I'll research the core tech at different rates and in a different order, and may never even find my way to certain stuff, because instead I'm improving my military capabilities organically, in multiple and unexpected directions. It's both the immediacy of the bonus - concrete improvements to your existing squads rather than merely laying groundwork for what the squads might be capable of much later - and the idea that it'll be lost forever if I don't shift my plans over to it nownownow that motivates me so.Įvery campaign, this stuff'll go differently. These one-off toys are irresistible, even if, moments before, I was absolutely convinced that I must have Powered Armour or finish autopsying Gatekeepers. Compounding this is that inspiration can offer upgrades that are not otherwise available from Research or anything else in the game - bonuses such as one extra hitpoint of armour per soldier, or making stims reusable rather than disposable, or +1 damage on a certain type of weapon. It's still a moment of dilemma, but this time it's not simply 'do I want X or Y' but rather 'do I want X enough to lose the opportunity to get Z super-fast?'īecause of this, I've spun off down totally different research paths than I'd planned to, and ended up getting certain techs way before I usually would - and others way later than I usually would. If you choose to take them up on their suggestion, they'll take significantly less time to research that tech - but choose something else instead and the speed-up offer will be lost. What WOTC introduces to solve this is your in-game scientists having flashes of 'inspiration', wherein they suddenly have a brainwave about a particular improvement.
![chosen weapons xcom 2 chosen weapons xcom 2](https://www.thetech52.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/XCOM-2-War-Of-The-Chosen_2-780x439.jpg)
![chosen weapons xcom 2 chosen weapons xcom 2](https://static-ca.gamestop.ca/images/products/754417/13scrmax5.jpg)
Even so, one can't really escape the 'I need Plasma weapons and the bestest best armour' stomp.
#CHOSEN WEAPONS XCOM 2 PLUS#
XCOM 2 already dialled this down a bit by adapting the types of enemies you face to where your soldiers are in terms of tech, plus there was a wider range of XCOM soldier skills to call upon, rather than total reliance on firepower and armour.
#CHOSEN WEAPONS XCOM 2 SERIES#
It's a system that I feel works very well - making a significant strategic choice that will very likely define your next few hours of play - but, depending on which iteration of the series we're talking about, it at worst forces and at best encourages a single golden path of research.
![chosen weapons xcom 2 chosen weapons xcom 2](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/xcom/images/1/1a/7-0.png)
Make a choice over what tech you want to unlock (or lay the groundwork for next), wait several in-game days or weeks for it to complete, do it again - each time agonising that you might have sold yourself short by, say, choosing weapon upgrades instead of better armour. There's a lot of things that XCOM does different to its more measured and unpredictable precursor X-COM, but the way you research new military technology is not one of them.
![chosen weapons xcom 2 chosen weapons xcom 2](https://gameranx.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/20170829160043_1-1-1024x576.jpg)
But there's one very small change in WOTC that I didn't mention - a tiny thing with massive, massive repercussions for XCOM 2: War of the Chosen 's replayability. Though it suffers from having as many different tones as the last thirty years of Dulux catalogues sellotaped together, I found in my XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen review that the latest expansion for Firaxis' game is an extremely effective remix of, basically, everything.