XCOM 2: Long War 2 turning Geoscape to battlefield
This means WAR!
XCOM 2: Long War 2, the officially-sanctioned sequel to the venerated XCOM mod, will expand the 'Geoscape' global strategy layer in new and awful ways. Long War 2's initial announcement this month was a little light on details, leaving us guessing at how it'd give XCOM 2 that complex and gruelling Long War flavour, but interesting factbits are now surfacing. For starters, the Geoscape is now a battlefield of its own, with push, pull, and BETRAYAL!
A new blog post explains that Long War 2 players will need to actively manage the rebellion in regions they've contacted:
"Each region has a certain number of rebels who may be assigned to one of three different tasks: scrounging for supplies, recruiting new rebels and soldiers, or gathering intelligence to generate new missions. You'll also be able to deploy a single adviser – a scientist, engineer or soldier – to each region to provide bonuses to a particular task, and may improve a region's defenses by capturing ADVENT MECs and repurposing them through the advanced Specialist perk, 'Full Override.'
"Rebels can die during retaliations and other missions, and even some can be Faceless in disguise."
Lawks! And, naturally, the enemy will be more active on the Geoscape:
"The enemy has employed a new strategic AI that will be operating counter to your own efforts, under the same goal of finishing the Avatar Project. ADVENT will try to move forces from adjacent regions to your location; if ADVENT feels safe in a region, it'll try to construct research facilities to further the Avatar Project. If you've managed to drive ADVENT out of a region, they may return in force to try and take it back."
Long War 2 is still largely cloaked in shadow and mystery, which also covers details like a release date, but we do know a little more. It'll introduce a new tier of weapons, Coilguns, sitting below the current top tier. It'll also add a new character class, the Technical, who wears a mighty gauntlet packing both a rocket launcher and a flamethrower.
While the mod is made at the behest (and with the support) of Firaxis, Long War 2 is being made by Pavonis Interactive - the folks who made the original mod, who've since changed their name from Long War Studios. Maybe once this mod is it, we'll hear more about Pavonis's own alien invasion strategy game, Terra Invicta.