XCOM Analysis: Denoument
There will once again be spoilers for the end of the game. Turn back if you don't want to know.
When it gets down to it, the game's primary problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be, nor how to go about being whatever thing it is it wants to be.
In theory, it wants to be the new, updated version of the original XCOM. However, it's clear that
1: Firaxis had a shaky grasp of what much of the original XCOM's design accomplishes, and thus what is important to recreate and what is optional.
2: The remaquel wants to be its own thing, without necessarily being clear what it is sacrificing in the process of distinguishing itself from the original.
3: The remaquel just plain isn't clear on what its own underpinnings accomplish.
Critical hits are a good example of point 3. They have exactly one clear purpose in the game's design -a big reward for flanking targets, above and beyond simply ignoring the Defense the cover provides- but then the game isn't built around that point. The most crit-focused classes -Assault and Sniper- can get astonishingly reliable crits when not flanking, which is particularly baffling in the case of the Assault as it is the class whose primary feature seems to be that they are king of getting flanks. This is directly contradicting the purpose crits-from-flanks serve: if you can get crits reliably without getting a flank, then the only incentive for flanking is ignoring the target's Defense from cover. And if you can get accurate shots even through cover -a Colonel Sniper with Damn Good Ground holding a SCOPE has 145 Aim when using Archangel Armor to get height advantage on 99% of enemies, which means even targets in Full Cover will be hit if they don't also have innate Defense- then who cares about that part of a flank?
Which leaves flanks, themselves, with no clear, consistent utility.
Another example of point 3 (And arguably point 2) is that my understanding -from interviews with members of the development team- is that they wanted players to connect to their soldiers as individuals, hence why there's an extensive system for customizing soldier visual design. This is probably also why Mecs have their heads on display, for instance. But mechanically, soldiers aren't distinct individuals if you aren't running certain Second Wave options. In theory the skill system should allow players to have even soldiers of the same class quite divergent, but in practice the balance of individual skill pair choices is so lopsided in the majority of cases that deviating from a handful of cookie-cutter builds makes no sense to do. Every Sniper should be a Squadsight Sniper, every Heavy should take Bullet Swarm, every Assault should take Rapid Fire, etc.
A third example of point 3 is that the game employs randomness, with no clear idea what purpose randomness serves. At the most basic level, randomness can be used to break up cookie-cutter strategies, requiring a player to adapt to varying conditions rather than always answering the same situations the same way, but the game shies away from this utility -Aliens come in 'pods' of 1-3 copies of the same individual, with most exceptions still stuck to a specific rule, such as how Sectopods and Cyberdiscs get 0-2 Drones following them instead of being pods of 1-3 Sectopods or Cyberdiscs. Instead randomness gets applied to damage, to your chance to hit, etc.
Now, to be fair, the original XCOM had far more randomness to damage, but the randomness of damage served to throttle back a player's ability to precisely plan turn actions, encouraging cautious play. It also tied into mechanics like how a Heavy Plasma will occasionally break UFO sections, but as it happens at random, and only occasionally, a player can't efficiently and effortlessly burn a hole through a UFO's wall first time every time. In the remaquel, damage variance is so low that it almost never matters, and critical hits (Ignoring flank-crits for the moment) in particular basically just add spikes of lethality -sometimes reducing how many unit-turns it takes to kill an enemy, sometimes killing a player unit that should've survived the turn no matter what.
My complaint about the plot twist at the end is probably one of the better examples of point 1. The original XCOM is consistent and coherent, with basically everything about the Aliens logically following from what we ultimately learn of their nature. The remaquel, by changing the goal/motive of the Aliens, removes the root reason for things like Terror Missions and Harvest missions, and fails to provide an adequate replacement.
But for more gameplay-specific aspects, probably a better example of point 1 is the change in how weapon 'accuracy' works.
See, even though both games give you a 'percent chance to hit' report when firing a weapon, they mean completely different things. The remaquel is, bar some cheating for the player on the lower two difficulties, doing approximately what you'd expect for its framing: when you take the shot, a 'virtual die' is 'rolled', the result is compared against your chance to hit, and if the result is good you land your shot. The visual effects of weapons fire are completely, totally irrelevant.
