Awesome / XCOM 2

XCOM lives.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Story

• Three words from the tutorial mission:
  Bradford: Central, reporting in.
  • Bradford then proceeds to bodily carry the Commander out to the Extraction Zone, even taking a bullet for him/her in the process. He never asks for any kind of favor to be repaid afterward.
  • The start of the tutorial mission, where Bradford deliberately uses himself as bait for the ADVENT checkpoint, while Jane Kelly plants a plastic explosive on an ADVENT armored car. Even after Bradford gets a rifle-butt to the stomach, and doubles over, he's clearly more pissed off than hurt, and he calmly gets to his feet before telling Kelly "Now.". Cue Kelly detonating the explosive while doing an Unflinching Walk, with the blast launching the entire ADVENT squadron into the air like ragdolls.
  • The alternative Operation Gatecrasher mission, which is given to you if you skip the narrative-heavy tutorial, has you commanding a "B-team" of rookies to sabotage/vandalize an ADVENT monument in order to act as a distraction for the main Gatecrasher party and announce to the world that XCOM is back. The vanilla XCOM 2 version has you set demolition charges on a giant golden statue of one of the Elders, while the War of the Chosen version has you destroy one of the stages the Speaker normally uses to spin his propaganda. Either way, it serves as a huge wake-up call to advertise that XCOM still lives.
• Building the first radio relay.
  Bradford: Welcome to the fight.
• A small one but the reunion with the former council spokesman who gives you an attack plan and a way to assemble resistance forces.
  • The spokesman, in general, is awesome, acting as The Mole within ADVENT to help the Commander thwart their plans at every possible turn. His final act in the game is to broadcast straight from the ADVENT Tower to the Commander about an opportunity to reveal ADVENT's agenda to the world, even though his broadcast ensures that the ADVENT Troopers would come in to massacre him. As the ADVENT Troopers break down the door, the spokesman pulls out a mag-pistol with the intent of gunning down as many of them as he can.
  • To add to the spokesman's awesomeness, the voice actor for the spokesman was told by developers that his character didn't die. Indeed, he's quick to point out that they Never Found the Body.
  • His mission directive for XCOM, first glimpsed in the retaliation trailer, is one as well:
  The Informant: You must rebuild the XCOM Project. Expose the Aliens' true agenda. And renew Humanity's will to fight.
  • The Spokesman gets a subtle one - he's been operating from inside ADVENT for twenty years, passing information to the Resistance.
• The mission where you have to facilitate peace talks between the Reapers and the Skirmishers is full of awesome moments for both parties.
  • First, during the talks, Elena and Mox are at a standoff, with both seemingly ready to shoot each other before the talks can begin. Bradford tells them off for it, stating that ADVENT is the only one who benefits from their constant infighting. Elena lowers her gun... than immediately raises it, seemingly firing a shot at Mox. Except instead, the bullet travels over his shoulder and nearly hits the Assassin, who was cloaked and preparing to strike from behind. Even the Assassin is impressed.
  • When the Assassin tried to attack Elena next, Mox returns the favor by grappling over and firing on her with is Bullpup, forcing her to flee the overpass they're on.
  • Credit where it's due, despite having had a blood feud going back nearly 20 years, Mox and Elena are quick to set aside their differences to have a shot at beating the Assassin. Despite their animosity and the less than optimistic outlook Bradford had on the mission beforehand, the two prove to be both competent and professional enough to put defeating the Assassin and the Lost first, and their squabbling stops for the rest of the mission as they focus on escaping the city with XCOM.
    • During the fight, the two soldiers quickly gain a respect for each other's abilities. Elena boasts that the Reapers will one day reclaim the various dead cities from the Lost. Mox actually has confidence in them, provided they're all similarly badass. Mox meanwhile performs so well in the fight that Volk mentions Elena praised him in her report to him, which she rarely ever does. Keep in mind, she had a grudge against Mox specifically beforehand for his actions while under mind control.
