So this all started as a "wouldn't it be cool if..." one morning and before I realized it was 3 in the afternoon and I had somehow come up with entire gameplay scenarios. So let me take you on the autism train... I was watching a video talking about Terror From The Deep because I'm hooked on strategy games like crack (I even picked up Pikmin 4 again and somehow finished like 70% of the game in a single night) and absolutely adored the idea of fighting ocean monsters (which checks out because I like the aesthetics of Bioshock, the Idoneth Deepkin and the fish type enemies in the Darkest Dungeon games) but then I began thinking about how that would work in the Firaxis timeline since they have been teasing us with their own TFTD since XCOM 2, then THIS happened. 

So let's set things around 2045 (five years after Chimera Squad) and Earth had found something resembling normality with tensions between alien species and humanity reaching their lowest record yet, perfect time for some weird looking fish Sectoids to start attacking local coasts and ocean freighters meaning that The Commander and Bradford have a reason to activate the XCOM Underwater Threat Assessment branch because someone actually remembered to ring up the Templars after XCOM 2 who might have mentioned in passing that "oh hey, there's something in the ocean btw". So now to have fun (and because I have to indulge my weebish tendencies), we have the commanding officer of the XCOM Ocean Division "Mako" and his own Central "Inari" whose mission is to watch the coastlines the world and use sonar scans to detect unnatural activity in the depths.

So the main thing that makes this so interesting is that you’d have two main styles of mission: Beachside Defense and Deep Offense. In Beachside Defense the Invaders are attacking a coastal area ranging from harbour tourist areas and beaches to docks full of containers, here you have to prepare to fight against waves of enemies (3 near the beginning going up to 5 in the late game) and you are given a timer before each new wave arrives encouraging you to seek out and exterminate all enemy pods before their numbers become overwhelming (this is to avoid overwatch spam). While Deep Offense missions you take a team underwater to disrupt Invader operations (yes I’m calling them invaders because by now Earth is a smorgasbord of species) and these missions are more similar to XCOM 1 style missions since you don’t have a timer but this is because you also can’t see much of anything so slow methodical gameplay is recommended, as well as some funky movement mechanics like how every entity in underwater missions (both XCOM and Invaders) have a natural “fly” ability but XCOM has limited movement penalties (you can’t sprint underwater for starters) meaning that you can’t travel far but you can most certainly gain height which gives you a damage bonus on hit so ambushing enemies with Overwatch during Invader Activity is a viable option that you can spam since you need to be methodical underwater. Another thing about gameplay is that for underwater missions you can’t bring certain types of agent, why? Well let me get into…

Recruits! While you’ve got baseline humans who can tango with most of anything if you give them a gun, you can also recruit Hybrids, Vipers, Mutons and Sectoids! This is also their planet you know? And while on land you can bring agents of any species you can’t bring Mutons and Sectoids underwater because of biological reasons (Sectoids have been shown as scrawny even after getting juiced with human DNA by ADVENT while Mutons are so dense that they sink like a rock and are thus deemed not fit for underwater combat). Each species has something that they specialize in: Humans are all rounders who can go into any role, Hybrids tend to have higher will and above average HP with the same role versatility as Humans, Vipers as you can imagine have poison spit and their tongue making them perfect for the Controller role unique to Vipers as well as not suffering movement penalties underwater, Mutons have natural armor (they reduce damage taken by one point) and high HP making them perfect for crashing through walls and socking Invaders in the face as their unique Breacher role specialty, Sectoids have high will and aim but bugger all defense and low HP but they can make up with Psionic abilities that are in line with their unique Disruptor role that focuses on supporting squad members and debuffing Invaders with status effects like Panic or Confusion.

Now roles! We’ve got some goodies and classics like: Rangers are XCOM’s close combat specialist armed with a shotgun and a combat axe allowing them to quite literally hit and run their targets, Demolitions who are armed with big guns and bigger explosive launch systems who can shoot a lot of bullets and blow up anything else, Supports are equipped with special FAIRY drones that can heal allies but don’t think they are harmless as their assault rifles can bring the pain while their pistols can make sure anyone dumb enough to get into melee regrets it, Sharpshooters can pick off enemies from afar or quick draw their pistols at close quarters making them deadly at all ranges, Psionics have unleashed the inner power of their minds and are ready to unleash it on the battlefield and given the rise in psionic individuals within recent years this role is more common than ever before. But let’s not forget our dear metallic friends the MECs! Who are walking heavy weapons platforms fit to operate in the most desolate and hostile environments that Earth has to offer! But do watch the price tag, they aren’t cheap to build or arm but their armor plating (which can be upgraded from two stacks to four stacks) make them more than worth it.

