XCOM 2’s ragtag band of resistance fighters are far more characterful than the troops you became attached to last time around. You can customise the new recruits within an inch of their lives, picking beards, tattoos, accents and ‘attitude’. You can even make your mum. Not my mum, not XCOM 2 producer Garth DeAngelis’ mum, but your mum, as an insurgent ready to be rescued from an alien administration sitting in sovereign control of Earth.
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“The character pool is really cool,” DeAngelis told our Jake during his XCOM 2 preview. “Before you start a game you can go and create a roster of characters – soldiers and engineers and VIPs if you want to – and they get pushed into your game world.”
The sequel’s newly procedurally generated maps will build on the target escort objectives of Enemy Unknown. Which opens up interesting possibilities if you have indeed constructed your old mum in the character creator.
“Organically you might be rescuing your sister or your mum or a celebrity or whoever you’ve created,” explained DeAngelis. “They can show up on your maps in an ADVENT jail cell and you can go and get her and bring her back to your base and then she’s part of your squad.”
Who do you think will be joining your squad in XCOM 2? Jake’s first act was to build our own Ben Barrett, who didn’t last long. RIP.