  • While it ends in his capture, Mox holding the line so Elena and the others to escape is pretty badass. It SEEMS like a Heroic Sacrifice at first, but he claims he doesn't intend to die, and he backs that claim up, cutting a swath through the Lost with his bullpup as the others board the Skyranger. Once she gets aboard, Elena covers him with her sniper while he charges for the ship. Were it not for the Assassin's interference, they both would've made it.
• After Mox is abducted, Volk immediately offers to help find him as thanks for saving one of his comrades. In addition to locating the base he's being held in, you can also bring Elena on the mission (which is ideally a stealth mission), where she can repay him personally by infiltrating the base with XCOM, taking out the guards, and busting him out personally.
• The cutscene that plays when you finally reveal to the world what ADVENT has been doing, by replacing the Speaker's intended video with a cleverly edited one that reveals the truth behind ADVENT's lies and is timed perfectly to make the Speaker's words ring false. Humanity is instantly in an uproar and fighting back together.
  • As an added benefit, The Speaker who has been talking bullshit about pre-Advent government institutions and XCOM as being corrupt finally gets to see firsthand his own government's dirty laundry out in the open, as he makes another speech on the so-called gene therapy breakthrough. The look on his face is priceless as he turns back around and sees the lynch mob advancing on him; even though he somehow escapes them and manages to make his voice heard to XCOM throughout the final mission anyway, taking him down a peg like that will forever be Worth It.
• The start of the final mission: After The Commander takes control of his/her Avatar, they do an Unflinching Walk to the portal connection to the Alien Fortress, with the other members of XCOM saluting as they pass. This isn't a cutscene - it's in-engine, with your soldiers from your campaign. And, after Bradford tells the Commander to "Give 'em hell", he makes a Rousing Speech to the rest of XCOM.
  Bradford: "Alright people. The world got its wake-up call. And now they know the truth: ADVENT is a lie. And their time is up. They've got a full-fledged war on their hands now. While the aliens struggle to contain our world, we're going to make a move on theirs. It won't be easy... But you're used to that. You did what was needed, and never gave up the fight. You are XCOM. And you're gonna end this. Humanity is counting on us, people. Good luck, Commander."
• The final mission is one long chain of these. First, your squad rampages through the Ethereals' main base, using top-level tech and the Commander's Avatar. After tearing through the most dangerous enemies in the game, you come up against three Avatar Lightning Bruiser bosses with psionics even stronger than yours. As they blink around the map, disrupting your squad, endless hordes of Andromedons, Vipers, Codexes, Mutons, Gatekeepers, and everything else the aliens can throw at you teleport in. Bringing down all three while struggling not to be overrun by sheer force of numbers is an incredible moment.
  • By the end of the mission, the map will be completely trashed. Any structures left standing will be covered in plasma burns, and alien corpses will be everywhere. It's a hell of a way to end the game.
• The end of the final mission. The Commander, controlling his/her Avatar, reopens the psi portal that had shut down moments before, allowing the team to evacuate, then psionically holds off at least three disembodied Ethereals, buying time for the squad to get away and the Commander's link to be severed before the Avatar base implodes. Is there a trope for Non-Entity Badass?
  • Let us stress this again: The Commander, in an Avatar, manages to both hold a portal open for the squad to get through, and fight off the combined psionic assault of five disembodied Ethereals. Before the scene cuts away The Commander's Avatar was winning the Beam-O-War to boot! It really puts into perspective just how powerful these Avatars are, and also immediately makes it apparent just why the completion of the Avatar Project is an instant lose condition: If a human's mind inhabiting an incomplete Avatar can multitask while fighting off five disembodied Ethereals at a time, then just how powerful would an Ethereal inhabiting a perfected one be?
• The final cutscene of the game: As open revolts against ADVENT break out all over the globe, an unarmored civilian, armed only with a baseball bat, distracts the guards at an ADVENT checkpoint so that other rebels can sneak up behind them, raise the XCOM flag over the checkpoint and eventually beat down the ADVENT troopers.
• Randomly-generated operation codenames are back and they can lead to Badass Unintentional meets Badass Boast:
  • Killing a Sectopod with a Repeater execution on a mission named "Operation Spider Slayer".