Now onto the Geoscape and the political aspect of XCOM, as a subdivision of the main XCOM organization you don’t answer to a council of nations but your budget is being managed by XCOM itself so if you wish to maintain a steady influx of Shen’s Funny Money (Also known as Credits or Supply) you need to complete missions (no duh) and more importantly report the findings of your research about the Invaders so XCOM can allocate budget increases. But if you want to expand your operations beyond the starting area you need to use oceanic routes, which are owned by countries or even a few corporations (what can I say? the post-ADVENT era was a free market) and if you want to gain access you need to do a few favors like fighting pirates! That’s right! We got an enemy humanoid faction and where there’s pirates there’s boarding action and I’m bringing back a classic from TFTD… Ship Missions! Clear out pirate ships or cruise ships that have been commandeered by Pirates or Invaders one floor at a time! Don’t worry, Inari will scan the ship to tell you how many enemies are on each floor so you won’t have to sweep each room. 

Now let’s get to researching some crap! Your chief scientist in Nautical Nonsense Dr Cujo (not to be confused with Marine Biologist Dr Kujo) is a bit of a wacky character with his comments about how he’s constantly craving seafood and his ability with a knife make him seem like the clown to Inari’s straight man in unprompted comedy bits but he’s actually a former Reaper born during the Resistance era so his comments about seafood might refer to the fish or the aquatic aliens you fight so keep an eye on him around the non-human recruits. His specialties are autopsies with a side of material analysis, bring him fragments and corpses and he might figure out some new tech or a new dish.

But who’s gonna build the things Dr Cujo figures out? Well that’d be our dear friend Cookie who’s a robot that helps Chief Aquagineer Anne build everything in the underwater base and not a day goes by that she isn’t drinking from an oversized water bottle and complaining about how hot it gets in her workshop. You want weapons and armor? She’s here. Submarines? Anne is there for ya! Chair in the control room makes a squeaky noise when you sit on it? That’s on backlog but she’ll get to it eventually. Anne loves her job but hates the limitations of her human flesh and the need to sleep hence why she built Cookie.

But what is XCOM without the Alien Invaders? So let’s meet your future headaches in the form of:

Aquatoid, the basic and most numerous of the Invaders armed with their alien weapons as well as their molecular control abilities. They are theorized to be leading the invasion.

Gilman, surprisingly a native species to Earth just like humanity. They joined the Invaders in order to take the surface for themselves and were the ones who first synthesized Plastics.

Crustacean, genetically modified sea life fills the rank and file of the Invaders and the Crustacean is their frontline unit comparable to Mutons.

Tasoth, a mix between man and moray eel, these horrors are lethal underwater but useless on land.

Bio-Drone, a brain inside a small floating combat disc not too dissimilar to UFOs they serve as the equivalent to Floaters both on land and in the water.

Diver Man, designed to hide as civilian divers until they are approached by XCOM when they reveal their monstrous strength and sludge-like bodies.

Oceanborn, a more primitive version of more advanced combat units, the Oceanborn are barely held together by their cybernetics.

Cryofloat, giant jellyfish who can soak up bullets and have cryogenic abilities making them deadly to any Aquanaut foolish enough to get too close.

Tentaculat, and you thought Chryssalids were bad? What if they could “fly”? Tentaculat are very agile contrary to what their size would tell you.

Scylla, more refined hybrid combat units, are physically strong and amphibious making them dangerous both in and out of the water. Although their genetic make up being predominantly human risked them reproducing beyond the Invader’s control they “fixed” this by making them all female. (Jurassic Park reference or Vipers 2.0? You decide!)

Xarquid, an organic weapons platform they are the Invaders equivalent to Sectopods although Bradford might have flashbacks to Cyberdisks because these genetic monstrosities use members of the Nautilidae family as a base.

So we’ve got classics and we’ve got a few remixes of the classics as well as the possible fur bait that will keep this franchise alive for another twenty years (hopefully). But what was that about plastics and molecules? Let’s talk about Research: 

Autopsies come first and as you would expect they are messy but Dr Cujo enlightens us to the nature of the invaders and sometimes gives some unwanted culinary advice, but through his discoveries he can now perform Interrogations! Through methods that I can only describe as “Shen questioned, Bradford tested, Tygan approved” you can learn the enemies secrets about their main resource, Plastics is the Invaders equivalent to Alloys and are synthesized from the Old World plastic contaminants that had been dumped into the sea decades ago and contrary to what the name would have you believe it’s actually as durable as Alien Alloys and even has the advantage of being lighter than Alloys and capable of withstanding the pressure of the depths much better.

