Firaxis Announces War of the Chosen Expansion for XCOM 2

At 2017’s PC Gaming Show, Firaxis’s Jake Solomon announced a massive expansion to last year’s XCOM 2, called ‘War of the Chosen’.

The expansion is named after three new “champion” alien characters that players will have to face several times throughout the adventure, the Assassin, Hunter, and Warlock. As with the player’s squads, these enemies will learn new skills and tactics with each new encounter, ensuring that the game will constantly offer new surprises.

To combat these new threats, players will also gain access to new factions that will bring in a range of new weaponry, and the most powerful units ever included in an XCOM game. Those factions are the Reapers, Skirmishers (alien defectors), and Templars. Before being able to use them, however, players will have to gain their trust and recruit them to the cause and battle against the enemy threat.

In addition to these major new characters and factions, ‘War of the Chosen’ will also introduce a new enemy type known as The Lost. Unlike the other adversaries, The Lost do not engage in tactical battles, but instead attack as a horde, overwhelming with sheer force of numbers. The creatures are the mutated remnants of humanity left in the cities after the initial alien invasion.

Solomon announced that the new expansion is “easily twice the size of the previous XCOM expansions,” though he neglected to mention whether that comment referred to just the XCOM 2 expansions, or Enemy Within as well.

The expansion will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on August 29, 2017.