Inspired by a combination of Exquisite Corps and some pumping up of War of the Chosen by Austin and Rob Zacny of Waypoint, I hopped back into Xcom 2 this winter. After really liking the early part of the game, I decided to take advantage of some tie off around the holidays and started streaming a new playthrough, where my characters were mostly from a custom pool of games industry people plus my own friends and family. It's been a blast even if I am just streaming for myself and a friend or two who sometimes watch live, sometimes watch the VOD. The takeaway from my last few missions though is relevant to this community, because my Xcom 2 version of Alex "The Wolf" Navarro is a stone cold killer.
Navarro was one of my first recruits, and he was given the "specialist" specialization. This is akin to Xcom: EU's support class. They have a drone that can heal or aid teammates, and you can spec them to hack or interfere with mechanical enemies. There's also a a new system in Xcom 2 around weapon upgrades, and one type, the repeater, gives a small percentage (5, 10, or 15 based on item quality) for instant kills on a successful shot.
A few streams ago, I sent out a pretty experienced squad on a "facility sabotage" mission. These are plentiful in Xcom 2, and completing them are vital to keeping the aliens from completing "The Avatar Project," which is game over for the humans/the player. I was told before going into the mission that this base was guarded by a high level alien, meaning I'd be seeing a unique enemy.
We started in concealment and quickly ambushed the first patrol we came across. This meant we would be exposed making our approach to the facility. We barely had time to regroup, when we got in range of said facility. It was guarded by two heavy (and armored) turrets...and then the Berserker Queen showed up. The Berserker Queen has three armor (meaning all damage done to her is reduced by three until you shred that armor or have Armor Piercing rounds to ignore it) and a health bar that appears to be thirty segments. It's literally three rows of health.
We had a good tactical position, as we had arranged ourselves with cover between us and the facility's entrance, and the Berserker Queen was coming from that general direction, and a little bit to our left. She showed up, and we received a bit of dialogue between Bradford and Dr Tygan about what a monster she was and what Dr Vahlen could have been thinking when creating her. I steeled myself for a long, brutal fight - I hadn't encountered her in my earlier, unstreamed test game but had fought one of these captains before and knew they were no joke between high health, armor, and abilities I probably hadn't seen yet.
Except, "Alex Navarro" was in cover, on overwatch, and had his weapon tricked out with one of those repeaters. As soon as she had moved towards us and Dr Tygan and Central started their dialogue, I saw Navarro take a shot, and the screen read, "Executed." He one-shot one of the biggest enemies I'd ever seen.
Now, Xcom is a game of random occurrences and percentages breaking in your favor or very much not. This was an incredible moment...and it happened AGAIN on his next turn when he "Executed" a heavy turret that had the potential to make our lives very uncomfortable.
This all happened a week or so ago. Why am I writing about it now? Because it happened AGAIN tonight when he executed a Gatekeeper, a heavily armored enemy who makes every turn it's alive a pain in the ass.
So while those of us enjoying The Exquisite Corps wait for the return of Commander Navarro, I want to raise a glass to my "Alex 'The Wolf' Navarro," the baddest motherfucker to ever take on the Advent threat.
I'm going to be real sad when he dies because of a stupid move I made.
(Thanks for indulging the story - if you're interested in my ongoing streams of the Youtube archives I"m happy to share the info via PM; I don't want to be accused of too much self-promotion for my Twitch empire of like 3 followers and one occasional viewer!)
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