I hope the future direction of this game goes back to its roots. The X-COM2 DLC which introduces alien combatants to your team as players always seemed deeply misguided to me. To me the point of XCOM is about humanity confronting those aspects it finds unacceptable to its condition, I’ve never taken it literally about aliens vs. humans, so the othering of a race of aliens is not a concern for me. What I care about are non-fictional people, their nations and their cultures. So the DLC where aliens were part of your team seemed like such a misguided venture to me. It seemed like something someone might come up with in a thoughtless effort to be inclusive of diversity. But what does that even mean in this case? So, yeah I hope XCOM reexamines it point, or someone else should create a better IP.

> the DLC where aliens were part of your team seemed like such a misguided venture to me. It seemed like something someone might come up with in a thoughtless effort to be inclusive of diversity. But what does that even mean in this case?

If I live a million years I will never understand the paranoia over the ‘threat’ of inclusivity / diversity.

I feel completely the opposite. What would it look like in an alien war? Would we have defectors like we do in actual war? Could some of those fighting for the aliens actually be enslaved and riot?

All of this adds depth and texture to a game instead of "humans good, aliens bad". The world isn't simplistic and I really don't want a game with a theme to either.

The plots to XCOM were never very strong: it was the gameplay that set them apart. Gollup’s earlier games (the subject of the article) developed turn-based, grid-constrained tactical simulation out of board games; plot was just polish added to that. Using roughly the same mechanics, you command a death squad on search-and-destroy missions, terrorists doing direct action against the government, and, in Chimera Squad, cops. The story is just window dressing for the mechanics.

I really liked X-COM Chimera Squad. Different capabilities were really cool and interspecies banter made the whole thing feel alive. Don't get me wrong, I still like shadowy claustrophobic climate of the original just as much, but for example X-COM reboot was almost spoiled for me because of one character, Bradford. I never hated any alien as much as his nagging, orders and tone.

Also the mechanic in the reboot was a bit misguided. They eliminated sneaking up and ambushing the enemy and replaced it by little animated introduction of the enemy as soon as they land into a very large circle around your soldiers, almost regardless of terrain. X-COM 2 brought it back a little bit with you soldiers starting in stealth mode and some of them potentially re-entering stealth again using a skill.

Yeah, I didn't like significantly more cartoony/comicy shift in themes in 2, especially with DLCs, either.

Fighting campy superhero bosses just kinda made everything less tense (and frankly, the random spawns got kinda annoying).

> It seemed like something someone might come up with in a thoughtless effort to be inclusive of diversity.

The more obvious explanation is that having alien members in your squad opens up new gameplay opportunities.

Your comment seems like a caricature of a right wing person who thinks everything they don’t like is “DEI/woke”. It’s like you need the world to be black and white and when it isn’t it upsets your world view?

Did the developers say it was driven by inclusivity?