TAKING ON THE CHOSEN IN XCOM 2 PART III

The Assassin finally falls, but at what cost?

- Ian Evenden

As the third and final part of this diary begins, XCOM has a problem. The scrappy resistance organisation may have fought off a huge alien attack on its base, and be gearing up for an assault on the stronghold of the Chosen Assassin who’s been harassing us. But there’s a little problem.

The issue is that the Commander – that’s me – has not been paying sufficient attention to the supply of raw recruits, instead focusing his resources on a rotating pool of higher ranks who go out on missions, plus a few others to do Covert Actions. After the intense battle as we defended the Avenger, almost everyone is either laid up in the infirmary or too tired to shoot straight.

There’s a simple cure for this: time. Sitting on the Geoscape screen, scanning away and letting time pass will see my soldiers heal and my research projects come to fruition. However, XCOM 2 does not like the idler. It stresses the slothful and pesters the procrastinator with a constant stream of scanning locations, resource drops, retaliation missions, rescues and guerrilla ops, constantly trying to pull you in at least two directions at once and force you to prioritise between, say, a new scientist or a heap of alien alloys. Combined with the constant ticking of the monthly clock and the Avatar Project meter glowing balefully at the top of the screen, trying to do nothing for a while is irksome.

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