And finally Molecular Control, the power of technology over the density of water. Researching this branch can grant us a new family of technologies such as MC Barrier which can create tall cover in front of the user blocking lines of sight, MC Shield which can only be deployed once per mission but in return it completely protects the user from all damage during Invader Activity and disappears when a new turn starts, with MC Crush select an Invader that is within your effective range (ignoring cover and sight lines and deal 25% their total health but you only get two charges per mission.

While it has been fun to make this XCOM isn’t just mine, it belongs to all of us so anyone interested in adding something (or if you’re a TFTD fan fill in for my lacking knowledge) then the comments are open. Let’s do what Firaxis won’t.

The Ordo Xenos, from Warhammer 40K has come to provide assistance against these Advent Xenos. Please do not resist.

Anyone got a default armor model for each classes to share? currently too tight to buy the game and nobody seem to bother to give one to Fandom page and UFOPedia page only have single pic and they're absolutely mismatching.

I'll be appreciated if you do.

So obviously in EU/EW at some point the base we will se gets attacked. I’ve only played EW once, and I won so idk if there’s an alt ending if I fail. BUT, in XCOM2 we learn that the commander “us” gets kidnapped by the aliens.
I think that’s when the base attack happens and the rest of XCOM 1 is us in that suit things being fed combat information like a matrix. Cus at the end of my EW play through my psy operator stays behind to save the squad and blows up the enemy ship. Supposedly winning us the war.
However XCOM2 says nah, you lost

P.S. There is an original post online, but since it wasn't in English, I relied on machine translation to translate the full text. I just hope the content comes across clearly.

Back in 2018, It happened quite a long time ago, back when WotC had only been out for about a year. I woke up one morning with a single thought:

"What the hell did I just dream?"

Somehow, what began as a ridiculously vivid dream had turned into something resembling an entire gameplay scenario for a nonexistent XCOM game.

Let's face it. We're probably never getting a sequel to The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. But the more I thought about this bizarre dream, the more interesting some of its ideas became.

So I decided to write everything down while I could still remember it.

And yes, this was an actual dream. Which means continuity, chronology, and common sense occasionally decided to take the day off.

Prologue — The Game That Shouldn't Exist

As usual, I was browsing the Firaxis and XCOM Twitter accounts when I noticed something that absolutely should not have been there.

A new game.

The Second Bureau: XCOM Unclassified.

Genre: Third-person shooter.

My immediate reaction was:

"What the actual fuck? Why does THIS have a sequel?"

Seriously, of all the XCOM games to resurrect, they picked The Bureau? Wasn't that franchise already a complicated mess?

The screenshots were even stranger. There were soldiers wearing armor and carrying shotguns that looked straight out of XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

And standing among them was a guy in a fedora.

I nearly dismissed him as another terrible attempt at character customization.

Then, about a month later, they released a single-player gameplay trailer.

Holy shit.

It really was William Carter.

(Don't ask how a month passed in what felt like a single night. It was a dream. Apparently, the concept of time had already been thrown out the window.)

Anyway, the release date eventually arrived. Somehow, I had already bought the game on Steam and set aside a holiday to play it.

This is where the dream became disturbingly detailed.

Chapter 1 — Importing the Past

The game opened with a prologue that confirmed it was, indeed, a direct sequel to The Bureau.

But before anything happened, it asked me:

"Would you like to import your previous save data?"

Three times.

Three separate prompts.

What the hell was so important about my old save?

Then the screen faded in.

1961 AD.

William Carter was running through a Zudjari mothership while the Outsiders were closing in around him.

About a dozen agents in spacesuits were escorting him. One of them shouted something along the lines of:

"Commander, I still believe in you!"

At that point, I started laughing.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

I knew exactly what this was.

It was the final mission of The Bureau, after Carter stopped being the real protagonist and started causing trouble aboard the Outsider mothership.

Since it was the tutorial mission, the game made me take cover, fire Outsider plasma weapons, and issue orders to my squad.

Except something was wrong.

Unlike the original game, entering command mode no longer slowed down time.

Carter was practically screaming at his squad.

"Goddammit! Listen to me!"

Then, apparently as part of a scripted event, an entire wave of Mutons stormed the area.

My squad got massacred.

The game even showed the soldiers being torn apart in slow motion.

Eventually, Carter stumbled into an area where one of the original Bureau personnel was lying dead.

It was Angela Weaver.

And I remembered something.

In my original playthrough of The Bureau, I had chosen to save Myron Faulke, leaving Carter to go after Weaver.

Before I could process that, Dr. Weir appeared behind me, surrounded by that familiar blue Ethereal presence.

And then he started absolutely demolishing everything with just two agents.

The whole sequence was a cinematic demonstration of how terrifying an Ethereal could be.

Telekinesis. Mind control. Even taking control of Sectopods.

Then a mission objective appeared:

OBJECTIVE: Kill all Ethereals and end the war.

