mods which tell a story: interesting or not?

[Mythrell]

I think they could be interesting, maybe a chain of council missions type of a thing.

[Dragon32]

Maybe break into the original XCOM base? hat's be fantastic. Optional objective: retrieve Bradford's sweater.

 

Somewhat to the original question, I find one of the great things about XCom (whichever version) is that it's something of a story generator. Emergent is I think the buzz word.

 

My randomly created soldiers go to randomly created places. They meet interesting people. And kill them. Randomly.

 

From all that RNG stories and characters arise. At least in my head. I've a Russian grenadier in my current campaign, originally defined in the Unique Soldiers mod as someone who no-one in XCom knows if they can really trust ("Enigma" is his nickname). He got Rapid Fire as his AWC perk (big grin time) and I'm using quite a harsh voice pack for him, from either EU/EW or the disabled Russian voices in XCOM2 itself.

 

He's my main go-to-guy when I need something shot first, he holo-targets and shreds with Rapid Fire before the rest of the team. In my head he's constantly trying to prove himself to the rest of XCom by being the very pointy tip of the spear.

 

That's one of the things I love about this / these games.

 

So mods which create a chance for those kind of stories to um... emerge are fantastic.

 

Stories need characters and stories need conflict (some of the best are driven by internal conflict but this is a computer game so we have guns and aliens).

 

So...

 

The missions to rescue / recruit Playable ADVENT are, I think, great story missions. Or rather they're start of that creature's story, will they live or will they die? If they live what stories will they make?

 

Having a set of linked missions like the Zhang ones isn't necessarily a bad idea. I just worry about railroading someone through a narrative.

 

Personally I'd like some soldier recovery missions, those POIs on the map for soldiers actually spawn a VIP rescue mission. F'rinstace.

 

I guess, to me, XCom isn't an RPG so side quests are a little trickier to create.

 

Vahlen's an obvious one (and I really hope Firaxis have her lined up for one of the upcoming DLCs)

 

There's a snippet of Shen(?) in the Avenger where she mentions someone called (I think) Cato. Haven't yet come across any more references or remember the exact words but that could be something one could launch off from.

 

So, yeah, the stories of XCom are those of its soldiers which arise through missions. Missions which act as key scenes or punctuations of those stories would be great.

 

Maybe a sniper gets a unique gun model to use, same stats let's not power game, or a ranger a sword? Perhaps it's a "retrieve a family heirloom" quest and you have to take one particular soldier along.

 

Not sure if soldier backgrounds can be parsed but have a mission in the country of a particular soldier. Their family is going to be carted off somewhere, XCOM need to extract them.

 

Maybe a resistance cell has gone rogue (use the stuff developed for Hostile Territory), and they're the ones on a resistance haven assault-type mission. Can you subdue and bring them back to the Avenger for justice or just kill them outright?

 

Anyway, enough of my waffle.