Is War of the Chosen the first game to use the "Nemesis System"?

So I was just watching some videos and reading reviews on War of the Chosen and it looks really good. The coolest part is that the new Chosen enemies are like the Orc captains from Shadow of Mordor. They have specific random traits, they can escape during battle, and they may appear randomly in battle. You will have to kill them multiple times to defeat them, and when they get away they will call you and taunt you. It all seems really cool.

This also got me thinking, is this the first game to use the Nemesis system/idea? I remember after Shadow of Mordor came out a lot of people (myself included) thought the Nemesis system would be the next big mechanic we would see in every game, yet as far as I know this is the first game to use the idea. Pretty cool, I never thought about XCOM as being a good game for the system but it sounds great.

I believe so, which is really weird because I didn't expect a turn based game to actually do that first. MGSV and other games had enemies that adapted to you but to my knowledge no game attempted to do the Nemesis system. If anything I would expect a Assassin Creed game to try to copy that system.

If the loot box system is a huge success then I would expect a lot more games trying to copy it to get some of that money.

Honestly I thought it would be everywhere too, but it seems incredibly complicated and something that wouldn't be simple to balance. Of course I'm talking out of my ass.

I haven't really invested the time I wanted into XCOM 2 but I'm super intrigued by this expansion, some of the new systems seem complicated but look like they add a great deal to the experience. I get the impression the Nemesis system isn't as easy to implement due to its nature than we think.

The one game that seemed like it was begging for the system was Mad Max. Have no interest in Xcom 2 but I'm glad some devs seem to be figuring out how to replicate that system

For as many journalists as jumped on the "omg the Nemesis system is awesome and more games should have it" bandwagon. The Nemesis system in Shadow of War was actually quite shallow and limited mechanically speaking, it only took a few scratches beyond the surface to see it's hyper narrow boundaries if you've played a significant amount of that game, it ticks very predictably in the end. So while some people found valid entertainment in it; other developers would have to consider how much would it actually add to a game versus how difficult it is to implement, ultimately I think most were inclined to think like I did that it just wasn't worth it unless it's scope and depth was expended in a major way, which would take even more effort.

Firaxis went the other way. The stuff War of the Chosen has is a very cut down version of it, which is what i believe made it easier to implement, since you're only dealing with 3 entities that basically have a few random modifiers and may get buffs as they advance (something Xcom2 already had as dark events). And it doesn't need to support the rest of the game like the nemesis system, since it's just a nice little addition to an already robust tactics game and no more then that.

That's some weird hearsay. Pretty much everyone who plays it (except Dan who doesn't count) agrees that it's a better game then EU in almost every way, a significant advancement if you will. Tho it did have some performance problems at launch. The console versions that came out later are questionable from what I understand.

The only hearsay I've heard so far about XCOM 2 being trash is this very post.

What are you even doing right now? Prove me wrong?

The game isn't trash. Prove me wrong. See how that kind of post reads? Besides, you said yourself you haven't even played the game, you aren't exactly in a position to discuss it's quality. This topic isn't even about whether the game is good or not.

I bought X-Com 2 (on PS4 no less) over the past sell and... it's a very good game. A lot of smart improvements and interesting new mechanics were added to the original X-Com's formula. Haven't seen any bugs over 10 hours or so of gameplay. Load times are sorta long, that's my only complaint I can muster up.

It's not. The first game to copy it was: *plot twist* XCOM 2. With its Alien Rulers DLC. It added a Viper King, Berserker Queen and Archon King. They had 90, 110 and 130 health respectively and all fled combat once wounded enough, reappearing later. The Chosen are more advanced designed versions of this in many ways though.

There are people that think so, like the staff. I don't. It's my favorite game of all time. I believe it surpasses Enemy Within in all ways. So do most people in the XCOM community. Not to use that as a 'you're wrong' argument, but more as a counter argument that lots of people actually think it's fantastic. Whether you'll like it is of course only one way to find out.

I'll say it's less forgiving of mistakes while simultaneously being more complex than Enemy Within, so by nature you kind of have to be a madman to like what it is going for to begin with.

Enemies just leaving and coming back isn't necessarily the Nemesis System. I was under the impression that these Chosen were like the Alien Rulers, meaning they were essentially just a trio of bosses than can show up during a mission. A think where they themselves aren't randomly generated and their isn't some sort of heirarchy that scrub enemies can climb to become new "bosses."

Those Alien Rulers were a fuckin blast to figh against though, holy shit. More of that is a plus, but I don't think either quite qualify as using the Nemesis System.

It's fun! The timer stuff was a bit of a bummer going in, but in practice it's not a huge deal. The stealth stuff (you can sneak around and set up ambushes on the aliens this time around) kinda counteracts the pressure of having to get in and get out. If you didn't much care for Enemy Unknown though (or at least care enough to keep with it), it may not be for you.

So does this new content integrate into the original campaign or does it have its own campaign?

Hopefully, it's the former the former. I liked the original release well enough but the "meta game" base management stuff didn't do it for me like EU's did. Plus all the tech issues the PC version had but hopefully those are fixed now? The new content will be a great reason for me to jump back in assuming it's good but if it's a new campaign I don't know if I would be as interested.