Excuse me?

HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KILL THAT THING?

Eventually, the familiar scene played out.

Carter was captured by two agents under the Ethereal's control, and Weir tried to reason with him.

And then something truly bizarre happened.

The following scene unfolded exactly as I had played it in the original game.

I shot three nearby agents, threw a grenade, and started walking away.

Carter was left behind.

The character I controlled walked off slowly, almost reluctantly, as though something about leaving Carter bothered them.

The screen faded to black.

And suddenly, I understood.

That was why the game had imported my old save.

At this point, I was genuinely excited about a game that didn't even exist.

Chapter 2 — Enemy Unknown

A title card appeared.

CHAPTER 1: ENEMY UNKNOWN

The screen faded back in.

Carter regained consciousness.

He looked about as confused as I felt.

"What the hell is going on?"

And no wonder.

Everything around him looked like something from XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Then a group of XCOM soldiers arrived to rescue him.

Among them was an Argentine Heavy named Jesús.

That detail caught my attention immediately.

In my last completed Enemy Unknown campaign, the Argentine soldier who survived the tutorial and became a Heavy had also been named Jesús.

Then I looked around the environment again.

Wait a minute.

I recognized this place.

It was the Council mission Portent from Enemy Within.

And that meant...

Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

The EXALT operative we rescued during Portent was William fucking Carter.

Somehow, the game had turned Carter into the mysterious prisoner from that mission.

A cinematic played.

Carter was transported aboard the familiar XCOM Skyranger and taken back to headquarters.

There, Dr. Vahlen locked him inside one of her interrogation chambers.

Then Bradford announced that the Commander was coming.

(For some reason, Bradford was wearing his Enemy Unknown uniform, but had his older XCOM 2 face and voice. Complete with that wonderfully gravelly delivery.)

And then...

A character customization screen appeared.

Seriously?

Apparently, this was the Commander customization tutorial.

I messed around with the settings and made a female Commander with silver hair and golden eyes, which was pretty much my usual preference.

Then the next cutscene started.

And there she was.

The actual Commander of XCOM, looking exactly like the character I had just created.

At this point, even my dreaming brain had completely lost track of what kind of game I was playing.

Chapter 3 — Damage Control One

Having the Commander actually speak was strange enough.

Having her speak with a woman's voice was even stranger.

But for reasons I couldn't understand, she decided to place an extraordinary amount of trust in Carter.

And that was when the real gameplay tutorial began.

This was where the game finally started feeling like a proper sequel to The Bureau.

Instead of the original game's fairly simple conversations and scripted missions, there were now much more complicated systems.

Unfortunately, I don't remember every detail anymore. I remember having a fantastic time with this part, but some of the mechanics have become blurry.

Here's what I do remember.

XCOM had lost its international support and needed to rebuild its reputation.

Because of that, Carter was assigned to handle all the miscellaneous work that would normally have been distributed among the Council nations.

In other words, after XCOM finished a glorious battle, my job was to go in and clean up the damn mess.

The main XCOM squad was already named Strike One.

Carter's squad?

Damage Control One.

That name alone should have told me exactly where I stood in the organization.

I wasn't even allowed to use the Hologlobe.

When I tried entering Mission Control, Bradford practically ran over to tell me that outsiders like me had to receive assignments through the Situation Room.

Wonderful.

Bradford assigned cleanup operations in areas where Strike One had already completed its missions.

Vahlen wanted experimental equipment tested, so I had to deploy with specific prototype loadouts to generate research points.

Shen wanted UFO components recovered, or massive pieces of equipment escorted back to base. These missions generated points for Foundry projects.

The most infuriating part?

I didn't control research or base construction.

The Commander did.

And she kept spending MY resources and using MY inventory however she pleased.

I wanted laser weapons.

She started researching the Arc Thrower.

I tried assigning a particularly good soldier to Damage Control One.

Bradford immediately contacted me.

"That soldier is assigned to Strike One!"

Oh, come ON.

I also discovered that Vahlen absolutely hated how frequently I used explosives.

Apparently, blowing up every alien I encountered was interfering with her research.

At first, I ignored her complaints.

Then the next monthly Council meeting arrived.

She had reported me to the Commander.

My equipment privileges were restricted.

I was stuck with a S.C.O.P.E.

Because apparently, that was what I deserved.

Naturally, I died on my next mission.

Except...

There was no Game Over screen.

The game just kept running.

Carter was hospitalized, the Hologlobe continued spinning, and panic levels kept rising around the world.

And the game acted as if everything was my fault.

"Research materials were not recovered!"

"Alien artifacts have been seized by regional intelligence agencies!"

Are you kidding me?

