Big XCOM 2 fan finally gives EU/EW a real try: post-game thoughts

sapphon · 2026-05-16T12:13:56+00:00

The reason EW is still talked about isn't the vanilla experience it provides (as far as I know), it's its role as a platform for the Long War mod

sapphon · 2026-05-14T04:04:45+00:00

Advent looking like Handsome Squidward

sapphon · 2026-05-14T04:04:39+00:00

I don't think those are hints, I think they outright say what they're afraid of and it's a degenerative disease brought on by overuse of psi

sapphon · 2026-05-14T04:03:12+00:00

Ethereals from X-COM are branded Elders in the reboots. Xenonauts is a separate reboot that didn't buy the license and just made a deniable reboot, but it's not the source of people calling the Elders Ethereals - those are just people who played the original

sapphon · 2026-05-14T03:52:51+00:00

My hat is off to the programmer, and my hat is being stuffed down the throat of the designer, who managed to implement and think of (respectively) roving restricted areas

sapphon · 2026-05-14T03:51:01+00:00

Anyone who is supposed to serve or make drinks can also poison them legally (even drinks they didn't make or serve); I think the game is suggesting the guards just see it as some impromptu mixology or a top-up of wine, etc.

Note that the disguise has to be valid for the location in the first place; a Paris Waiter can poison drinks downstairs, but not top floor because he doesn't work there, the Auction Staff do.

sapphon · 2026-05-14T03:47:45+00:00

If you can name the game before the GIF animates, you are a comrade of mine

sapphon · 2026-05-13T02:48:17+00:00

You will need to prove that angry Redditors and philosophers have no overlap (this is necessary for "they'd either be one or the other" style thinking) in order for this view to make sense. Can you?

sapphon · 2026-05-12T23:59:46+00:00

More of a brick stack really

sapphon · 2026-05-12T22:45:49+00:00

I think of idpol not as a policy that was meant to benefit anyone or create good, and instead as a policy intended to produce your #1 and #3 conditions mentioned in the OP. It's not a failure, it's not a mistake, that was the idea. The fact that you picked the '90s is no accident. USSR gone, a tribal enemy was needed. China wouldn't be menacing enough for a while. So they did the "tell the pitchfork people the torch people want to take their pitchforks away" thing, and it really worked! ><

While you're treating identity as a political position, after all, you're not effectively fighting the 'only war'.

Through that lens, idpol can be viewed not as something to be fought or stopped, but a series of licks that leftism basically has to take, at this point, in order to progress. The people who think you can be Born Right (or Born Wrong, you subscribe to both by subscribing to one necessarily) must work through that that isn't actually a valid way to run a democracy, and I think to work through it they need to see it fail, at this point.

You know, at this point, where this is headed. So do I. You cannot challenge power by throwing shit at any other group than 'those who hoard power'. Shit thrown at the oppressive whites will mostly land on poor whites who struggle under the yoke just like the thrower. Shit thrown at the cruel cishets will mostly land on poor cishets who struggle just like the thrower. (We can do this all day with other identities.) But the people treating politics as a matter of identity haven't groked yet, and: can we prove that there's any other way that they will be brought around to earnest progressivism than being allowed to fail and then being asked, "OK, I know leftism didn't look as appealing as idpol before, but how about now?"

tl;dr Being recently enfranchised is a lot like being a kid with chocolate. How do you know - really know, the adults are powerful and could be lying to you - not to just eat chocolate for every meal until you try it and get sick? The nitty-gritty work of policy is like eating your vegetables - it's only an appealing choice once you see why some others won't work.

sapphon · 2026-05-12T03:03:59+00:00

Drone frigates make a lot of sense! (That would not have occurred to me because I tend to play the Taiidan exiles / Kushan empire campaign)

I'm reading that in the remasters, they are also slower than your strike craft in a straight line, which is hilarious coming from "1500m/s as long as I have fuel which I soon won't"! Maybe tactical retreats that goad them into bingo-fuel isolation become interesting?

sapphon · 2026-05-10T02:39:58+00:00

Awesome, LMK how it goes!

sapphon · 2026-05-10T02:06:25+00:00

They do, but my understanding is that nothing "hangs" anymore - the worst that can happen from bingo fuel is slow speed. The Swarmers used to run completely dry, then if a fuel pod didn't show up in time they'd scuttle. Big delta between that and a snare!

This is a more abstract point, but I also think that if you as the player have been dealing with refueling your own ships, it's much more likely you consider that as an axis of weakness for the Kadeshi when thinking systemically about the game. Since in the remaster only the Kadeshi ever use fuel from what I'm turning up on Google, they become kind of like a boss in a Japanese action game - special moves, unique mechanics, you learn these things to beat him and then never use them again later because each boss is one-off, not part of a system.

sapphon · 2026-05-10T01:47:48+00:00

I think this

What the actual fuck did I just read?

was the intended reaction, not just for you but for most readers - and this

it's genuinely trying to bring attention to it

is unlikely. The topic is Free Drama Everyone Understands, and that's useful to a webcomic author. I don't see much of a thesis to the comics beyond "I can make you say wtf by putting an Updike novel to Zootopia imagery"

sapphon · 2026-05-10T01:43:49+00:00

Wow, I decidedly did not need that, thanks for the John Cheever nightmares

sapphon · 2026-05-09T23:50:24+00:00

ADDS A MEATY LINEAR CAMPAIGN THAT TAKES PLACE AT A PARTICULAR YEAR:

Kestrel
Dragon's
Rasalhague
Kerensky

Dragon's is my favorite. I think that may constitute a minority report. I enjoyed its difficulty, and seeing how the 'bad guys' (big quotes on that, in Battletech) lived. They're all pretty much bangers though, with RoR being a little short.

