Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Thrall

HP: 4 (+0/+2)
Aim: 70/70/75/75 (+2/+5)
Mobility: 10
Damage: Complicated. See below.
Will: 50 (+10/+20)
Initiative: 70

Some notes to start.

First of all, there's a Progeny Dark Event that adds +2 HP to Thralls while it's active. I largely don't intend to get into Dark Events on this site for various reasons (Mostly: it would be a huge pain to properly document, and the mechanic isn't actually all that impactful, unfortunately), but this is worth mentioning because Thralls cross a bunch of 'magic number' thresholds while this Dark Event is active.

Second, the Thrall is the first of several enemy types that are allowed to wield all of Assault Rifles, SMGs, and Shotguns, which have slightly different stat profiles. In the Thrall's case, their weapons all start from 2 damage with 1 damage from a crit, except the Shotgun has a 50% chance for +1 damage to occur. They then all gain 1 damage per Act, except the non-Shotguns also gain a point of spread starting from the second Act. Or to provide a summary you might find clearer:

SMG/AR: 2/2-4/3-5

Shotgun: 2-3/3-4/4-5

Crit adds +1 for all weapons in all Acts

Unfortunately, in practice this boils down to 'Thralls have a chance to be slightly more lethal than their usual'; the SMG and Assault Rifle are completely identical to each other, and the Shotgun has no disadvantage or other distinct qualities, just the little bit of extra damage. This is because, as I've alluded to before, enemies in Chimera Squad retain the XCOM 2 quality of their Aim never being affected by distance from the target; as such, where your Shotgun-equipped agents struggle to hit far-off targets, a Thrall with a Shotgun is just as accurate at any range as a Thrall equipped with an SMG or an Assault Rifle.

I like the idea of individual enemy types being able to have different weapon types equipped, but if XCOM 3 returns to the concept it really needs to put in the effort to make distinct weapons distinct when in enemy hands, and it also needs to make sure this concept is relatively obvious to the player. In Chimera Squad, not only is the Shotgun just better for enemies than an SMG or Assault Rifle, the fact that enemies can carry different weapon types, as well as the fact that this can matter, is not actually conveyed clearly to the player; the only indication is the audiovisual elements of the weapon itself. For various reasons, it's really easy to just entirely overlook that a couple Thralls in an Encounter are actually holding different weapons, and even if a player notices this it's easy to end up assuming it's just flavor with no gameplay implications -exacerbated by the fact that this is functionally true when it comes to SMG vs Assault Rifle, so a player might notice the different graphics, expect a difference to result, pay attention to what happens... and see no difference between two Thralls because the SMG and Assault Rifle don't have mechanical differences, and so just take longer to arrive at the 'this is just flavor' guess than a different player who went to it immediately.

It's not like it's a serious flaw in practice -it's not as if Shotguns are hugely more powerful than the alternatives, where it's safe to ignore an SMG or Assault Rifle Thrall but a Shotgun Thrall will casually kill someone- but it's one of the elements of Chimera Squad that's very obviously rough around the edges if you're aware of it at all.

Alert actions: Move to a different position, Hunker Down, Subservience.

The Thrall gives us our first example of an enemy whose Alert actions include the option of using one of their special abilities (That being Subservience) rather than just moving around or Hunkering Down. In all such cases the ability in question is not capable of delivering damage to your squad; they are always defensive or supportive effects. This includes that even preventible delayed-damage effects are forbidden from being Alert actions. Not that Thralls have such an example, mind, but there are a few enemies that toss a grenade at a location and a few turns later it detonates, and I imagine some players intuitively expected such to be allowed as Alert actions, and no.

Of course, getting into the implications of Subservience as an Alert action requires actually laying out what Subservience does, so onto that.

Subservience

1 Action point: The Thrall targets a friendly Sorcerer. If that Sorcerer should take damage, the Sorcerer will Deflect it, taking no damage, and the Thrall will be instantly killed instead.

Subservience is, unfortunately, possibly the most poorly-communicated enemy ability in the game in terms of visuals and so on.