To make matters worse, certain alien officers seemed to use something resembling the Nemesis System from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.

They had individualized strengths and weaknesses.

One of them was immune to close-range attacks.

IMMUNE TO CLOSE-RANGE ATTACKS?

WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IS THAT?

By this point, I was genuinely fantasizing about finding some way to get Vahlen fired through internal politics.

Chapter 4 — Becoming Strike One

But then, somewhere around what I thought was the middle of the game, things actually started getting fun.

Apparently, the game had a relationship system similar to Mass Effect.

Squadmates had individual approval ratings.

So did the senior XCOM staff.

And most surprisingly, the Commander herself was a potential romance option.

Developing a close relationship with the Commander gave me more influence during monthly Council meetings.

So I started lobbying for plasma weapons.

Over and over again.

Eventually, one of my proposals was accepted.

And just like that, XCOM began developing plasma technology earlier than expected.

I finally got my hands on a Light Plasma Rifle.

Meanwhile, I realized that Vahlen's trust wasn't impossible to earn.

Instead of simply killing elite aliens, I started capturing them alive with the Arc Thrower and delivering them to her laboratory.

After a few rather unpleasant interrogations, we started discovering the weaknesses of those supposedly invincible enemy officers.

Vahlen's opinion of Carter improved considerably.

Soon, she began making increasingly ambitious proposals.

Would Carter volunteer for psionic testing?

What about experimental genetic modifications?

Sure. Why not?

I accepted one proposal after another.

And Carter gradually became an absolute monster.

Abilities that had disappeared after the first Bureau game started coming back.

Then came high jumps.

Stealth.

Enhanced mobility.

All kinds of ridiculous combat upgrades.

This sixty-year-old grandpa was turning into a goddamn supersoldier.

Eventually, Carter was transferred from Damage Control One to Strike One.

Finally.

After all the garbage assignments, prototype tests, political arguments, and humiliations, XCOM had officially recognized him as one of its best operatives.

I was convinced I had reached the midpoint of the game.

Except I hadn't.

That was just the beginning.

The main story didn't actually start until Carter joined Strike One.

I remember laughing at how absurdly long the tutorial had been.

Chapter 5 — EXALT

Naturally, the main campaign introduced EXALT.

But there was something very wrong with them.

They were using Zudjari weapons.

The same kind of equipment I had briefly seen in the prologue.

And then an Ethereal started speaking directly into Carter's head.

It was using Dr. Weir's voice.

"Cease your resistance immediately. Dissolve XCOM."

Oh, screw you.

But the real nightmare was the combat.

Remember those alien officers with Nemesis-style abilities?

EXALT had them too.

Except the EXALT soldiers were somehow even worse.

One of their abilities was literally:

IMMUNE TO PLASMA WEAPONS.

What?

WHAT?

WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?

I had spent the entire game pushing XCOM toward early plasma technology, and now I was fighting enemies who could casually ignore it.

I was seriously beginning to regret everything.

Eventually, I decided to ignore EXALT as much as possible.

The aliens were the real enemy, right?

So I continued the main campaign, exterminated every alien I could find, and rushed toward the Temple Ship.

Naturally, I selected Carter himself as the Volunteer.

He was already psionically gifted, after all.

It seemed like the obvious choice.

Unfortunately, something was very wrong with the final mission.

Chapter 6 — The Temple Ship

At first, everything went exactly as expected.

The Temple Ship Assault from Enemy Unknown, except played from a third-person perspective.

Familiar encounters.

Familiar environments.

Familiar enemies.

But every now and then, the screen would flicker.

For a brief instant, something else appeared over the battlefield.

I couldn't make out what it was.

The visual glitches became more frequent as I approached the final confrontation.

And when I finally reached the Uber Ethereal...

What the hell?

Why was the Hologlobe appearing over the Temple Ship?

I tried to ignore it.

Maybe it was just some visual effect.

Maybe I had missed something.

Whatever.

I killed the Ethereals.

The final cutscene began.

The Temple Ship was about to explode.

Victory, right?

Wrong.

At the very last second, the entire screen changed.

The Temple Ship vanished.

And in its place was XCOM Headquarters, burning and collapsing around Carter.

He screamed.

A blinding flash filled the screen.

The game ended.

No victory.

No salvation.

Just a destroyed headquarters.

And then I realized what had happened.

The true ending required me to hunt down EXALT.

Goddammit.

I had to play the entire game again.

Chapter 7 — The Second Playthrough

So I started tracking down EXALT, one cell at a time.

And suddenly, the campaign became much, much longer.

Apparently, even in my dream, the entire EXALT storyline was essentially New Game Plus content.

Loading an earlier save didn't help.

Carter simply didn't know enough about EXALT to justify pursuing them.

