XCOM: Chimera Squad

[Calax]

4 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Adeptus Arbites?

Or Space Marines.

Or IG

or Storm Troopers

You "breach and clear" a chaos cult or genestealer nest while trying to save your planet for humanity.

[Skazz]

Deathwatch would fit the bill.

It's literally the 40k's version of XCOM.

[Azdeus]

34 minutes ago, Skazz said:

Deathwatch would fit the bill.

It's literally the 40k's version of XCOM.

Not to mention that they have a badass colour scheme. And all the coolest toys.

Edit; Thought with the current fluff being where it is, I suspect that DW is pretty much effed, as in truly ass-invaded.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Azdeus

[Oner]

Credit where it's due, a pistol blowing up half a wall would at least make sense in a DW game.

[melkathi]

Anyway: installing

[Wormerine]

I swear, Godmother still speaks with Vailian accent. 

[Wormerine]

Played couple missions, and my initial impression is surprisingly positive. We shall see how the systems will persevere through a stress of a longer playthrough, but so far CS offers a fresh spin on XCOMs system, addressing some of my frustrations with Vanilla game - mainly there is an actual combat happening here. In vanilla XCOM1&2 ambushes and alpha strikes are so dominant I felt I never experienced what enemies had to effer, as they would rarely made their turn. And due to interwined turns, defensive abilities are so much more valuable. I found myself analysing turn order, and planning moves in a way I never had to in XCOMs. Is it better? Probably not. No perma death nor customisable soldiers is a bit downgrade, but for the price it seems like a worthy distraction.

Oh, I need to see if one can made the "breach" less cinematic. While really cool, trying to analyse the situation is rather tricky. 

[melkathi]

You can research some nifty breach tech. but so far it all is used while breaching, so you still go in fairly blind and then try to figure things out as you breach. But I got some holo-targeting-thingy that is supposed to highlight enemies when breaching. No idea if it actually does anything useful. You can't use special breach orders during the initial breach...

[melkathi]

Expanded my initial team with Shelter, then Axiom. Hope to get more options soon.

[Wormerine]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

You can research some nifty breach tech. but so far it all is used while breaching, so you still go in fairly blind and then try to figure things out as you breach. But I got some holo-targeting-thingy that is supposed to highlight enemies when breaching. No idea if it actually does anything useful. You can't use special breach orders during the initial breach...

Breach is the weird thing. It is the most interesting addition to the game, but I feel I have to little info to make informed decisions. It's difficult to make a smart tactical decision, while having no idea as to enemy placement and room layout. Even breaching itself, while it looks cool, it makes it really tricky to evaluate the situation, outside who poses immediate danger.

[melkathi]

People on Steam complaining that they can't save scum on Ironman...

[melkathi]

Apparently the game breaks itself. If you validate your install, it will fix 53 files. Not sure what fixing these fixes.

[melkathi]

Torque: How can you inject so much naive cheerfulness into dreadful situations?

Whisper: I am Canadian.

[ktchong]

On 4/25/2020 at 4:52 AM, melkathi said:

People on Steam complaining that they can't save scum on Ironman...

I've save-scummed for every XCOM game (to grab the Ironman badge)...  just had to locate and incrementally back up the save files.

Edited April 27, 2020 by ktchong

[melkathi]

But you didn't rush to a forum complaining about bad game design when Ironman mode doesn't allow you to create as many saves as you like and load whichever save you like

[melkathi]

[Wormerine]

Just started second investigation. I like quite a few things about it, though I think it could have been really special with a bit more depth and better characterisation. 

[melkathi]

Who are you investigating?

[Wormerine]

I finished the psions, and moves to hybrids with chrysalids 

[Wormerine]

So....

My playthrough might have reached a premature end, at least for now.

I am doing a mission, and I was told to hold off against 3 enemy waves. Those waves never came. IRONMAN!

[melkathi]

Oooops.

 

Yeah, until they patch the game, I'd advise against ironman.

You could try to friendly fire kill your team which will cause the mission to restart.

[Wormerine]

9 hours ago, melkathi said:

Yeah, until they patch the game, I'd advise against ironman.

You could try to friendly fire kill your team which will cause the mission to restart.

Yeah, one would think I would have learned my lesson after XCOM2. 

I am not sure, if I have means to do that - but perhaps there will be a way to restart or abandon the mission. For now just sent the save over to 2k.

[melkathi]

Nominating Zephyr as the worst written character 2020.

They took an interesting concept: a human who (probably as a teenager) was turned through the gene-therapy into a hybrid, broke free and joined the skirmishers, and now tries to find out who she was before they turned her into a hybrid soldier.