First of all, the animation for Subservience makes it seem like the Sorcerer is the one initiating the effect. This makes in-universe sense and is probably the intention as far as what's supposed to be canonically happening in-universe, but within the game itself it's poor visual communication. In conjunction with Chimera Squad's experimental turn design, it's easy to end up guessing something non-standard is happening with the turn mechanics, like the Thrall is gifting an action point to a Sorcerer who is then casting Subservience on the Thrall. (Especially since XCOM 2 and Chimera Squad are both prone to not 'calling out' action point gifting with an ability popup)

Second, when damage is done to a Sorcerer after Subservience has been triggered, the Sorcerer performs the Templar Deflect animation to negate the damage, and then the camera cuts to the Thrall that promptly dies, with nothing about the visuals suggesting that the Sorcerer redirected the attack to the Thrall or anything of the sort. It's easy to end up thinking Sorcerers have a passive block chance in general (They don't, to be clear), and also easy to end up thinking initially that the Thrall is being killed by some other mechanic you missed. Among other points, the game absolutely does handle turn transitions 'too quickly', where it's possible for an enemy to not finish some animation or another before the game decides it's the next enemy's turn, which can result in eg Poison downing an enemy while another enemy is still finishing some animation of theirs.

Third, when the Thrall is killed, you get a damage pop-up that lists a damage number. This makes it easy to misunderstand the mechanics and think that, for example, the Sorcerer is deflecting the damage onto the Thrall, or deflecting the damage but doubling it, or otherwise think that the damage you would've done to the Sorcerer actually mattered. Nope! Nicking a Sorcerer for even a single point of damage will instantly kill whatever Thrall targeted them with Subservience!

Exacerbating all this is the very fact that it's an Alert action, as when the Breach Phase ends the game simply jumps about depicting enemy actions without otherwise signalling what action is tied to which unit's turn. This mostly isn't a problem since normally a unit apparently doing something is in fact that unit using its own turn and thus it's all intuitive enough, but with Subservience it makes it especially easy to think an Alert Sorcerer is using it, not an Alert Thrall.

All of which is unfortunate, as the difficulty of late-game Progeny fights is heavily influenced by whether a player correctly understands this poorly-communicated mechanic or not. If a player has any number of incorrect models in mind, they may find battles with Sorcerers in them are a notable uphill struggle, possibly outright some of the toughest fights in the game. With it properly understood, though, Sorcerers are sadly prone to making fights easier by being present. After all, it opens up the option to do things like lob a weak grenade at a Sorcerer benefitting from Subservience and have your 2-3 damage grenade effectively do 4, 6, or 8 damage by virtue of instantly deleting a Thrall.

Notably, Thralls heavily prioritize using Subservience without any particular regard to current conditions, where Sorcerer presence will often cause them to give up opportunities to flank or even opportunities to shoot at all because they'd need to move first and they'd rather use Subservience. So even before the potential to exploit the kill-for-minor damage aspect, Sorcerer presence is notably prone to dropping Thrall danger level.

All that said, this isn't to say Subservience is never a problem once understood. Maybe you try to take out a Thrall, and roll low enough on damage they end up at 1 HP, followed by getting their turn and using Subservience. At that point hitting the Sorcerer they targeted is basically guaranteed to be a loss in damage, and depending on positioning and all it may be worse than that -if you toss a grenade so it catches a Thrall and Sorcerer at the same time who are linked by Subservience, even if the grenade is doing enough damage to finish off the Thrall, the game will still have Subservience trigger and prevent all damage to the Sorcerer. Or maybe you try to shoot an Alert Thrall in the Breach Phase, and once again roll low on damage such that they survive on 1 HP and then use Subservience. These kinds of situations aren't common, but they are something to keep in mind; among other points, I'm not suggesting that deliberately ignoring Thralls so they can use Subservience is a good idea, because honestly, it often isn't.

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Aside Subservience, Thralls are about as basic as units get, being a Cover-using humanoid carrying a firearm. As Subservience requires a Sorcerer is present to matter, and Sorcerers are uncommon elites, a lot of missions with Thralls have them essentially the blandest enemy in the game. (Which is another reason why I'm pretty sure the Progeny is meant to be your first Investigation target for first-time play)

They are one of the few examples of the game's number tuning particularly favoring Shotguns, I guess, in that if you hit the Progeny as your first or second Investigation a Shotgun is guaranteed to down them in one hit whereas your other weapons need a damage boost of some kind to be fully reliable. Even that comes with the caveat that you can get the Dark Event that raises their HP and makes this point stop being true, especially if you hit the Progeny late so a Dark Event is immediately active.

But overall I don't have much to add in terms of gameplay discussion; when Subservience isn't relevant, Thralls are basically ADVENT Troopers, but minus the part where ADVENT Troopers at least picked up a grenade past their Basic tier.

Narratively, Thralls are, as far as I'm aware, never fully explicated by the game. There's a strong picture painted collectively, mind, but key details are never directly addressed, so just as with Acolytes there's some uncertainty at the edges.

