XCom Chimera Squad

[GloatingSwine]

It worked as a Reaper ability in WotC but the optimization for reapers was always extended clip, scope/reloader, and ammo to kill your preferred target.

I mean using banish to do something other than bluesceen murder a doom bot was a waste.

You mean the "Delete Chosen" button?

Robots in WOTC were easy to shut down or hack and didn't really need anything as powerful as Banish.

Although when you got the upgrade for it and it would roll over to other enemies in sight you could use it to shut down those gatekeeper/codex pods that liked to appear late game.

[BRC]

Beat the game last night

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So, like, I knew the story was going to be kind of half-baked when I went in. But like
1) the "Shrike is behind it" thing, when SHRIKE troops have literally been fighting alongside the enemies this entire time. I guess Xcom has never really been a series about big plot twists or anything.

I feel like they could have given the SHRIKE troops different models, make them look more like generic mercs, rather than have them uniformed.

2) The absence of a "Kill all the Aliens" faction is...really noticeable. Like, I get that they don't want to thematically criticize the "Human good Alien Bad" viewpoint of core XCom, but, like, the heroes being all about Diversity, and City 31 as a model of co-existence, and the only sense we get that anybody in the city actually has a problem with the Aliens (who were an invading army less than six years ago) is in the initial tutorial mission.

There's also a couple awkward bits of gameplay. The missions that advance solving the current mystery you want to avoid unless Anarchy is threatening and you're trying to break things, since you want more prep time (Although I guess the fact that I DIDN'T want the game to end says something about it).

In fact, the whole "One Faction at a Time' Structure was kind of odd. I feel like they could have used the other factions for the non-plot missions, so it didn't seem like Sacred Coil was just twiddling their thumbs until you decided to look at them.


I don't mind that the story was kind of half-baked, it's about what I expect from an Xcom game, but I can't help but feel like it would have been pretty easy from a game design standpoint to actually make it stick.

BRC re-writes the story of Chimera Squad

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I think minimal changes are needed.


The new Big Bad is revealed to be EXALT, from the Enemy Within expansion of 2012 XCOM. Canonically, Enemy Within never happened, but EXALT seems like they were pre-existing, so they could still be around. Have a Cutscene where Kelly describes Bradford mentioning that XCOM briefly clashed with a group of humans exploiting the invasion to gain power, but that XCOM fell before they could really look into it.
You could keep the big plan being to throw the city into Chaos so they could take over, but I feel like it wouldn't be hard to have each faction providing some component for EXALT's master plan.

For example, maybe EXALT's master plan is to build an artificial Ethereal, and use it to mind control all the Aliens in the city, effectively re-establishing the invasion army under EXALT's control. Grey Pheonix helped with the tech, Sacred Coil had high-ranked ADVENT officers who explained how the Etherals dominated each species. Progeny already had the ability to activate latent psychics, and could have provided the pile of tame or comatose psions needed to run the machine.
Taking down each faction gets you a bit of intel about their "backers", with perhaps some more if you managed to take the leader Alive.

All you really need to do is add one more late-game enemy model to be EXALT elites, and those are just Humans In Suits And Sunglasses, following their appearance in Enemy Within.

Rest of the game plays out basically the same, only you get to blow up EXALT's machine in the final mission and take down their leader.

Then, we get the ominous cutscene of "Well, that plan failed, but the war has just begun", cut to black.
Except, if you managed to capture all 4 leaders (3 faction leaders plus the EXALT leader at the end), you get a Secret Ending cutscene of Chimera Squad storming the Shady EXALT conference Room.

[LaZodiac]

While those are some interesting ideas, I feel like the structure of the game is pretty good as is. The other factions are doing things in the background, and you get slightly different cutscenes for each depending on the order you do them in! It's neat.

As for the "no alien hater" faction...

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well, I mean. Shrike is right there, hating aliens real bad. Also something I do find funny is that while I always knew the mercenary guys were Shrike members... I still kinda just saw them as generic mercenaries until it was brought up that "hey these guys are ACTUALLY Shrike remnants". Hiding in plain sight and all that, you know?

[BRC]

While those are some interesting ideas, I feel like the structure of the game is pretty good as is. The other factions are doing things in the background, and you get slightly different cutscenes for each depending on the order you do them in! It's neat.

As for the "no alien hater" faction...

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well, I mean. Shrike is right there, hating aliens real bad. Also something I do find funny is that while I always knew the mercenary guys were Shrike members... I still kinda just saw them as generic mercenaries until it was brought up that "hey these guys are ACTUALLY Shrike remnants". Hiding in plain sight and all that, you know?

The game is fine, I'd honestly put it on a similar level, or above, as the other XCOM games as far as overarching story. Like, when the standard is "There are Aliens, we should stop them", it isn't that hard to meet that.

I didn't mind the story or game structure, I just kind of feel like they could have done more, and the fact that they kind of halfway did (with the static, named cast, more worldbuilding, and more story around the three factions), kind of makes me itch for more.

As for SHRIKE

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Their status as the Alien Haters is kind of undermined by the inclusion of Cobras (Snakes), Bombers (Mutons) and Necromancers (Sectoids) as the game goes on. Them helping Grey Phoenix and Sacred Coil can be explained away as "we are manipulating them for our Master Plan", but there are a few too many Aliens wearing stylish SHRIKE helmets for me to view SHRIKE as the anti-alien faction.

heck, I was having trouble buying them as an ex-resistance network. It's implied that the humans in Chimera Squad are the few XCOM Veterans willing to fight alongside aliens. Apparently SHRIKE is a lot less picky.

[lord_khaine]

It's implied that the humans in Chimera Squad are the few XCOM Veterans willing to fight alongside aliens.

Dont see this as spoilering to much. But as i understood the exchange, it was just as much that the XCOM veterans are great soldiers.
But Kelly needed policemen.

[Forum Explorer]

So I beat Chimera Squad yesterday. Overall I found it quite easy, but still pretty fun.

My favored squad was Cherub, Terminal, Torque, and Godmother.

And I get why they call her Godmother, because she is a God of war. Run right up to something powerful with Alpha Strike. Kill it, activate untouchable, auto reload, rinse and repeat with Motile Inducers, Teamwork, and Terminal's Cooperation. She cleared out nearly half the room in the first round of the final boss fight and took basically no damage in return.

Also AP rounds are a must. You tear through everything with those.


Honestly, I wish I dropped Cherub for Xypher, but I didn't get her until really late, so her level just wasn't high enough for the final fights, and I wasn't willing to grind missions to level her up.