And they turned it into "Look, this character has an overdone Aussie accent. LOL!1!1"  (Yes, you can feel that the writer thought LOL with capital letters, multiple exclamation marks and typos for some of those exclamation marks). She actually gets a two-part barracks dialogue with Terminal, where Terminal (being the idiot she is (another character concept wasted by hack writers)) makes fun of Zephyr's accent. Not once, but you get two interactions because one wasn't enough to underline that hey, we added an Aussie accent!

 

It's as if they had someone who can write supervise part of the work (Gray Phoenix investigation, dialogue between certain characters, the character backgrounds, some of the archive texts) - the parts they felt were important for telling the story they wanted - and then let the writing team fill the rest of the needed text with every stupid idea they threw out there over beer and pizza.

 

It reminds me of the difference in quality in Guild Wars 2, where the Asura and Sylvari had interesting writing, while the Norn were bland as can be, while the Humans were cringe worthy.

Or Old Republic, with the great writing for some classes and the, well, writing for others. Especially the drop in quality for Smugglers past act 1, where you could tell that they just needed two more acts written and be done. And then the intern who wrote those actually did leave, and everyone who had made snarky remarks "Did they let the intern write this?" felt like an idiot, because they had never expected the answer to be "yes".

 

Now with my dislike for Terminal, you'd think I'd nominate her, but at least there was an attempt to write the character. A failed attempt mostly, but an attempt non the less. The girl who watched Advent kill her parents, then got taken in by a lady, only to have Advent kill the foster mother as well. Buried underneath rubble when Advent razed the Haven she had been living in, she was dug out by the Resistance. All this death and destruction changed her demeanor. Her clown attitude is a coping mechanism for all the death and destruction in her life, and her suicidal tendencies. And there is a dialogue with Godmother where she seems to halfheartedly reach out to talk about it. And there is a dialogue with Blueblood where he addresses the situation. But if you don't get those to trigger (and I for example didn't have Blueblood on my first playthrough), then all you see is an annoying clown. And that is a failure on the writers' part, but the attempt was there.

Zephyr though they didn't even try. Her in-mission comments add nothing. They say nothing about her character. They are just delivered with an Aussie accent.

With Claymore and Shelter I understand why they didn't try. The characters are boring. But at least Shelter has some comments about psionics.  If you want to be generous, you could even recognize a hint of his reluctance to use his abilities.

 

Torque, Axiom, and Verge are great characters.

Cherub is good, but I understand why he can be annoying. It isn't easy to write a mentally 5 year old in the body of a soldier. He knows how to fight, but socially and all the non-combat knowledge is underdeveloped.

Godmother works as a character. The veteran of the squad who has been fighting since the aliens first invaded, and who doesn't really have a life anymore beyond being den-mother to whatever unit she is with. There is nothing to stand out in the writing, but some characters don't need to.

Blueblood is similar. As the cop of the team, he just fits in with the game setting.

And Patchwork exists. Amazing character gameplay wise. Had to count how many characters I had mentioned and work out who I had missed to remember to list her.

 

Jane Kelly is there to drive the plot. She fills the role of the councilman from previous games. It means she doesn't get to have much personality development, but it is better that way. The text she gets is required for the plot, not to showcase her as a person. So I am happy they refrained from distracting from the plot with character building.

Whisper has some good writing when he welcomes new squad members. It is the part where you get to see that he is the person who is trying his best to make Chimera Squad work. He goes out of his way to know everyone on his squad and make everyone feel comfortable in this pilot project. And during random missions he is what Bradford wasn't: someone who gives you one line of your objective and leaves you in peace. Story missions he can get annoying though. They had to make those stand out and give him extra text. They let the hacks write it.

 

 

[Wormerine]

That's far more indepth analysis then I am capable of. To be honest, I had trouble recalling which name goes with which character. I didn't catch more depth in them then "snake-lady", "medic-lady", "shield-guy", "My Palladin Pal Pallegina", "sectoid dude" etc. I see very little reflection of their backstories in their banter. If you would say to me that they recorded VO without a character in mind, I would buy it.

A decision to use normal human VO for aliens is just weird to me. I can't match the normal human voice, to the jaw, fangs and forked tongue of a snake.

[Skazz]

1 hour ago, Wormerine said:

 If you would say to me that they recorded VO without a character in mind, I would buy it.

A decision to use normal human VO for aliens is just weird to me. I can't match the normal human voice, to the jaw, fangs and forked tongue of a snake.

Incidentally...

^ Torque's (Snake lady's) voice actress on Twitter.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Skazz