The Long War is, far and away, the most popular mod for the 2013's XCOM reboot. It’s a pleasant surprise, then, to learn Firaxis has partnered with its developers to have something similar available for next months’s XCOM 2.
If you’re not familiar with The Long War, the short version is that it’s a much harder version of XCOM. Was iron man, which prevented players from having multiple save files, not enough? The Long War was for you. The mod added classes, missions, and generally speaking made the game more complicated.
Downloaded over 500,000 times since its original release in early 2013, XCOM’s own developers have long sung The Long War’s praises.
“It’s unbelievable what they did,” said XCOM lead producer Garth DeAngelis to IGN. “The Long War was my go-to recommendation when our hardcore fans would come up to us at shows and would say, ‘I beat Impossible Iron Man three times. I want more.’ There’s absolutely an awesome challenge there for you.”
All that Firaxis has said is The Long War developers are working on “multiple mods” for XCOM 2 that will launch with the game, and more details are coming at a PAX South panel on January 30th at 1:30pm ET. It’ll be livestreamed.
If I had to guess, the mods will focus on making the game more difficult.
In addition to these XCOM 2 mods, The Long War developers recently announced they’ve decided to collaborate under the name Long War Studios and launch a Kickstarter for a brand-new strategy game called Terra Invicta. There aren’t many details about Terra Invicta, but there’s a short synopsis on their site:
An alien force has arrived in the far reaches of Solar System and begun probing Earth’s defenses and building an invasion fleet. The player must assemble a council of scientists, politicians, military leaders and operatives who can unite Earth’s squabbling nations with the ultimate goal of taking the fight to the aliens in the high ground of outer space.
Sounds a bit like XCOM, no?
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.