TAKING ON THE CHOSEN IN XCOM 2 PART II

The battle against the alien DLC steps up a notch.

- Ian Evenden

As a new entry for the diary dawns, I'm feeling pretty good about my position. I've unlocked the fifth member of my squad through the Guerrilla Tactics A School, and my troops now have magnetic and gauss weapons. Nothing can stop me. The game, too, seems to be adapting to my preferences, as new soldiers are appearing already wearing jorts.

A rescue mission comes up, netting me an engineer. I'm in the middle of ambushing a bunch of Advent led by a Viper when Nightwitch, the Chosen Assassin, decides the moment is ripe to teleport in and cause me some problems. The final Covert Action that will allow me to assault her fortress only becomes active when one of my troops is promoted to major, meaning I'll have to go through a lot of missions before I can finally put a stop to her incessant radio messages.

The Assassin always sounds much worse than she actually is, and she's not that much of an issue this time, dazing three of my troops but taking cover right below a window where stealthy sniper Elena Dragunova is crouched unseen. It's a 100% hit and the assassin is weak to Reapers, so she takes heavy damage yet doesn't move, allowing me to bring my Grenadier round for a 69% flanking shot, which forces her to teleport back to her base. Flanking shots and forcing a Chosen to retreat gain us extra Ability points, which can be spent on new skills. In the same mission my Specialist's magnetic rifle hits a Sectoid so hard it goes through a wall, and my Sharpshooter holds her rifle like a pistol in a weird glitch.

COMBAT LOSSES

One mission later, and I suffer my first death. Her name was Mary, and she was a Grenadier. She was disorientated by a Sectoid psychic attack, then hit by a Mec's explosive mortars as we raced to steal some Advent data before the box it was in exploded. She was only a squaddie, with two missions under her belt, but we take the loss hard.