XCOM 2 - War of the Chosen Villains

XCOM 2's Chosen are the best videogame villains since the Nemesis system

If you’d asked any of us if XCOM 2 would be better with mustache-twirling villains when it came out, we’d likely call the strategy game police. As goofy as XCOM’s Advent enemies are—a motley crew of little green men, snake people with boobs, and shape-shifting slime monsters—we’d cry out, ‘Strategy games are driven by cold, hard logic, not emotion!’ And yet, here we are, all angry at our own purple bad guys. Now we can blame our losses on the Chosen, three characters introduced in the recent War of the Chosen expansion that have hijacked XCOM 2 completely. They’re the best thing to happen to the series since its reintroduction, and some of the greatest videogame villains since Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system. We had to talk about them.

Tim Clark: I've honestly been blown away by the Chosen. Literally, on many missions, but figuratively by how fun they are to fight. Prior to jumping into the expansion, I had vague concerns that being menaced on already stressful missions by super aliens would be like getting sand in your spacesuit. But although the Chosen are irritants by design, there's such a thrilling build-and-release of tension to beating them that I actually looked forward to the encounters. Like all the best pantomime villains, the Chosen are chatty sallys—yammering on during missions, and even spilling over into the menus, telling you how much you suck and how you're doomed to failure.

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