XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

XCOM 2 is a turn-based tactics video game. A defense team known as XCOM must repel and resist an alien invasion. The War of the Chosen expansion makes changes to XCOM 2's campaign structure and adds new enemies, story elements, new hero characters, modifiers, and more behaviors for characters.

The expansion introduces a new set of enemy aliens called the Chosen, three elite alien-human hybrid warriors tasked by the Elders to defeat XCOM and recapture the Commander; The Assassin, who relies on stealth and melee attacks; the Hunter, that uses a long range rifle that fires bullets that track their targets; and the Warlock, who uses psionic powers and can take control of several of the player's units at once. As the game progresses, the Chosen gain new exclusive abilities over time, and eventually become able to launch a direct attack on the Avenger. The Chosen continue to appear occasionally during missions even after being defeated, and can only be killed for good once their base is destroyed as well.

The game also introduces three rebel factions that antagonize each other, but grant special hero classes once their allegiance is earned; the Reapers, specialized in sniping and stealth, the Templars, who employ unique psionic abilities, and the Skirmishers, former ADVENT soldiers with exclusive equipment and tactics. Each faction also provides covert ops missions in which soldiers can be deployed to obtain extra resources, delay the Avatar project, or gather info about the Chosen's strongholds, as well as other benefits. Other new features include a revamped strategic layer and the "Bond" system, in which pairs of soldiers develop special abilities that are accessible when both are deployed during a mission, however, when a bonded soldier is killed, their partner may temporarily enter a "berserk mode", ignoring any player orders and attacking targets at random, or they may panic, becoming uncontrollable and fleeing from battle. For research, breakthroughs and inspirations are made to increase the speed that researchers work at, sometimes instantly being able to complete a project.

The expansion also adds a neutrally-aligned zombie-like enemy type called the Lost, former humans created during the invasion that will attack both ADVENT and XCOM in battle, along with new ADVENT units with exclusive abilities.[2]

Other new features include a daily challenge mode, as well as the ability to create posters featuring your custom characters that will appear inside the game world.

Various characters introduced in the expansion have voices provided by actors known for their roles on Star Trek, including Denise Crosby, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Johnathon Frakes, John DeLancie, and Dwight Schultz.[3]

War of the Chosen was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017. It was released on August 29, 2017.[4]

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen received "generally favorable" reviews from professional critics according to review aggregator website Metacritic.[6]

IGN's reviews editor Dan Stapleton praised the amount of variety War of the Chosen added to the mission objectives and campaign of XCOM 2. Although he found there to be some balance issues, he thought that both the Hero classes and the Chosen were great additions.[8] Game Informer reviewer Ben Reeves was impressed by the amount of content included in the expansion, noting that it could almost have been a standalone game.[7]

• Official website