The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 22

Oh god it's time.

That was the most challenging mission ever.

Good Job Abby. Get a Big Mac. You’ve earned it

Also Jason redeemed

The end?

Best of luck, Commander Russel! (At least from our perspective!)

I was kind of hoping Alex would get this mission, but lets see how this goes!

Uh oh, it's finally happening.

I can't believe it.

Oh God this is so stressful...

...but you pulled through, Commander Russell. Nicely done!

You already know what it is.

This is probably the hardest mission in the game.

So with them managing to overcome this obstacle, i believe the road to victory is now open!

So this is what it sounds like...When doves cry...

Dan has the best baton passes, by far.

Vinny, how could you not remind abby that ABOMINATION GETS FREE SHOTS IF KILLING DUDES NOT IN COVER?

I know it's too late now, but those grunts in blue with default weaponry are always on the base invasion mission, they aren't your soldiers (I think they are just meant to be XCOM base staff).

Requesting “every time they say the word ‘sucks’ in this video”

I'm only about 15 minutes in but I'm so glad Dan didn't get this mission. He'd fail it spectacularly.

This might as well be a feature film.

...That was so tense.

Abby absolutely smashed this, my god.

Fantastic episode!

Wow Abby, you killed it!

This was supper tense, really liked it. There's no better tutorial than jumping right into the fire, I bet there are lessons that will be difficult to forget. I know I lost the first time I tried, not ashamed to admit it.

Shame about the two deaths, there was nothing that could have saved the bleeding guy (becuase of that shitty muton at the end)...Sweary died on an understandable desperate effort. But great job handling all that! you where behind the tech tree for that mission even.

The Rookies that show up for that mission are not rookies or part of your roster, they are basically "base staff", so I would not worry about their fate too much.

About support: This only a recommendation, but in the event that you just don't get any good support troops leveled up, you can use tactical rigging to get more medkits out there in the field ( already on the pipe-line). It would be a shame to loose the offensive advantages, but It'll do. Other than that, your mechs can also level up to be healers and you can make more regenerating mutants. You are not out of options, thankfully.

Kind of takes some of the excitement out of it when the commander literally just stops doing anything until Vinny tells her exactly what to do with every unit in every turn, but whatever.

The issue with this mission for those who don't know,, now that its happen and can be talked about is..

You don't pick your people, it auto-populates who you get based on the highest ranked guys. Thus, no 2nd mech because they were not top 6 or whatever. Also, those who get selected by the game come in with whatever equipment they happen to have on them. Meaning if you had just finished a mission, say, training a bunch of rookies on an easy downed alien craft and stripped your top 6 best people of all their equipment..

Well, you didn't see the game give Abby a chance to re-equip her guys before this mission jumped her, and how this mission would have gone if, say, the only unit with an even half-way decent gun was the 1 mech you had. Imagine every single person on this mission not just the rookie canon-fodder soldiers it gives you with nothing but the starting guns!

Oh, and Abby mis-clicked and skipped the mission brief but this is a game-ending mission. You fail, you lose. So as seen from the results..(which are spoilers so I'll tag them) If she hadn't nailed this with absolutely flying colors (Go Abby!) if she had lost all her people, the entire series would be over with this episode.

What isn't a spoiler to say now is..thank god they got an easier version of this mission. It is always meant to be challenging (too much so IMO this is the worst designed part of this game for reasons above I feel), when the end-boss they throw at you is 'just' a sectoid commander, you got off lucky triggering the mission when you did. It would be a spoiler (cause it would detail aliens they have not encountered yet) to explain why but..yah. This mission only gets harder.

Oh, and while I don't know if its canon or not. I always felt that this mission is, canonically, where the two games (Xcom and Xcom2) split off. X-com 2 starts assuming you lose this mission (which is fitting given its difficulty and auto-game over) and X-com 1 lets you play the 'well if I can beat it, what if". Which we now get a chance to see!

@roy42: Didn't Vinny early on say that he basically wanted to come back to this game and then the feature happened? This is kind a his run as well. There's a reason why he is always there - he is playing too.

Other than walking Jason too close to the mind control guy, Abby was putting on a clinic. That lead to some questionable decisions (running past Jason, not covering Swery when there was no chance to kill), but they got through and it could have been WAY worse.

I was reminded of the Shadow Yukiko/Teddie fights - they're backed into a corner and the fights just keep going.

It's a turn-based game - you're SUPPOSED to take your time and think through all of the options.

I think we've all been fearing this may be the final moment for the Exquisite Corps, but that went far better than I think anyone expected.

