Well, I didn't really find any particularly good turn 1 designs to bring back from the first game that aren't our actual turn 1 design or just a bigger plasma guns. All I found was wonderful nostalgia over the Skin Crawlers, which remain my single best contribution to any arms race yet.
I feel like a cool idea though could be like, a being with a pretty much useless body and a huge brain focused entirely on psionics. Like, we're talking the squishy center of the Gatekeeper, downscaled and without the tentacles. We could use it to pilot our large robots and such, thus meaning they can't just straight up re-purpose the machines directly for their own use.
Also, I really want to use the
Old-com Cryssalids for something, or at least their design. I found them while looking up other old XCom aliens and I just love the look. Something about the carapaced humanoid brute with a perpetual smile built into its skull is just really appealing to me. More so than the generic horrible bug monsters anyway. I guess because you'd expect the horrible bug monster to lay eggs in people, but not the hulking brute with giant rending pincers.
Doom could be another good source of inspiration for designs as well.
Edit: Hmm, wait, some ideas just came to me. Gonna try to cook up a few things.
Question
Ebbor, do we have access to mind meld yet?