  • "Operation Sinking Knife" for an operation with Rangers kitted out with Bladestorm. Swords are useless anachronisms in a futuristic world with energy firearms? Let XCOM demonstrate otherwise.
  • "Operation Blood Strike" for a Neutralize Target mission, or "Operation Blood Witch" for a supply raid.
  • "Operation God Fort" for a raid on a downed UFO where an Archon King awaits.
  • Destroy Relay mission near Birmingham, UK. Mission name? "Operation Rebel Empire". The revolution begins here, lads.
  • "Operation Iron Giant", for the first mission using Julian and his new SPARK body.
  • What better name could you possibly get for a (ultimately successful) assault on a Chosen's stronghold than "Operation God Killer?"
  • "Operation Witch Song", for the rescue mission to save Mox, which goes down with the squad infiltrating the heavily-defended base without being seen, finding Mox, hacking the door open and sneaking out, only raising the alarm by the time XCOM had Mox and their ride home on the way. You would probably be leaving ADVENT thinking XCOM used magical or supernatural means to extract Mox out in this way.
• Even the missions with fixed names have names just as badass if not more than the randomly generated ones:
  • The very first mission, where either Bradford and a squad pulls the Commander out of the Lotus-Eater Machine, or a squad demolishes a giant Ethereal statue to reannounce XCOM's ability to fight, right on Unification Day; Operation Gatecrasher.
  • The mission to hijack the broadcast from the ADVENT Tower; Operation "Empty Mask."
  • The mission to go to the Alien's underwater base under the Pacific Ocean, destroy the Avatar project, and wipe out the Elders; Operation "Leviathan."

Gameplay

• Just your squad in general. As you progress through the game, your soldiers go from hopeless rookies that have difficulty using a gun properly because they probably never held a gun in their life, to battle-hardened veterans capable of annihilating an entire squad of Advent through sheer skill alone.
• Getting a rating of Flawless, even on normal difficulty.
  • Particularly if one of your post-mission stats is "Most Under Fire: ——" That's right, those poor bastards didn't even get a shot off before you wiped them out.
  • "Most Under Fire: Some poor enemy Sap that was mind-controlled the first turn" is also quite satisfying.
  • Getting a Flawless rating is difficult, but getting it on Operation Gatecrasher, where you can only use rookies and are unlikely to have the best cover is awesomeness incarnate. Imagine how insulting it must be for ADVENT that, not only did XCOM succeed at making themselves known as a formidable force for the first time, but did so without even being touched by the supposedly well-trained troops on site.
• Any time you get a particularly effective chain of Serial or Reaper kills. Even better if your sharpshooter has an autoloader on their weapon - it's entirely possible for one trooper to clear most of the map.
• Triggering Sharpshooter's Return Fire ability results in them whipping out their pistol and - if you're lucky - offing an enemy with one shot. The pissed-off expression on their face just screams, "Back off, asshole."
  • Works also on psychic and melee attacks. Resisting mindspin or dodging a stun baton and then shooting the attacker in the face is as badass as you would think.
• A Sniper Executing a Sectopod. Yes, one bullet takes out the XCOM equivalent of a Strider.
  • Repeater-inflicted Executions are always guaranteed to satisfy.
    • The Alien Hunters DLC adds 3 new boss aliens that may appear in missions. The first and weakest one has a whopping 50 health and 2 armor. They're still vulnerable to Repeater Executions, though.
    • Taking out a Sectopod the first time you encounter it, on the first turn you encounter it, with a Repeater execution, triggered off a reaction shot.
    • The Final Battle. One Sharpshooter. One Repeater. Three Avatars executed before they had a chance to do anything but pose. Not a single wounded XCOM soldier by the time the credits rolled. "Awesome" doesn't even begin to cover it.
• Landing the perfect Overwatch Ambush trap is amazingly gratifying. The whole team of operatives sneak up in an advantageous position, then with an opening shot, the enemy is alerted to your team just long enough to be promptly shot full of holes by all the Concealment Overwatch shots.^note And you get a Steam Achievement for it!
