XCOM 2: Stress Test

Alien invasion stories always end one of two ways: humans on the bottom or humans on the top. The Martians’ tripods trip and fall from the skies. MacReady and Childs sit under the chilled Antarctic sky. Either way, we’re entertained by the story of human supremacy or the shock of hubris that prevented us from overcoming anything at all. Alien invasions are stand-ins for anxieties about the world outside of human knowledge, and the outcome is less important than the moment in which humans are tested against the unknowable beings from the great beyond. Alien invasions are the ultimate crucible for testing humanity. Sometimes Randy Quaid and a computer virus saves us. Sometimes the monsters sing their whale songs to each other as humanity wanes.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown was the heroic story of humanity on the return swing of an aggressive alien invasion. It played into the tropes of humanity aligned against the invaders from beyond the pale of understanding, and we took on the role of commanding the shield arm of a shadowy Illuminati making sure that the world stayed safe. Bulky heroic soldiers in special forces teams went around the world hunting downed UFOs and saving the civilians of capital cities. We used our science and technology to make the best choices to combat each threat. We crawled slowly, painfully, across each map in constant anticipation of our best counterattack options. It was a slow game that rewarded patience, taking time and simulating the most middling of structural bureaucracies. Most XCOM programs failed

XCOM 2 pulls us a couple decades into the future. The aliens won. They took over everything, concentrated everyone into megacity population centers, and began integrating humanity into their genetically-modified space army. Worse, it is all done under the guise of a human face, a smarmy almost-hippie who just wants everyone to get along with the program of being used as weird cattle for aliens.

If the watch phrase of Enemy Unknown was “protect the world” then XCOM 2’s is “take it back.” Still the commander (but now rescued from years of captivity), you now control a ragtag group of scientists, engineers and commandos that must travel the world to create a global resistance. That resistance ultimately feeds into guerilla tactics that prevents the alien overseers from completing their own massive, unknowable project that will finally subjugate humans once and for all. As a note, you do all of this via airship as if you are a cool person on the last disc of a Final Fantasy game.

The guerilla tactics of XCOM 2 are usually represented in timed missions. You must infiltrate an area, complete a goal and then exfiltrate while preventing casualties and eliminating as many enemies as possible. These time limits, as contrived as they might be, are the major leap forward in design for this franchise, and they communicate that the XCOM program is no longer a structural establishment that can plod turn by turn through tactical combat. Instead, one has to strike as quickly and efficiently as possible—supplies are burning, and the aliens are always on your tail.

Beyond the tactical time limits, XCOM 2 mostly offers more of the same without some of the more stressful micromanagement structures of its predecessor. You no longer have to manage what interceptor planes are stationed where, nor do you need to bother with aligning your satellite communications arrays with one another in a giant organizational grid of rooms that you need to purchase to make your way through the game. Enemy Unknown understood itself to be a tactical experience from top to bottom, and that meant that every single part of the game had to be planned in advance. You needed to understand what your next move was when it came to planning, researching or building, but it was best to know what your next five moves were.

XCOM 2 drops that long-term strategic planning for short-term tactical decisions. You research what you have time to research before your next major mission. You delay a mission to travel across the world to get a critical scientist who might speed up that research. You build a communications array in the block of space you cleared out in your mobile base not because it’s the best thing to go there but because you need it ASAP and you can always upgrade it later.