I have put dozens of hours into playing a single game of XCOM 2, the turn-based tactical strategy game from Take-Two Interactive’s 2K Games label.
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Can humanity finally win the war? What is the deeper mystery of the aliens’ goals? And will any of the end-game stuff from Enemy Unknown be acknowledged? It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here. This is where you come in, taking command of this squad, and eventually, an alien supply ship that XCOM has retrofitted into a mobile base of operations called the Avenger. They launch an attack on the newly erected Advent statue as a show of protest, hoping to rally any human dissenters, and show them that the war is far from over. On this particular Unification Day though, a group led by Central Officer Bradford from the first game decides to emerge from the shadows. You’re nothing but terrorists to them, attempting to destroy the “gifts” that our alien benefactors have given us. The Advent’s revisionist history will actually impact your place in this new world, with most of humanity openly hostile to XCOM’s existence. They engage in hit-and-run missions when they can (labeled as terrorist activities by the Advent, of course), but so far, they haven’t had the ability to commit to a full-scale resistance. The remnants of XCOM haven’t been idly standing by these past two decades though, they’ve been underground preparing scattered, but not yet defeated. XCOM 2 opens on the 20th anniversary of Unification Day, with the unveiling of a prominent new statue. So how does this tie into the game itself? They’ve even installed a worldwide holiday called “Unification Day,” celebrating the official ceasefire. They’ve rewritten the narrative so that the end of the war wasn’t a hostile takeover, but a unification of the two species. That’s a hot load of bullshit of course, but the aliens are taking the story and running with it. These sorts of advances have probably made it easier for the population to swallow the alien propaganda that humanity is the one that started the original war, and that the aliens had originally come in peace. Although humanity now lives in what amounts to a global police state, the Advent has succeeded in curing all disease and eliminating crime using alien tech. Media outlets also appear to have been co-opted, serving as propaganda mouthpieces for the notion that the aliens and humans are living in a peaceful, mutually beneficial relationship. XCOM has been officially dissolved, with the world’s governments replaced with the “Advent Administration.” The Advent has human representatives, but it’s clear that it exists to perpetuate the aliens’ control of the human population. This makes sense given what we learned in Enemy Unknown‘s final mission, and there’s even mentions of the aliens building “gene therapy centers,” presumably to continue their mission of Uplifting humanity to be ready for “what lies ahead” (I really hope we find out what that is in this game). They have instead occupied the planet, even establishing a Vichy-esque proxy government to maintain the illusion of being benevolent overseers.
The aliens (now going by the name, The Elder) have chosen not to wipe humanity from the face of the Earth. It picks up 20 years after the end of that war. The sequel to the 2012 game chooses a pretty bleak outlook for humanity as its predecessor’s canonical ending, presenting a world where the aliens defeated the XCOM organization. How does XCOM 2 handle the ending of the first game? Fail in that, and well, you’ll end up in the story of XCOM 2 apparently. XCOM: Enemy Unknown was a game about choices. Make enough of the right ones, and your ragtag group of soldiers will triumph over the unbeatable alien invaders.
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