  • Several of the Steam achievements are for things you feel rather awesome for, especially if you haven't browsed the achievement list first. Your Colonel medic gets critically wounded, nobody else has a medkit, he's going to die in 2 turns and there's no way you can finish the mission in that time... so you choose one of your other soldiers to pick up his unconscious body and call down an evacuation zone to get him up to the medical supplies on your dropship. Achievement unlocked? Just trying to take care of my soldiers.
  • Speaking of achievements, there is one that requires you to finish the final mission using only conventional gears. This means that except for the Commander's Avatar, you're going up against the best the aliens have to offer (Sectopods, Gatekeepers, the Chosen that are still alive, and of course the Avatars) that completely outnumber you using nothing but basic equipment. Starter weapons that by late game do so little damage, you might as well be throwing stones and starter armors that barely protect your soldiers from being curb-stomped by the aliens. Yet you win anyway. Even more awesome if you pull it off on harder difficulties, on Ironman, earning other achievements in the process. "Who Needs Tygan?" indeed.
• Taking advantage of volatile elements in the landscapes will be guaranteed to satisfy. Sectoid hiding behind the fuel tank for a house's heating? Shoot the tank and detonate it, introducing them to the sun rising in their face! For bonus points, the explosions that ensue can and will obliterate nearby cover, so such property damage will often expose enemies to your team's waiting weapons.
• Sometimes you'll be forced to leave the AO before you can finish extracting all your operatives. Sometimes you'll get another mission at a later date to rescue them. It is entirely possible for you to get the extraction mission months later, in a different continent, and you will find the operative is not only alive and well, but when you successfully bring them home, they come back with a small cache of Intel or Supplies. Clearly they not only evaded capture, but got busy gathering what they could to help the cause while trying to re-establish contact with XCOM.
• Finishing a "sabotage alien facilities" mission with ONE Ranger. Thanks to the new concealment system, they can become Solid Snake with the right skills.
• Winning a "destroy alien facility" mission on the turn the first reinforcements are arriving. The facility sends out a panicked distress call, and reinforcements arrive just in time to see the Skyranger blasting away and the facility being obliterated (and they may even be caught in the blast). That's XCOM, baby.
• Getting Psi Operatives takes considerably more time and effort to get rolling than in the previous game, but once you start the training going, you'll want at least one on every team. From the ability to make themselves completely immune to every single debilitating effect to having multiple psionic, armor-piercing attacks that deal immense amounts of damage to everywhere in between make them incredibly versatile in combat. Few things are more satisfying than sending a Null Lance through a pack of enemies and absolutely slaughtering the entire pod. Well, maybe permanently mind controlling a Berserker or a Gatekeeper. It's up in the air.
  • Stasis. Yes, it isn't nearly as flashy as other abilities, but it allows you to shut down any enemy in sight with no save allowed, doesn't end your turn and has low cooldown. It is an absolute bane for Sectopods, Gatekeepers and Avatars.
• The satisfaction of successfully dominating a powerful alien and using it against its former allies. The best example of this might be taking control of a Chryssalid Hive Queen (Long War) and then siccing it on an alien Sectopod.
  • Or Hacking into and taking over a Sectopod and having it open up on a Chryssalid Hive Queen. Heck, take both of them over and smash them at eachother like life-size kaiju action figures.
• It's very, very rare, but it is completely possible to win a retaliation mission without any civilians dying. This usually involves an alien missing their potshot against a civilian on the first turn, and then you activating all the pods on the map on turn two. Imagine what it feels like for a resistance member to see your squad just tear through the aliens before they can even land a shot on one of their own.
• While sharpshooters usually pick Kill Zone over Faceoff, there's little doubt that Faceoff can save the day. Such as in this clip where a sharpshooter kills 9 enemies with a six-shooter. If you're being swarmed by smaller enemies (like a Codex that's repeatedly cloned), it can clear an entire field.
• The local resistance. With no more than some regular weapons and a ragtag bunch of misfits, they managed to survive and fight back. Heck, they can even shoot down UFOs all by themselves.
