They Shall Not Grow Old: The XCOM Memorial

So many friends, loved ones, dead pets, Auotobots and French philosophers have fallen. We've each of us made decisions that led to loss of noble life in our attempts to save the Earth from the malevolent alien hordes of XCOM. Briefly, we mourn their loss. Then, all too soon, we move on and forget them forever.

It is time to more meaningfully honour the fallen. Uh, via Facebook.

The XCOM Memorial Wall is something that Firaxis should probably kick themselves for not including within the game itself. So, no automatically posting upon the death of a soldier here, but instead loading up Facebook and DIYing the whole thing yourself.

That said, the act of manually entering all the information (nationality, class, rank, number of kills, preferred weapon, etc) about a lost XCOM soldier does create a sort of reverence that just pressing a button to auto-post would not offer.

It's kind of silly, of course, but I do like the idea that one's own memorials join many others from across the world - creating that sense that, truly, this was a global war on extraterrestrial terror. Clearly, the most important element is entering the cause of death - browsing the wall, I was browsing the individual stories all those other players had created for their short-lived heroes. And the offensive names too, naturally.