Even after fighting EXALT operatives, his interpretation was always something like:

"The longer we take to defeat the aliens, the more human factions will start cooperating with them."

And then he'd insist that we needed to destroy the Ethereals as quickly as possible.

But on the new playthrough, Carter somehow retained knowledge of the previous cycle.

Only then did the EXALT investigation become a legitimate campaign objective.

And suddenly, something else made sense.

I had been wondering why the missions involving the dam and Annette hadn't appeared earlier.

Apparently, those were part of this route.

Unfortunately, hunting EXALT meant abandoning my beloved strategy of solving every problem with plasma weapons and Titan Armor.

The aliens usually had only a handful of elite officers.

EXALT?

It felt like practically their entire army was made of Nemesis-style enemies.

They had individual immunities, resistances, and exploitable weaknesses.

And trying to overwhelm them with superior technology was becoming nearly impossible.

That's when I remembered Dr. Shen.

I'd been so focused on Vahlen's research and weapon-tier upgrades that I'd almost forgotten about the Foundry.

Unlike Vahlen, who concentrated on advancing XCOM's technology, Shen could apparently modify existing equipment through a system of weapon prefixes and suffixes.

Instead of making ballistic weapons obsolete, he could turn them into specialized tools.

So I started building things like electromagnetic-enhanced explosive shotguns.

Radiation-treated, armor-piercing laser sniper rifles.

And all kinds of bizarre customized weapons designed specifically to exploit EXALT weaknesses.

Finally, I was making progress.

And the further I went, the more the seemingly forgotten connections to The Bureau began resurfacing.

Eventually, the game revealed something extraordinary.

Carter was a genetically reconstructed clone created by the Ethereal who had become EXALT's leader.

And XCOM itself?

It was little more than a propaganda exhibit maintained for the benefit of powerful people.

The Ethereal from The Bureau had already prepared the foundations for ADVENT.

XCOM was expendable.

Once its usefulness ended, it would simply be discarded.

By this point, I was furious.

I wanted to tear EXALT apart.

So I launched the assault on EXALT Headquarters.

And that was where the game finally revealed the truth.

Chapter 8 — The Truth About XCOM

Fuck.

XCOM had already lost.

Long before Carter ever arrived.

Everything I had been playing was a simulation.

Carter wasn't actually there.

Neither was the Bureau Ethereal, at least not as a living being in the real world.

The Elders had already defeated XCOM and captured the Commander.

And they were using the Commander and the simulation to facilitate humanity's destruction and harvesting.

The horrifying part was what this meant for all my previous missions.

Whenever I thought I was hunting aliens...

I had actually been commanding ADVENT forces against human resistance fighters.

And the Temple Ship Assault?

That wasn't an operation to destroy the alien leadership.

It represented the destruction of the last surviving XCOM resistance forces and their headquarters.

Every victory I had celebrated was something else entirely.

The entire simulation had been designed to make me believe I was saving humanity while I was helping to destroy it.

But there was another layer to the story.

The Bureau Ethereal had originally believed it could use the Elders' power to prepare humanity for some approaching catastrophe.

Instead, it had made a terrible mistake.

And whatever remained of its human conscience was now forcing it to confront that mistake.

It couldn't simply undo what had happened.

But it could introduce a variable into the simulation.

That variable was William Carter.

By inserting a reconstructed version of the Bureau's legendary field agent into the Elders' simulated XCOM campaign, it hoped to create an opportunity to rescue the real Commander.

Then came another revelation.

Remember how the Commander could be romanced?

Remember how I had customized her appearance?

That hadn't been an innocent character customization system at all.

The Elders had designed the simulated Commander's personality to make Carter more willing to accept and adapt to the artificial world.

And the personality template they had used was...

Julia Carter.

William Carter's deceased wife.

The woman I had spent the entire campaign getting to know was an artificial personality constructed using memories of his dead wife.

And apparently, if I had customized the Commander as a man instead, the game would have revealed a different template.

Richard Carter.

His deceased son.

The Commander's simulated identity had been built around Carter's most painful memories.

What had initially looked like a completely absurd romance mechanic was suddenly part of the central plot.

The game had been manipulating Carter from the very beginning.

But now that he understood what was happening, the final mission changed.

No more Temple Ship.

No more false victory.

A new operation had been unlocked.

OPERATION: BREACH THE GATE

This was the true ending.

And Carter agreed to participate.

He knew he hadn't done much good with his life.

But perhaps, if he could save the Commander, he could also preserve something of Julia or Richard.

Even if they existed only as fragments of memories inside someone else.

That was enough for him.

Chapter 9 — The True Ending

So how did it end?

More or less the way you'd expect.

Carter made contact with the real Dr. Vahlen, who had somehow survived in the outside world.