In the original XCOM, though, the percentage you're being given is... actually very misleading. Shots fired are using actual physics, hitting whatever the shot intersects with, and 'accuracy' is how tight a cone of possible fire you have. At 100 or so accuracy, the cone is so tight as to be basically a straight line, and it's nearly impossible to miss, but lower listed percents aren't really very useful, as distance is an implicit factor in your accuracy: a target you're standing right next to is impossible to miss without truly awful accuracy, while a target halfway across the map is actually fairly unlikely to be hit by any given shot at even relatively high accuracy.
This has a lot of implications on how the game functions.
It means that you can miss your original target and hit another target entirely. It means that groups of enemies are easier to spray fire in and hit something, it means that firing from above is a good way to control collateral damage, it means that surrounding a target is risking shooting your own units in the crossfire -where in the remaquel surrounding a target is a natural consequence of trying to get flanks!- it means you should avoid clustering your units so the enemy has less chance of getting lucky on their 'misses', it means that when a civilian has a Chryssalid stopped two tiles away from it just spraying fire at it is quite likely to kill the civilian, it means bigger targets are easier to hit, it means that cover is a naturalistic mechanic where a unit firing from the other side of a window is relatively free to fire out but is a lot harder to successfully shoot back (Because eg a shot that would've hit them in the legs instead hits the wall in front of their legs) instead of an artificial mechanic, and probably more things I'm forgetting besides.
The remaquel loses a lot of these implications, and closer is more accurate is the only part of the whole thing the remaquel tries to artificially recreate. In losing these things, the remaquel loses a major component of the depth of the original game!
And there's a lot of stuff like that. The equipment system of the original game was complicated -and honestly, yes, it was probably too complicated and tedious, but the remaquel's simplified system loses a lot of the fairly natural checks and balances of the original game, and dramatically reduces diversity. In the original, soldiers can cart around backup weapons, extra grenades, utility items like Medikits and Stun Rods... but the weight will impair them if they carry too much, backup weapons take up a lot of space and require ammo be carried for them too demanding still more space, swapping stuff into a hand so it can be used takes up soldier time and if you end up in a situation where you can't actually pull out and use the thing then you're basically dealing with costs without getting benefit out of them. The system is deep, and helps make the game interesting and fun, even for someone who has already beaten it once.
The remaquel version is very one-dimensional. You have a gun, with only Assaults and Supports having any complexity beyond "use the best one". (Specifically: they both might consider using a Light Plasma Rifle over a Plasma Rifle for its Aim bonus, and the Assault technically has a choice between using a Shotgun or using a Rifle) You have a Pistol -unless you're a Heavy or a Mec- which is always "use the best one". (And the Heavy's Pistol-replacement -the Rocket Launcher- should be upgraded to a Blaster Launcher if you've got one, period) You have armor, which is basically linear (Basic->Carapace->Skeleton Suit) until you hit the end-game armors, which aren't very well balanced. (Archangel Armor tends to trump them all, and Psi Armor in particular is strictly inferior to Ghost Armor unless you care about the 20 Will bonus, which is honestly not noteworthy enough even for Psi soldiers) And you have an Item slot (Two for Major+ Supports in EU, two for everyone except Mecs past the early game of EW), which is basically the only part of your equipment management that is even slightly interesting -and even then, Snipers should always be Squadsight and so should always take a SCOPE (Since nothing else does anything of use) until Enemy Within introduces Seekers... and simultaneously gives everyone a second item slot, so Snipers should still hold a SCOPE, just with the second item slot being something to provide Strangulation immunity.
This is simple optimization, not any kind of engaging experience in its own right.
And on and on. The remaquel just plain doesn't understand the original XCOM well enough to know what effect it has when it makes changes, and then goes right ahead and makes massive changes.
It's a big-picture problem that trickles down to almost every individual choice, and the game suffers for it.
When it gets down to it, the game's primary problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be, nor how to go about being whatever thing it is it wants to be.
In theory, it wants to be the new, updated version of the original XCOM. However, it's clear that
1: Firaxis had a shaky grasp of what much of the original XCOM's design accomplishes, and thus what is important to recreate and what is optional.
2: The remaquel wants to be its own thing, without necessarily being clear what it is sacrificing in the process of distinguishing itself from the original.
3: The remaquel just plain isn't clear on what its own underpinnings accomplish.