Broadly speaking, it's made pretty clear that Thralls are unfortunate hybrids that the Progeny are psionically controlling and using as disposable meatshields. (Up to and including the Subservience ability making this a literal gameplay mechanic) One of the more subtle elements of this I suspect goes over a lot of players' heads is the intersection of two points; firstly and most obviously, when Thralls speak up in combat they consistently say a variety of pretty odd things. Second and less obvious is the Thrall's facial covering, which appears to be some manner of rebreather unit. (It's not just a scarf, though I suspect some players mistake it for such) Between the two, I suspect the Progeny are meant to be drugging the Thralls as well, and that this is probably meant to be part and parcel of the psionic control, making them more susceptible to psionic influence or some such.

In and of itself this is only mildly interesting -drugs to make people more pliable isn't really that unusual an idea in pop culture, and the implication of it helping with psionic control is something I've seen used a few other times in pop culture- but it gets a bit more interesting when connected to Sacred Coil's endgame, where we learn that Sacred Coil fills their religious centers with pheromones that specifically make hybrids more relaxed and whatnot. Altogether, Chimera Squad seems to be implying a new -but logical!- facet to how the Ethereals maintained control over their ADVENT forces, where their very biological design was tuned so the Ethereals had still more tools to minimize the odds of a rebellion or the like. It also interfaces with the previously way-too-vague implications of some manner of ADVENT religion, but I'll save that commentary for when we get to Sacred Coil, as it's far more relevant there.

All of this stuff is also interesting in that it suggests that the Progeny's lineup of unit types is, from an in-universe standpoint, primarily ruthlessly pragmatic. That is, it seems the Progeny isn't exploiting hybrids out of some philosophical commitment to discriminating against hybrids, but rather because they're an easy target, conveniently already designed to be readily controlled by the psionic powers the Progeny forces are honing anyway.

This is particularly interesting to me because I can broadly describe this as the 'controlling the weak-willed' set of tropes, which is a set of tropes I normally sigh at seeing, but where usually 'controlling the weak-willed' is a vague way of justifying psionic powers/mind control tech/magical domination/whatever controlling whoever the narrative wants controlled and not whoever the narrative doesn't want controlled (eg the protagonist is typically immune to such measures, where the concept of a protagonist is applicable) with no real underlying system of rules it actually follows, this is instead a coherent model of factors with specific implications that fit with what came before (ie XCOM 2), what's going on right now (ie Chimera Squad), and will hopefully actually be held to by later entries. (ie XCOM 3, other spinoffs, etc) There's nuance here, for one, and for another Chimera Squad itself is actually willing to touch a little on the idea of sociopolitical implications in regards to setting elements, where eg the between-mission radio chatter will touch on there apparently being 'psi dampers' that at least some Sectoids are legally obligated to wear, so it's possible later games will actually engage with such topics instead of glossing right over them and ignoring that the setting has established rules and whatnot. I can imagine XCOM 3 touching on ideas like some humans worry that hybrids are overly-susceptible to being controlled by psionic powers, and indeed this could even be a mechanic where the player has to be particularly careful with hybrid soldiers around psionic enemies. That could all potentially be very interesting.

The Thrall's aesthetic is potentially also interesting, though it's much more ambiguous. Unlike a lot of enemies in Chimera Squad, Thralls appear to have a fairly complete uniform of armor; nothing to cover their hands or head, but otherwise they appear to be pretty completely protected, and the protection doesn't look particularly makeshift, which is a bit unexpected given the overall presentation of the Progeny and the nature of Thralls as mind-controlled troops the Progeny clearly views as pretty disposable. Given hybrids are all, by definition, ex-ADVENT troops, it seems very possible the intent here is that Thralls are wearing a part of their old military uniform -a layer under what we saw in XCOM 2, presumably.

Buuuut this is never explicitly suggested, the visuals of the armor don't try to evoke any variation on ADVENT armor, and 'form follows function' is a thing, where it's not particularly surprising for two armored designs to arrive at similar looks not because they're supposed to be related but because the underlying goals are the same. It's entirely possible Thrall armor is meant to be just what a City 31 civilian can scavenge up relatively readily, and the aesthetic just isn't communicating this all that strongly.

A similar point is the conspicuous dark streaks across the top of their head; this could just be meant to be one of the looks hybrids can have kind of randomly, or it could be meant to be evidence of something a bit more specific having been done to Thralls, like the Progeny tattooing them or performing some manner of brain surgery where the dark streaks are scar tissue, or whatever. It's impossible to meaningfully guess what it's meant to be about, though.

It's too bad XCOM 3 is unlikely to return to the Progeny in enough capacity to potentially clarify any of these ambiguous elements.

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Next time, we move on to the Progeny Brute.

See you then.