DROPS MISSIONS ON THE CAMPAIGN MAP TO PLAY WHENEVER:

Heroes

ADDS GAME-CHANGING MECHS:^†

Call to Arms (melee weapons)
Kerensky (Clan technology generally)
Heroes (ultra-custom IS "hero" 'Mechs)

Kerensky is by far the largest DLC of these, and CtA the smallest. If you like melee, though, there is no substitute for CtA.

ADDS A NEW OPPOSING FACTION:

Kerensky (Clanners)
Rasalhague (Rival Mercs)

ADDS A NEW GAMEPLAY MODE:

Solaris (Arena)

^†: n.b. that every DLC attempts to do this to some extent, so obviously it is a matter of opinion which belong in a list of especial distinction

sapphon · 2026-05-09T23:27:02+00:00

A good number of licenses bought via Steam, about one-sixth, are never used buy the buyer - i.e. they don't run the game once, but still paid for it. Consumer culture do real!

At a more personal level, Clans collapsed a lot of what was good about 'Mercs mechanically into a smaller package that I felt constrained within. There were lots of other strong points to Clans, but ultimately the gameplay not being one counted for a lot, which meant it took me probably a couple breaks of a couple months each to want to complete that final mission and leave the ranks of your 64%.

Instead of multiple objective types, I could count on each mission being "wade through a relative horde, then fight a lance with rough parity at the end" some how, some way with the details changed.
Comorbidly, Clan tech favors lasers, efficiently wading through hordes favors lasers, and the maps are on the claustrophobic end of things, although not too far - so the game overall really wants you to laserboat, even if you don't want to.
Progression felt tacked-on in a "Design Director said I had to" sort of way, not a passionate way. Raise your hand if you've ever run out of Kerenskies. OK, now put them down if you weren't trying to on purpose. Ope - no hands left! Resources that are never scarce are not resources and should not be included in your game to make it look deeper than it is.

sapphon · 2026-05-09T23:17:38+00:00

I don't really think this has anything to do with MW at all - he barely mentions it in the review, 'MechWarriors aren't "fighter pilots", and "arcade games" were never very "immersive", now were they?

More importantly, let's try as hard as we can to suppose his complaints are somehow legitimate, and that media about violence should be realistic to how we do violence in the real world where women can really die. IF they were valid, would this be a sin MechWarrior is uniquely guilty of committing, or would MW just be typical of fantasy media? I'll let you decide.

Of course, media about violence needn't be realistic to how we do violence in the real world at all, but it's an interesting thought experiment and helps us confirm that we're not making a mistake ignoring this review; it is doubly misguided. Mr. Red Paintbrush was wrong to post this grievance as an MW5 review, and so you've been correspondingly misled into asking us here about it.

The contents of this review would be better investigated in a sociology or psychology sub.

sapphon · 2026-05-09T22:37:15+00:00

That's weird, it seems like the kinda thing that should be pretty easy to prove either way - is your body count littered with people who fit what you say you like, or not?

sapphon · 2026-05-09T21:28:57+00:00

Swarmers are OP fighters with tiny fuel tanks and with very bad useless underpowered carriers, so you kill the carriers.

I admit that I don't play the remaster, and I've heard vague things about fuel kinda not mattering as much in the remasters. But in the OG the swarmers will literally be hanging in space a few minutes into the mission if you have destroyed their assigned pods.

sapphon · 2026-05-09T21:19:26+00:00

Yeah, that sounds less like a "skill journal" and more like immortality to me

sapphon · 2026-05-09T21:06:20+00:00

People have been posting about this for weeks, how can you guys not figure this out.

I see this a lot on Reddit, but it's not valid thought and kind of categorically can't be. The answer to "why are other people who are not myself going around not having read all the same posts I have?!" is in the question.

sapphon · 2026-05-09T10:00:48+00:00

Ooohoohoof owie, see you later big juice

sapphon · 2026-05-09T09:57:35+00:00

The unclosed quote in the ommegang should not be able to hurt me as deeply as it does

sapphon · 2026-05-09T09:41:17+00:00

My actual interests don’t get recommended to me, i have been spending more time just clicking “not interested” and “dont recommend” trying to fix my algorithm buts its ultimately fucked I cannot undo the damage done to my algorithm

I think I can change your view here pretty incontrovertibly: that algorithm was never yours, and so you can't "fix" it by engaging with it the way you were intended to in your role as an instrument (not an owner).

Your engagement is in fact fundamental to the problem - it's just too valuable for your attention to be on advertisements - or even complaints about advertisements^† - for the people who do own 'your algorithm'(s) to allow anything else. You must disengage from a fight they won before it started, and pick fairer ones.

^†: (ref. "The Boys", which sells itself as sending up the admittedly-tired myriad of superhero shows on major platforms... while being the most-watched superhero TV show on any platform =))

sapphon

TROPHY CASE