Critical hits are a good example of point 3. They have exactly one clear purpose in the game's design -a big reward for flanking targets, above and beyond simply ignoring the Defense the cover provides- but then the game isn't built around that point. The most crit-focused classes -Assault and Sniper- can get astonishingly reliable crits when not flanking, which is particularly baffling in the case of the Assault as it is the class whose primary feature seems to be that they are king of getting flanks. This is directly contradicting the purpose crits-from-flanks serve: if you can get crits reliably without getting a flank, then the only incentive for flanking is ignoring the target's Defense from cover. And if you can get accurate shots even through cover -a Colonel Sniper with Damn Good Ground holding a SCOPE has 145 Aim when using Archangel Armor to get height advantage on 99% of enemies, which means even targets in Full Cover will be hit if they don't also have innate Defense- then who cares about that part of a flank?
Which leaves flanks, themselves, with no clear, consistent utility.
Another example of point 3 (And arguably point 2) is that my understanding -from interviews with members of the development team- is that they wanted players to connect to their soldiers as individuals, hence why there's an extensive system for customizing soldier visual design. This is probably also why Mecs have their heads on display, for instance. But mechanically, soldiers aren't distinct individuals if you aren't running certain Second Wave options. In theory the skill system should allow players to have even soldiers of the same class quite divergent, but in practice the balance of individual skill pair choices is so lopsided in the majority of cases that deviating from a handful of cookie-cutter builds makes no sense to do. Every Sniper should be a Squadsight Sniper, every Heavy should take Bullet Swarm, every Assault should take Rapid Fire, etc.
A third example of point 3 is that the game employs randomness, with no clear idea what purpose randomness serves. At the most basic level, randomness can be used to break up cookie-cutter strategies, requiring a player to adapt to varying conditions rather than always answering the same situations the same way, but the game shies away from this utility -Aliens come in 'pods' of 1-3 copies of the same individual, with most exceptions still stuck to a specific rule, such as how Sectopods and Cyberdiscs get 0-2 Drones following them instead of being pods of 1-3 Sectopods or Cyberdiscs. Instead randomness gets applied to damage, to your chance to hit, etc.
Now, to be fair, the original XCOM had far more randomness to damage, but the randomness of damage served to throttle back a player's ability to precisely plan turn actions, encouraging cautious play. It also tied into mechanics like how a Heavy Plasma will occasionally break UFO sections, but as it happens at random, and only occasionally, a player can't efficiently and effortlessly burn a hole through a UFO's wall first time every time. In the remaquel, damage variance is so low that it almost never matters, and critical hits (Ignoring flank-crits for the moment) in particular basically just add spikes of lethality -sometimes reducing how many unit-turns it takes to kill an enemy, sometimes killing a player unit that should've survived the turn no matter what.
My complaint about the plot twist at the end is probably one of the better examples of point 1. The original XCOM is consistent and coherent, with basically everything about the Aliens logically following from what we ultimately learn of their nature. The remaquel, by changing the goal/motive of the Aliens, removes the root reason for things like Terror Missions and Harvest missions, and fails to provide an adequate replacement.
But for more gameplay-specific aspects, probably a better example of point 1 is the change in how weapon 'accuracy' works.
See, even though both games give you a 'percent chance to hit' report when firing a weapon, they mean completely different things. The remaquel is, bar some cheating for the player on the lower two difficulties, doing approximately what you'd expect for its framing: when you take the shot, a 'virtual die' is 'rolled', the result is compared against your chance to hit, and if the result is good you land your shot. The visual effects of weapons fire are completely, totally irrelevant.
In the original XCOM, though, the percentage you're being given is... actually very misleading. Shots fired are using actual physics, hitting whatever the shot intersects with, and 'accuracy' is how tight a cone of possible fire you have. At 100 or so accuracy, the cone is so tight as to be basically a straight line, and it's nearly impossible to miss, but lower listed percents aren't really very useful, as distance is an implicit factor in your accuracy: a target you're standing right next to is impossible to miss without truly awful accuracy, while a target halfway across the map is actually fairly unlikely to be hit by any given shot at even relatively high accuracy.
This has a lot of implications on how the game functions.
It means that you can miss your original target and hit another target entirely. It means that groups of enemies are easier to spray fire in and hit something, it means that firing from above is a good way to control collateral damage, it means that surrounding a target is risking shooting your own units in the crossfire -where in the remaquel surrounding a target is a natural consequence of trying to get flanks!- it means you should avoid clustering your units so the enemy has less chance of getting lucky on their 'misses', it means that when a civilian has a Chryssalid stopped two tiles away from it just spraying fire at it is quite likely to kill the civilian, it means bigger targets are easier to hit, it means that cover is a naturalistic mechanic where a unit firing from the other side of a window is relatively free to fire out but is a lot harder to successfully shoot back (Because eg a shot that would've hit them in the legs instead hits the wall in front of their legs) instead of an artificial mechanic, and probably more things I'm forgetting besides.
