Of the many new features coming to XCOM 2 in its huge War of the Chosen expansion, soldier bonds are one of the more interesting. Forged in battle, these bonds represent friendships between your troops and will enable new abilities, like giving each other bonus actions.
We played an early mission in XCOM 2: War of the Chosen – check it out to see what we make of the huge new expansion so far.
The chance of two soldiers forming a bond is governed by their compatibility stats, which are random, but if you’re determined to make your two faves buddy up, there are ways to do that. Game director Jake Solomon told us “there are covert actions that you can send soldiers on, that will force them to work out their differences and change their compatibility rating.”
There will also be so-called ‘watershed moments’, which will recognise there are certain experiences you can’t share with someone and still hate them. “If two soldiers go on a mission and they’re the only two to survive, their compatibility is automatically set to high,” Solomon says. “Or if one of those soldiers is knocked unconscious, and the other throws them over their shoulder and evacs out with them, their compatibility is set to high.”
So if you dream of an alien-killing buddy movie (damn, how good would that be?) starring your favourite sniper and assault trooper, but they wind up hating each other, all you have to do is let the aliens kill the rest of the squad and your dream can become reality.