I can see why some people get a little snarky about Vinny's level of input. After a certain point, if it's basically Vinny's playthrough, there's no real point to the rotating players. When the feature started, there seemed to be more jeopardy where a certain player could mess things up due to unaligned skill levels and intentions. Now that Vinny's blatantly driving from the backseat, it's a little... bland.

I'm still enjoying watching, but I do feel like there's some potential in this feature going to waste.

This is gonna get tense!

Nooooooo, hero Sweryyyyy ;_; you even "panicked" to send that muton to hell! You saved their asses countless times and you were always one of the best! RIP, "Freud" o7

Now they really need to rank up that new support and Dick Tracy, fast

All that said, way better job this time Abby: welcome back in the ranks of the trusted commanders! You faced 34 enemies and defeated them (i shiver thinking about the possibility of this mission having being played by a certain someone)

It was a long, brutal and tense episode but certainly one of if not the best so far. Please, if possible give us again longer episodes instead of the 45 minutes single abduction ones (not many other missions can take such a strefull toll anyway).

It amuses me that the two of them probably thought they were sitting down for another 45-minute recording, and then THIS happened.

Good job Abby! Tough mission and it being a surprise definitely makes it tougher. Think it would be a bit better if they gave you a resupply midway through so you could get rockets and grenades back for anyone who has them.

I feel like this is the peak difficulty of the game btw, other random missions might be tougher just because certain squad members are in the hospital or whatever but this one is always tough. If you guys can build up a decent squad again then you'll be on the road to victory.

I gotta say...Abby just become a better player in a matter of this 2 hours mission. Considering options, protest Vinny for being "too saucy" and even utter the word "Confirm kill".

Too bad it had ended the way it did. Hats off to you Ms. Russel.

@tgjessie said:

Very true, but then Vinny is no expert. He was making some bad calls in this one too. Besides, I think they need a mitigating force or else the game would go absolutely sideways at breakneck speed.

I mean, let's face it: an unsupervised Dan would be responsible for the complete loss of humanity.

In fact, I'd go as far to say that without Vinny, this playthrough would have been over by now.

@tgjessie: @stordoff said:

Not to mention that because of the format they're playing in Vinny is basically the only one who retains any knowledge of the game.

They all still make massive tactical errors even with Vinny helping them, so I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. Vinny on his own would clearly play like twice as defensively.

It's up there, but there's still at least like 3-4 hard missions, especially if you're low on ranked-up guys:

@arjann: The Fishing Village mission for my money is the hardest mission in the game, but it usually came up for me way earlier than this. So maybe they'll be alright!

@arjann said:

Yup, I think that's correct.

That was all real good.

edit: And was the best episode to date.

"oops"

lol. It's really interesting watching this series. You kind of learn what makes a good "streaming" game. Apparently text and dialog are not part of it.

This was added in EW, right? That's a rough one.

For some reason I thought it would be an EXALT and not aliens though, weird.

This is by far the best series, nevermind the weekly cry babies about how they play. There is actual drama in these episodes that wouldn't come from experienced or careful play. Probably my favorite series since Vinny played through dark souls. The opening is so clever, i only wish they would actually write the letters instead of using a font.

This was a run worthy of respect. Hopefully it will also serve as a learning experience going forward. That's one enemy you do not want to take for granted again.

Boy that roster is getting a little scary though. A few high ranking units and then nothing but squaddies. But on the bright side, those squaddies will now benefit from the willpower perk Dan bought!

Very, very well done, Commanders Russell and Caravella.

Both of you should be nominated for the Star of Terra (in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed your Big Mac, Commander Russell - you earned it.)

What an episode, though. The ending with mind-controlled Jason - and the rest of the squad participating in the most dangerous game of 'Tag' the Earth has ever seen - was nail-biting. And nearly making it through with no Vets being lost...truly, a stellar performance overall (pun intended; RIP the Numeros.) And of course the Abomination went unscathed. Blimey.

I'm really looking forward to Commander Russell's letter to Commander Navarro for next week. See you then!

This was a tough one, but it could have been lots worse, for sure. I just hope they start getting some good support dudes.

Also, those red shirts showed up in the nick of time.

That mission was unbelievably cunty, Abby did astonishing work feeding them only jobbers (+1 for hiring them just cause not knowing their true value and some of them actually earned more than their keep before doing the job) but she got royally boned by attrition. Just rotten stuff that would be a near slap in the face of someone playing this during their free personal time. I still wish they had played WotC with mods out the ass but this was a fun twist that was not in the vanilla X-Comm 2013 that I played and glad it wasn’t.

*clicks through the screen that explains why you can't load out your soldiers*

"Why can't I pick my soldiers?"

Ohhhh shit I've been waiting for this day!!

I was just imagining these soldiers yelling from behind their sizzling, destroyed cover, "it's my first daaayyy.."