The remaquel loses a lot of these implications, and closer is more accurate is the only part of the whole thing the remaquel tries to artificially recreate. In losing these things, the remaquel loses a major component of the depth of the original game!
And there's a lot of stuff like that. The equipment system of the original game was complicated -and honestly, yes, it was probably too complicated and tedious, but the remaquel's simplified system loses a lot of the fairly natural checks and balances of the original game, and dramatically reduces diversity. In the original, soldiers can cart around backup weapons, extra grenades, utility items like Medikits and Stun Rods... but the weight will impair them if they carry too much, backup weapons take up a lot of space and require ammo be carried for them too demanding still more space, swapping stuff into a hand so it can be used takes up soldier time and if you end up in a situation where you can't actually pull out and use the thing then you're basically dealing with costs without getting benefit out of them. The system is deep, and helps make the game interesting and fun, even for someone who has already beaten it once.
The remaquel version is very one-dimensional. You have a gun, with only Assaults and Supports having any complexity beyond "use the best one". (Specifically: they both might consider using a Light Plasma Rifle over a Plasma Rifle for its Aim bonus, and the Assault technically has a choice between using a Shotgun or using a Rifle) You have a Pistol -unless you're a Heavy or a Mec- which is always "use the best one". (And the Heavy's Pistol-replacement -the Rocket Launcher- should be upgraded to a Blaster Launcher if you've got one, period) You have armor, which is basically linear (Basic->Carapace->Skeleton Suit) until you hit the end-game armors, which aren't very well balanced. (Archangel Armor tends to trump them all, and Psi Armor in particular is strictly inferior to Ghost Armor unless you care about the 20 Will bonus, which is honestly not noteworthy enough even for Psi soldiers) And you have an Item slot (Two for Major+ Supports in EU, two for everyone except Mecs past the early game of EW), which is basically the only part of your equipment management that is even slightly interesting -and even then, Snipers should always be Squadsight and so should always take a SCOPE (Since nothing else does anything of use) until Enemy Within introduces Seekers... and simultaneously gives everyone a second item slot, so Snipers should still hold a SCOPE, just with the second item slot being something to provide Strangulation immunity.
This is simple optimization, not any kind of engaging experience in its own right.
And on and on. The remaquel just plain doesn't understand the original XCOM well enough to know what effect it has when it makes changes, and then goes right ahead and makes massive changes.
It's a big-picture problem that trickles down to almost every individual choice, and the game suffers for it.
XCOM 2 was my intro to the series, never really played XCOM: EU/EW or the classic 90's titles. I'm backreading some of these posts out of curiosity, thinking whether I should buy XCOM: EW, especially since there's a small but very vocal part of the community that goes "Oh, you like X2? You'll love EW, it's the bestest game ever and without the artificial unfair spice-things-up mechanics like timers!" I mean, I like X2/War of the Chosen and I like Chimera Squad so why not?
ReplyDeleteAfter watching various Let's Plays of EW, and reading your articles here, I'm like naah. Frankly, gameplay of EW looks really boring. I am aware the XCOM titles from the originals to the Firaxis remakes have a reputation for being intense, but EW seems to have been made to be intense for the sake of intensity. Which just makes it tedious, so never mind.
The Cover mechanic's evolution is quite interesting. In the XCOM internet communities, the one-shot-crits-into-full-cover-instakill memes are everywhere. I don't think the exact mechanics of cover changed at all In X2 - it's just Defense, which is just reducing RNG chances, but the gameplay loop highly encourages mobile and aggressive advancing-while-fighting play so flanking actually becomes relevant. But besides Full Cover becoming situationally irrelevant by the RNG being unkind to you, you can still stack aim bonuses to get 100% shots into full cover anyway (especially in WotC).
In Chimera Squad, Full Cover additionally gives you 1 Armor. Which makes it actually meaningful in multiple ways. Mechanically it makes sense because you can now rely on full cover hits actually reducing damage. Thematically it makes sense because it makes intuitive sense that a) it's harder to hit something behind full cover (the Defense part) and b) hitting behind cover means shooting _through_ it which should reduce the damage (the Armor) part. I think it's something that XCOM 3 should carry over. Maybe Full Cover should completely cancel crit chance too.
