Mission One

Well, I've now played one winning campaign of XCOM 2 and... uh... let's not mention the others. Poor, poor troopers. Sigh. But one winning campaign surely qualifies me to play through again and do better right? Right?

So here we go, my blog-through of XCOM 2.

This whole blog is spoiler city, if you don't want to know anything about the game, don't read any further. I won't be tagging anything with spoiler alerts, assume it's 100% spoilerific.

So, to begin with we see a series of media montages about how awesome the "Elders" are and how they've managed to squash the bad-guy rebels and stuff. You know, not creepy at all or anything.

This happy chappy is "the speaker" who spins out the propaganda big-time. He wants the world to be happy and Advent (the name of the organisation that "keep the peace" are rolling out medical and gene therapy clinics in all the city centers. The world will soon be awesome!

Gah, but who's this ugly guy, it's Lieutenant Bradford, otherwise known as "Central" he kinda runs things and has been all resistancing it up since XCOM totally lost last time (which is true, I lost multiple games!). He stepped through a metal detector and set it all flashing and beeping, so this Advent commander is, I dunno, asking him to turn out his pockets or something (they speak in a sort of Klingon meets poor quality speakerphone voice).

But wait, some other woman is taking the advantage of the deliberately overstaged diversion to plant explosives!

Kerpow!

And now the mission proper starts. I have control of two brave soldiers, Ana and Pete. I'd give you their full back-story, history of their involvement in the resistance, forbidden love, hidden treasure... nah, don't get attached to them. Seriously. They are tasked with using the distraction of the explosion to grab "a package".

Oh, Ana is dead already. She forgot to take cover and was flanked. Right, cover is super important and being flanked is really nasty. Gotta remember that. Sorry Ana.

A little skirmishing later and a flare goes off. Must be fireworks planned?

Oh, right, Advent reinforcements. This is cool, rather than guys popping up out of nowhere, a flare goes off and on the next turn a zippy little transport flies in and guys jump out. You get that one turn's notice to set up an ambush. XCOM 2 is much pacier than the previous version.

Pete takes violent and bloody, or at least yellow gooey revenge for Ana!

And here we find out that the Advent troops are not fully human, but some sort of Alien/Human hybrid! David Duchovny was right all along! In your face Scully!

Central and Jane (the girl who planted the explosives) turn up just in time to save Pete and enter the facility where they find... dun dun daaaaaah... a strange suit in some sort of Matrixy goop. "The Package".

Oops. Pete! Nooooooo! Well, sorta saw that coming eh?

Jane decides to create her own exit with a handy grenade. Lots and lots of destructible objects, it's often easier to make your own exits, though the trade off for using grenades against enemies is often a tough call. It's nice when you can combine the two! Bad guy near back wall... boom! 

Here come the cavalry, evac on the way!

Jane and Central zip up and out of the way while under heavy fire. "The Package" over Central's back. You can pick up fallen troops etc. though you can't shoot or take any other actions while carrying them. Often you do this for your own guys so you don't lose their equipment... I mean... so that they can be given a decent burial.

This strange electronicy, glitchy, cyber womany thing appears, looks around and then disappears. We'll find out more about these later.

Here are Engineer Shen and Doctor Tygan. They are working on "The Package". She's the daughter of the previous chief engineer and he's an ex-Advent doctor who removed some sort of chip from the back of his neck. We totes trust him.

While he's removing the chip we discover that - shock! - YOU are the package. You're only referred to as "The Commander" and it turns out you were captured by the aliens. They implanted some sort of chip into your brain and have been using it to run battle simulations. Plot and stuff!

Somehow you have memories of cities being bombed. Sorry Eiffel Tower.

And here's the chip that had been in your brain. 

Jane earned a promotion for her work and is now a Ranger. She's got a sword and a shotgun. I wouldn't mess with her!

So to recap, the aliens are trying to move people to the city centers for medical clinics and free gene therapy to turn the world into a better place. The "Speaker" looks as though he's spruiking for Apple or something. I think that this whole situation is about something truly evil... advertising!

It's the only thing that fits! They want to sell stuff, some cool dude tries to get people to come and buy it, they've tried subliminal advertising, changing terminologies and in the city centers there are billboards everywhere!

Somehow my brain had the key to the perfect ad campaign! Fortunately Central and Jane rescued me before the nefarious plan could be perfected. 

So what are they really selling?
What horrible ad campaigns might they come up with?
If they're like Apple, are we like Microsoft?
I've heard of aggressive ad campaigns, but have they gone too far?
Tune in next time for more adventures in XCOM 2!