• Avenger Defense missions. You're on your way to make contact with a new region or pick up your monthly supply cache or what-have-you, when a UFO shows up out of nowhere and shoots down your ship. Good news: You survived the crash. Bad news: There's an EMP device outside keeping your ship grounded, and so your squad has to go out and destroy it. Worse news: Hordes of ADVENT are advancing towards your ship the whole time. If they reach the ramp, not only do you you fail the mission, but ADVENT takes your ship, resulting in an automatic game over. Awesome news: In addition to whichever six soldiers you choose at the mission start, more will come out of the barracks to help defend the ship! If the mission lasts long enough, your entire roster could be holding the line against waves of aliens, defending the ship that has been their home for months. It's a tense, nail-biter of a mission with stakes rivaled only by the finale itself, where nearly all of your soldiers can get a chance to shine. It's a hard fight, but damn does it feel good to win it.

War of the Chosen Gameplay

• The three Resistance Factions prove XCOM isn't the only real thorns in ADVENT's side: the Reapers, gasmask- and night vision goggle-clad cold sniper saboteurs; the Skirmishers, rogue ADVENT super-soldiers wielding bullpup autorifles, and with gauntlet mounted Scorpion-style grapples and Predator-like wristblades; and the Templars, mysterious badass psionics who dual-wield Psi energy blades as their primary weapon and carry a machine pistol as their sidearm.
  • At the end of the story-based mission to ally with them, Elena of the Reapers and Pratal Mox of the Skirmishers have become Fire-Forged Friends, consistently covering each others' backs rather than strictly Enemy Mine territory.
    • Special mention goes to Pratal during his portion of the Escort Mission - upon seeing an army of ADVENT Purifiers, he lines up his shot on the gas tank of one, sending all of them up in an explosion.
  • Skirmishers especially so due to the fact that, as far as we know so far, were ADVENT troopers with the sheer strength of will to rip out their own implants, tough enough to survive that and compassionate enough to defend the species they were created to oppress, not to mention one of their resistance orders actually gives a chance for any ADVENT troop on the field a chance to have a change of heart, meaning their sheer presence alone is enough to make other ADVENT troopers question what they're doing, even WITH control implants.
• The Chosen are fearsome Elite enemies with powerful weapons and potential immunities in their Strength feats. They are still as vulnerable to Repeaters as the next ADVENT mook.
• Every time kill off one of the Chosen for real is this by default. You've finally tracked the purple bastards to their base over the course of a few months, only to discover it's heavily guarded by their alien allies. What follows next is a nerve-wracking raid that could easily have been the final mission in another game, all the while knowing that if you fail, you won't get another chance. Eventually, somehow, you reach the inner sanctum of the Chosen owner, who has full access to the power of their Sarcophagus and knows it, sending wave after wave of reinforcements at you every time you force them to retreat to heal. Eventually, you finally break the damn golden monolith, at which point the impressed Chosen comes out for one last strike...and you finally, finally kill them, leading to a final, satisfying cutscene as the Sarcophagus explodes into purple fireworks and your allies rightly congratulate you for the rest of the game.
• In the base game, Retaliation missions were a race to see if you could get enough civilians out of the line of fire before ADVENT troops gunned them all down. Now, there's a new Retaliation mission type called Haven Assault, where the resistance is not only fighting back, but kicking ass with nothing but kevlar and baseline ballistic weapons, fully capable of killing even powerful aliens like Mutons despite their weak weapons through sheer grit. On lower difficulties all XCOM has to do is sit back and watch as the NPC resistance fighters take the aliens to pieces as they focus their fire. It's a mix of heartwarming and badass when a couple of plucky resistance fighters flank some aliens that were giving you trouble and pull your butt out of the fire for a change.
  • It's particularly amazing and hilarious at the same time if a resistance fighter takes out a Chosen.
• The Lost can be pure Nightmare Fuel as they're essentially zombies converted by those green gas containers from Enemy Unknown, especially early on when your troops don't have the skill to chain the headshots needed to put the pods down. But once your soldiers start ranking up and get better weapons, piling up dozens of them in a single mission is easy.

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