With how much I like XCOM 2, I'm in some sense glad EU/EW exist, but I'm honestly baffled EU/EW weren't universally reviled commercial and critical failures. I've seen so many Edgy High Definition Modern Versions of older cult classics that missed the point, were badly designed messes on their own merits, and got the appropriate reactions of 'meh' (From people unfamiliar with the classic) or 'I literally hate this'. (From people familiar with the cult classic to thus be mad at how wrong this new version is) EU/EW fit this mold *exactly*, only then they're beloved instead of reviled, and I've yet to get a hint as to WHY they're exceptions.
DeleteI also don't discuss on this site elements like the combat shaky-cam and whatnot, as I'm focused on gameplay and narrative over 'experiential' elements, but even these are things where EU/EW makes incredibly bad decisions that undermine those experiential goals. (With this thankfully being another area XCOM 2 is a shocking improvement in) My 'favorite' example is that the game has a particular camera behavior that only kicks in when the shot is going to be a kill -which leads to the effect that you'll periodically know whether a shot is a kill or not noticeably before the game actually intends for you to know it's a kill, because this camera mode kicks in the second the animation for *firing* the shot starts. (As opposed to, say, kicking in just before impact, or playing out the whole animation normally and then doing an Instant Replay of a Dramatic Killshot) So even things that are wholly EU/EW, where I can't complain 'the original game did this better' (Because the original had nothing equivalent to all this dramatic camera stuff) just contributes to EU/EW being a poorly-designed mess! (As opposed to some Modern Edgy Version games, where I probably still think the original is a better game but can at least credit the new version having competent cinematography or the like)
Which is all to say I certainly wouldn't recommend EU/EW as experiences to another person. At this point I'd be willing to point people to Long War Rebalanced, but not to the unmodded games. (And not to Long War 1.0, for that matter, though that's a whole other topic)
(I do sort of wish that, instead of Midnight Suns, we'd gotten an announcement of an updated version of EU/EW using XCOM 2's improved engine as the foundation: even just 'backporting' a lot of XCOM 2's changes to how maps work and how destructible terrain works and so on would actually do a lot to make the experience decent, especially if it came with intentional balance changes that brought the classes more in line with XCOM 2's design sensibilities)
XCOM 2 made exactly one direct change to Cover; the Aiming Angles Second Wave setting was made a standard part of the game instead of something a player could turn on if they wanted. I specify 'direct' changes, though, because XCOM 2 also reworked the crit roll mechanics, allowed accuracy to be genuinely reduced to a 0% chance to hit (EU/EW pushes 0-or-less up to 1%), and re-tuned innate Defense, all of which contributes to XCOM 2's Cover being a fairly different beast than in EU/EW. (Even if these details are a lot less important than the changes to enemy AI)
DeleteThe one-shot-crit meme actually is specifically an EU/EW phenomenon, even though Cover is unchanged. EU/EW forces a minimum accuracy of 1%, and its damage tuning makes crits incredibly huge spikes of damage; a Sectoid in that game does as little as 2 damage, averages 3 damage, but a crit can spike it up to 6 damage, which is to say *triple* its minimum damage and still *double* its expected damage. In XCOM 2, a Basic ADVENT Trooper does 3 damage normally, and adds only 1 damage if they crit; thus, in EU/EW a Sectoid can single-handedly kill someone who could've actually survived two shots and certainly expected to survive one at minimum, and can do so even if your soldier is in a Telekinetic Field and Dense Smoke and standing behind a Full Cover object through sheer RNG. In XCOM 2, meanwhile, if a soldier could survive being shot by two Troopers, then a single Trooper critting is something they will definitely survive, and furthermore they can't even be hit in the first place if they're in High Cover and Smoke and the Troopers have been Flashbanged. This is one of the big examples of why I think XCOM 2 is far and away superior: EU/EW's design deliberately enshrines RNG as always able to completely overrule tactical (in)competency, where you can do everything to prepare and it can accomplish literally nothing if the RNG feels like being ridiculous, whereas in XCOM 2 the game isn't completely clockwork so you do have to account for the unexpected but serious preparation *reliably* helps.
And yeah, I like Chimera Squad attaching Armor to High Cover. I think it should've been 2 points, but that the devs experimented with it at all is promising to me; I've always felt it obvious Cover should actually directly reduce damage, and was incredibly frustrated by EU/EW limiting it to Defense boosting, and not even that much Defense. (And though it works out okay in XCOM 2, I still would've preferred XCOM 2 adding in damage reduction instead of sticking strictly to Defense boosting) It would be great if XCOM 3 finally went 'yeah, okay, Cover now provides consistent damage reduction as well as Defense'.