@fatalbanana: It integrates into the base game's campaign, like Enemy Within did.

A lot of the PC tech issues have been fixed over time, most i think, tho there still seem to be one or two left ocassionally, the load times on an ssd can be super fast now. Anecdotal but I've played an entire Long War campaign which is like 10 standard campaigns recently and experienced very few if any significant bugs even with a lot of mods installed. Just remember to disable Super Sample Anti Aliasing if you aren't on a monster PC that's still a massive resource hog like always.

It is an add-on, like Firaxis always does add-ons. So it's the same campaign, but augmented to fit all the new stuff into it. Some cutscenes have been replaced, but otherwise the exact same content that was in it before is in this, except they bolted on a beefy chunk and integrated it into the other stuff.

Technical issues have been resolved over time since the game's release (probably worth pointing out I barely had any at launch too) and they have doubled efforts on that in this DLC. The load times are ridiculously fast now. It often loads up the mission before it even loads in the inside of the Skyranger. It takes like 1 second.

It's still XCOM, so it will still have bugs. That's the nature of this type of game on the scale and possibilities that they have created it. For example, being able to blow up literally everything will mean that will sometimes break, making enemies appear to be floating or whatever else.

@zevvion:

Yeah, that's what I thought thanks for the info.

I started a new game since leaving the comment and everything was working great until the game crashed. I was hoping that this was an isolated incident but I looked it up and crashes seem like a common problem. The game autosaved right before the crash so it isn't a huge deal but still not crashing is better than crashing.

I'm enjoying jumping back into it though and looking forward to picking up WoTC on Tuesday.

Tried this on the free weekend. During few hours, I countered constantly save game related bugs that were annoying because (what I have read) common end of mission crashes. Also Xcom 2 still eats more GPU+CPU than Witcher 3 or any other actually impressive looking game (even when it is paused) and have strange habit to eat almost all the GPU power in instances where it really should not (like in the research screen). Load times are still about 5-10 times longer than EU that is loading from the same drive. Game part might be good but technically PC port is one of the worst I have encountered in a long time.

Kinda glad this got delayed a few weeks on ps4 so I can get through Kiwami first. Although Destiny 2 is....ah fuck.

I am really excited to play this, as I never played it before :)

It seems these days I never play games when they come out anymore. I wait for moments like this where I get a big xpac and then the base game for the base price, all in one. Since it is a single player game [or at least what I am dong with it] it might as well be as if Xcom 2 just came out for the first time ever :) but it is a way bigger game now lol!

Like with a lot of PC games YMMV. But if you're having such significant technical issues with the free trial then it's likely to be the same experience with the full game.

Anecdotally I've had very few severe issues over 400+ hours and two different machines. Plus most of the streams I've seen or watched of people they are doing fine as well, so do most Steam users it seems.

As far as performance goes it can be a very demanding game if you have all the visual effects turned on since despite being a turn based game it's rendering a lot of quite detailed objects on the screen at once, including destructibility. You can really make that game go from 30fps to 90fps with just a few option tweaks. The load times are very negligible on an SSD (keep in mind EU levels are premade not generated and have way less objects that are also lower detail).

Also the trial doesn't include the expansion (since it's not out yet obv) which is introducing a further significant optimization pass, i've seen people with early streaming access have load times of a couple seconds, and a less resource intensive usage in the Avenger (supposedly, since that's harder to verify directly on stream, I would have to see it for myself).

Actually, the nemesis system in Xcom sounds like an absolutely beautiful matchup, I'm surprised I never thought of it before.

There are a fair amount of YouTubers who had early access to the game and the game seems to crash for some of them every 15-20 hours or so. Not bad. There's so much nonsense going on under the hood that the stacked events sometimes cause a crash on certain systems. I'm not sure if that's avoidable.

@tennmuerti: Yes, the expansion could be better. However in Twitter Firaxis admits that there are issues with the base game and they will not be fixed:

"War of the Chosen fixes aren't available for the base game. The XCOM 2 code base was rebuilt to implement new and update existing systems."

source: https://twitter.com/FiraxisGames/status/900383863477850113

I don't really see how the Chosen work like the Nemesis system. There is no promotion of enemies, they don't really evolve or anything. They are just three bosses who get pissed off at you depending on what you do. Don't get me wrong, awesome expansion, but the Nemesis system was more intricate than some enemies who recognize you.

No. The 3 chosen are pre-made enemies that are scripted to show up at specific times, just because they have slightly random traits doesn't mean that they're "nemesis system" worthy.

In Shadow of Mordor ANY orc that killed you could become an unique addition to your experience. If Xcom 2 had such a system that would mean that any ADVENT trooper that killed one of your soldiers would be promoted, have related dialogue and have some sort of reference to that event.

What Xcom 2 has is a pre-made 3 character setup that is end'able aswell, the nemesis system is made to continuously give you new orcs to fight against and to make those orcs feel alive, having 3 enemies that always look the same and always come in the same order during the campaign is nowhere near the same.

A true nemesis system for Xcom 2 would be overkill, as most of the time you're going to kill all units on the battlefield(depending on difficulty) and also don't forget that none of the generic ADVENT troops you meet use english, they speak their own language, so even if they implemented such a system it wouldn't give you more than "ARRG!!! TI'NAZ!"