. In addition to the standard penalties of low Will, soldiers can now gain some interesting negative traits if they are sent out while tired. Not sure if these traits are temporary or not, though.
Some new items:
We’ll also get some nice new toys. Reapers use Vector Rifle, Skirmishes use a Bullpup Rifle and a ripjack (can pull enemy to you or you to an enemy), Templars have the Shard gauntlets. For equipment, there’s a Lost Lure that can be used to make them attack where you want. And, if you’re paranoid about losing a soldier, you now have an insurance policy: there’s a consumable Sustaining Sphere item, if a unit is killed while carrying it, it will prevent them from dying and bring them back with one hitpoint the next turn.
Pretty self-explanatory. The Chosen also have unique weapons which you can loot if you kill them.
There's also some new systems for research to encourage differing research paths each playthrough:
Meanwhile, research has a new angle to it in Breakthroughs and Inspirations, which are meant to tempt you away from your standard research path of choice. They appear randomly: Once you finish researching a tech, Tygon will sometimes offer you a one-time chance at researching a new tech that might offer bonuses like increasing all sniper rifle damage by one, or all conventional weapon damage by one, or halving the cost of a given facility. Inspirations will give you one-time opportunities to research a tech at a discounted rate.
Then there's the Challenge mode:
Once you’re done with that, or if you only have a few minutes at a time to play, there’s the new challenge mode. These missions can be either hand-crafted by Firaxis or randomly generated, but either way we’ll take a group of units - both human and alien - into combat and see how we fare against others on a leaderboard. They give you updates as you go, saying things like “75% of people have lost a soldier by now.” Firaxis isn’t sure yet how frequently they’ll be available - maybe weekly.
Firaxis has also done some technical improvements. Loading times, stability, and frame rate should be all going up by some degree.
Firaxis hasn’t forgotten about those still experiencing technical issues with XCOM 2, says Solomon, and War of the Chosen will come with some engine fixes. “We’ve definitely made improvements to loading times, certainly to stability, steady state frame rate has gone up. We have, right outside of my office, a bunch of machines running the game on a loop. It’s pretty fun, actually, because you can watch the AI play the game over and over, and there’s a performance monitor. They’ve done a lot of improvements, performance-wise.”
The game will apparently generally be "10-15" missions longer due to this new stuff.
To me, this expansion seems to be focused a lot on emergent gameplay. In addition to all its other features, our soldiers will have relationships, your research will vary, missions will have different modifiers, the challenge mode exists, the Chosen level up differently responding to your style of play, and more. Lots of content that'll change between campaigns.
I covered most of the article here, but there is some stuff I didn't include so I still recommend checking out the article.
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Topic: X-Com Chimera Squad (Read 733756 times)