> I'm honestly baffled EU/EW weren't universally reviled commercial and critical failures
ReplyDeleteWell, I thought System Shock 2 was bad, and that Half-Life's humanoid enemies were boring, both opinions are contrary to the conventional wisdom. And I looked at EW Let's Plays and thought, this looks boring and tedious and the action seemed rather contrived. And nobody else expressed something similar until I got to this site. I guess you and I are weird. :)
I suppose EU/EW's commercial success is a blessing in disguise. If it flopped we might not have XCOM 2, War of the Chosen, and Chimera Squad.
> At this point I'd be willing to point people to Long War Rebalanced, but not to the unmodded games.
All right, I'll have a look at that. The XCOM games go on sale deep enough that I might give it a shot. It helps that I really, really like WotC and wouldn't mind buying it twice if the games went on bundle sale (I have the XCOM 2 Collection on Switch).
Yeah, I dunno. Mainstream gamer opinions regularly baffle me; not just the conclusions, but the proffered logic underlying these conclusions. I sometimes feel like I'm listening to someone explain that the best part of riding a motorcycle is when it wipes out and you suffer road rash and take years to fully recover. Without any trace of sarcasm.
DeleteBut yeah, I'm glad we got XCOM 2, and more particularly War of the Chosen. (I'm pretty fond of Chimera Squad, mind, it's just not got the same degree of draw) I'm even somewhat glad Long War happened, even though the Pavonis version is Not Good, as it's so obvious that some of the best bits of XCOM 2 and War of the Chosen are drawing inspiration from Long War 1.
Note that Long War Rebalanced requires a decent amount of work to set up -EU/EW doesn't have Workshop support, so you have to manually grab Long War 1.0, install that (Which is relatively painless; it comes with its own installer), then grab Long War Rebalanced and paste/overwrite files in the correct directories to get it running. It's not a long process, but it requires a little more tech savvy than 'tell the computer yes you want these until it's finally done asking, then play once it finishes'. It's also still being continuously updated, so it's easy to grab the latest file, unaware they just made a relatively big and experimental change, and whoops they broke things in the process.
All that said, Long War Rebalanced has a fascinatingly different approach to topics like Overwatch, pod management (To wit: it tries to get rid of pod management almost entirely, and it's shocking how much of a *relief* this actually is), and other major topics mismanaged by EW and Long War 1.0. I think War of the Chosen is a better game (It benefits a lot from the underlying engine improvements, for starters), but Long War Rebalanced is good enough I'd love to do a series on it if only it wasn't in such perpetual flux.
I think Chimera Squad was a particularly good exercise in good branding. I've seen arguments to hell and back whether it's "real XCOM", but as a newbie to the franchise who loves XCOM 2 and wanted something similar, but maybe a bit less intense for busier days, it was perfect. And I appreciate that a AAA developer was bold enough to release a small and experimental title that also happened to be of high-quality; Not everything has to be a $60, 100-hour blockbuster (that I don't have time and money for, not to mention those are pretty lackluster quality wise nowadays), and I'm not going to wade through indie shovelware to find that diamond-in-the-rough.
DeleteI hope you're doing a series on Chimera Squad eventually - though I imagine we have a long way to go with XCOM 2. That said, get rested and get well first. :)
Yeah, Chimera Squad existing at all is really cool, and I very much appreciate several of its experiments, like having more tightly-defined geoscape time mechanics, where a day is essentially a turn. Even into War of the Chosen the fuzziness of time passing is clearly something the devs wrestled with -experiments to see if there are less fuzzy ways to handle the topic are worthy experiments. (Even if I think Chimera Squad's exact handling is an experiment that more shows the dangers of clearer time definition; I'd rather not see XCOM 3 use Chimera Squad's day system as its base)
DeleteAnd yes, I'm working in the background on Chimera Squad posts, collecting basic data, testing non-obvious interactions, setting up skeletons of posts for later filling, etc. And I'm actually nearly done with XCOM 2 -I only have 4 XCOM 2 posts definitively queued at this point. (I have some posts I originally was sure I'd do, and am now not sure, so it might be more than 4, depending) My current thought process is that I wrap up XCOM 2, then do a relatively brief series on a different game, then launch into an XCOM 2-like series for Chimera Squad.