XCOM 2 Long War could be happening as Firaxis announce official partnership with mod studio

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Long War Studios, the team behind the legendary XCOM: Enemy Unknown mod, is officially working with Firaxis on mods for XCOM 2. They’re due to be released at the same time as the game itself on February 5th and will be debuted at an XCOM 2 panel at PAX South on January 30th. It will be the first released work done by the three-person team as the game development house they set up to work on their own turn based strategy games after the success of their mod.

What would you like to see LWS working on? Here’s the best possible XCOM 2 mods we could think of.

The announcement was made via the official XCOM blog, which had this to say:

“We are happy to announce Long War Studios, the developers behind the Long War total-conversion mod for XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM: Enemy Within, has partnered with Firaxis Games and 2K for XCOM 2.

“The Long War Studios team, which is comprised of John Lumpkin, Rachel “Amineri” Norman and James “JCLewis” Karlson, is currently hard at work on multiple mods for XCOM 2. These mods are currently slated to be available at launch on February 5, 2016. We’ll have more information about the content of these mods soon.”

This is fantastic news in so many ways. It’s great to see mod teams being brough on board – and presumably paid – to work on sequels when their work is so well received. Jake Solomon, top-man on XCOM and XCOM 2, once described Enemy Unknown as a “25 hour tutorial for Long War” such was his respect for what the team has done. It was arguably a large part of why modding took such a focus in XCOM 2, and why PC ended up as its main platform.

It’s unlikely that whatever they release will be as in-depth or all-encompassing as Long War was by the end of its release cycle, but if someone was going to take what Firaxis have done and add bells and whistles, it should be them. Much like the Second Wave modifiers that came to the first game, I’d guess they’ll be adding numorous modifiers that, when all turned on, push the game into a Long War-like state with harder enemies, more missions and a tougher time all round.

We’ll know more come January 30th, when the PAX South panel will be streamed via the official Twitch channelas mentioned in the blog post.