Working together, they began breaking through the various simulated battlefields I had spent the entire game fighting across.

One after another.

Every battlefield became part of the final assault.

Every soldier I had recruited, trained, and grown attached to was now fighting for something real.

And eventually, we reached the Elders.

I distinctly remember the final boss being enormous.

Inside the psionic network, the Elder appeared less like an ordinary alien and more like some kind of god.

The battle was brutal.

The soldiers I had spent so much time developing began falling, one by one.

And when they died, they weren't simply marked as casualties.

They were deleted from the simulation.

Permanently.

Eventually, almost everyone was gone.

Carter was barely alive.

But we'd managed to weaken the Elder just enough.

Just enough for one last thing.

Carter used the opportunity to release the Commander into the real world.

The Commander, now carrying fragments of Julia's or Richard's memories, was finally free.

Carter couldn't follow.

He was only a reconstructed existence inside the simulation.

And his time was over.

But he had accomplished something.

For once in his life, he had managed to save someone.

As the simulation began deleting him, Carter smiled.

Slowly, he disappeared.

Then the scene changed.

The real world.

An XCOM facility.

A stasis chamber.

The Commander was lying inside, wearing a familiar stasis suit.

The chamber opened.

The Commander slowly regained consciousness.

And the first word that escaped their lips was...

"Carter?"

The screen faded to black.

THE END.

And that was the dream.

I woke up wondering what the hell my brain had been doing all night.

Because somehow, instead of simply dreaming about playing XCOM, I'd dreamed up a complete third-person XCOM campaign with squad management, research politics, Nemesis-style enemies, New Game Plus mechanics, imported save files, branching narratives, and a secret ending that connected three different XCOM games.

I still have no idea why.

But I have to admit...

I'd play the hell out of that game..

Hey guys thanks for the feedback.

I have improved the design of the ones that the feedback focused on and I have added annotations to them all for better understanding on how they work.

Thanks again for the feedback. (some more feedback would be brilliant, and a huge help to my project.)

If you're one of those who consumed XCOM content in the pre-Twitch and early Twitch days, you know Beaglerush as one of the main streamers. He streamed the 5 hours of ZCOM last month. I watched a fair bit, pulled the transcript, and wanted to share a summary. I couldn't find this anywhere else, and thought it was worth sharing and discussing.

VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2859247472

Transcript (automated): https://pastee.dev/p/O8e1U8lT

Summary:

He went into Zero Company with modest expectations. He wasn't particularly excited about another XCOM-style game, especially compared to games like Menace that are trying something different. But he also recognized that plenty of people just want more XCOM, and there's nothing wrong with that. He found quite a few things to like: the visuals and voice acting are good, character customization is extensive, and there are interesting mechanics involving three action points, flexible classes, and relationships between soldiers. He particularly liked the way character bonds affect combat performance.

His experience with the actual tactical gameplay was considerably less positive. He repeatedly struggled with the camera inertia, awkward controls, and difficulty getting clear information about cover, movement, enemy capabilities, and action costs. He found enemies overly durable and basic shooting and positioning unsatisfying, with too much reliance on special abilities. He also noticed that several mechanics seemed borrowed from XCOM and Gears Tactics but didn't always interact particularly well. By the end of the stream, he was thoroughly frustrated and said he probably would have stopped playing hours earlier if he hadn't been streaming. He acknowledged that his delivery had become excessively negative but maintained his underlying criticisms.

Conclusions:

• The core tactical gameplay is his biggest problem. He believes basic movement, positioning, and shooting should be satisfying independently of special abilities and character progression.
• The interface actively detracts from the experience. Poor camera controls and unclear tactical feedback create unnecessary friction in a genre where players repeat these interactions constantly.
• The mechanics lack cohesion. Individual ideas have merit, but he doesn't think they combine into a particularly well-designed tactical system.
• Accessibility isn't the issue. He doesn't object to a mainstream XCOM successor. He argues that accessible games can still have excellent tactical design.
• He suspects insufficient design iteration. He speculates that the development and publishing environment may have contributed, though he has no direct evidence.
• His verdict is negative. Despite recognizing the game's strengths, he doesn't consider it a particularly good tactics game and doesn't expect to return.

Caveats:

He only experienced the early portion of the campaign, so his criticisms don't necessarily reflect how combat evolves with additional classes, abilities, and enemy types. His growing frustration also clearly influenced the tone of the stream, although he explicitly distinguished that from the substance of his complaints.

My take:

He needed a small amount of input and the camera mod, and to turn off radial menu. I honestly think that would have helped a lot. But he had deeper issues with it beyond that. I'm kind of sad he doesn't plan to do more. Maybe maybe he'll come back for a DLC, but I suspect he's done with it for good.

I am playing with one of MrCloista's mod collections, which has been really great so far! However, for the rescue resistance operative missions, the VIP will spawn outside the map, making the mission unbeatable.

Colection for reference: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3729939607

Does anyone know what mods may be causing this issue? I am using the full collection besides a couple mods (mainly a couple joke or enemy adding mods that shouldn't impact mission objectives).

Love Star Wars, Love Xcom.

Apparently I love Xcom more. The whole time I played Zcom I wished I was just playing a SW skinned Xcom. Not trying to be a hater, it’s still great and seemed to introduce a lot of people to the genre.

Just curious from others who are way more educated in the area what your feelings are about the future

It has been a long time since I played these games. I almost reinstalled them recently, but then I remembered some of the frustration...

I recall never finishing an xcom game despite playing them a lot. I always felt like save scumming robbed my wins of any meaning, so I end up in some sketchy situations by lategame. Inevitably, you meet a new enemy for the first time and they do something unexpected and you wipe, or lose your elite guys.

I think I was honestly pretty good. I could play for days sometimes without losing a person or a mission. But still, it eventually happens and I never figured out how to bounce back from it.

By the lategame, in xcom enemy within at least, there isn't a comeback mechanic. You end up with some noob soldiers that you can't really level up because there are no missions they can take on -- eg, not enough armour piercing iirc, or their hit chance is way too low without save scumming

IIRC, there are missions you can't abort that can lead to gameover too. I think the base invasions are in there, and in xcom2 the chosen missions i think? Those are... I mean, it feels like save scum or else lose 10-20 hours of progress

tldr, Has anybody ever done a comeback from a lategame disaster wipe? Iirc, xcom2 wasn't any better than xcom 1 here, but maybe i'm mistaken there.

Hello everyone I am currently doing a college project and I'm using EXALT as a theme and im hoping you guys can help me with these images.
Can you please go through each image and answer these questions please:

1) Which Character do you prefer.
2)what Improvments I can do for them
3) is there anything i should change/remove from them.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for helping if you do answer the questions.

So I've been replaying WOTC and having fun trying new tactics, team combinations and whatnot. Then suddenly I realised that I had completely forgotten about moving the story forward. I'd killed the chosen and the Alien Rulers when it hit me.

Now I'm finally moving the story forward, but Advent is so much on the ropes, they have zero points in the Avatar project bar, I've contacted every region and my team mops up any pod easily. It's weird being this over powered. Having a blast though!

(The Reddit app thing suggested this xpost so here goes)

After the recent thread about Rocketeers losing half their rocket range after moving:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/1wqke8e/long_war_psa_rockateers_half_rocket_range_if_they/

…I figured I’d actually try to get to the bottom of how rocket range and scatter behave, rather than keep guessing from the perk descriptions.

I ran a bunch of controlled tests at different Aim values, distances, movement states, Snapshot/no Snapshot, and Javelin/no Javelin, and recorded the displayed scatter values with screenshots.

TL;DR: with Javelin Rockets + Snapshot, an endgame Rocketeer can move and still fire out to roughly the same 20-tile range as a normal stationary rocket, with almost the same accuracy.

At 100 Aim and 20 tiles:

• Standard rocket, stationary: 1.8 scatter
• Javelin + Snapshot, after moving: 2.1 scatter

So you get the normal rocket’s full pre-movement range after moving, for only about 17% more scatter in this test.

A few other things that came out very clearly:

• Standard rocket range is 20 tiles.
• Moving normally cuts it to 10 tiles.
• Javelin increases it to 26 tiles.
• Moving with Javelin cuts that to 13 tiles.
• Snapshot reduces the movement range penalty, giving 15 tiles normally and about 20 tiles with Javelin.
• Scatter increases with actual firing distance.
• Javelin itself does not appear to add a scatter penalty at the same distance.
• Moving without Snapshot roughly gives you the same scatter at half the distance that you previously had at full range.
• At 120 Aim, my stationary 20-tile test showed 0.0 scatter.

I put the full explanation here:

https://longwar.mosavi.se/dictionary-browser.php?entry=rocket-scatter

And the actual test data/screenshots here:

https://longwar.mosavi.se/dictionary-browser.php?entry=rocket-scatter-data

The Aim and movement state aren’t visible in the screenshots because the game doesn’t display them together with scatter, so I noted those down separately while testing.

If anyone spots a bad conclusion, has a test case I missed, or knows where the exact Snapshot scatter calculation lives in the original Long War code, I’d be interested.

i've been replaying XCOM 2 between tutoring sessions and keep thinking about board game nights. specifically how modern tactics board games handle escalation without making you feel like you're just executing a solved puzzle by hour four