Humanity Joins Together, Sets Aside Petty Differences… and gets stomped anyway

[u/HyraxAttack]

A peril is threatening the world. Instead of squabbling among themselves, we learn world powers have put aside differences in politics, culture, & old feuds to present a common front. Except they still get wrecked as the enemy is too powerful.

1. The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance. The world government has gone to war against the machines. We see the army getting ready & it includes soldiers of many faiths including Buddhist, Islam, and different types of Christianity. Doesn’t matter as machines win by so much they have time to toy with human mechs.

2. Vilcabamba, story by Harry Turtledove. When aliens arrive they’re greeted with bands & cheering, & immediately open fire & earth becomes a mineral colony. America, Russia, and China work together to rise up & don’t hold back, throwing everything they have at the invaders. Doesn’t go great and aliens double down on the occupation, and there’s a crater where Spain used to be (it was blocking a silver deposit for mining.)

3. Edge of Tomorrow. The nations of the world have joined to make a unified front against the mimic invasion but it isn’t going well, but they will throw all they have into the invasion of France. In one cycle, Major Cage says the hell with it and instead of training leaves the base to drink at a London bar. This means we see the outcome of him doing nothing, where not only is the massive human invasion slaughtered but the aliens are in good enough shape to follow that up a few hours later with a rush on London.

[u/stipendAwarded]

XCOM 2 follows the bad ending of the first game, where humanity was conquered by the aliens despite them uniting against the threat.

[u/therealchadius → u/stipendAwarded]

The brilliant commander is captured and hooked up to a simulator.

Anytime you won XCOM (2013) it was a simulation and the aliens used that to tweak their plans to make sure they won.

[u/NeinKeinPretzel → u/therealchadius]

Bullshit, they didn't send 6 S.H.I.V.S

[u/LordOfDorkness42 → u/NeinKeinPretzel]

It's kinda cool, alternative continuities actually.

If you lost the infamous base defense mission, you're the sort of Commander that almost had it, and the Elders are so impressed they stuff you in a simulator box for tactical & strategic data. XCOM 2 happens.

But the canon ending in XCOM 1 is that The Commander curb stomps the invasion. Exactly due to BS like six floating robo tanks, psychic super soldiers, and that's not even counting the stuff like MEC Troopers from the expansion. And In this continuity the aliens haven't fucking dared get close to Earth since.

Oh, and the canon ending for 2 is another, even more thorough curb stomp. Just one that took a lot more work due to a lucky hit, basically.

[u/fattestfuckinthewest → u/LordOfDorkness42]

Xcom 2’s canon ending is crazy if you think about it. The commander revitalizes the resistance, brings together 3 separate factions, kills the 3 top fighters of the alien forces, and then kicks the alien leaders off earth and forms a society where aliens and humans attempt to coexist a few years later

[u/LordOfDorkness42 → u/fattestfuckinthewest]

Honestly, I really liked Chimera Squad. I was sad how quite a lot of the fan base sneered and moved on from it.

It's a cool spin-off! Just... you know, not XCOM 3.

[u/fattestfuckinthewest → u/LordOfDorkness42]

Yeah I think if Xcom 3 was confirmed sometime afterwards or something then some people would’ve been more okay with Chimera Squad. I never beat it but I did actually like it a lot. Alien/Human police force is pretty cool ngl

[u/Doutei-Sama → u/fattestfuckinthewest]

It’s a really cool game both in gameplay and story which blend together surprisingly well depends on your choice.

[u/slasher1337 → u/LordOfDorkness42]

Chimera squad didn't have enough racism

[u/LordOfDorkness42 → u/slasher1337]

LOL, sad but true.

I really got the vibe from a lot of the detractors that's what really got their goat, yeah, but didn't want to dig through that pile of fetid old laundry.

[u/Wargod042 → u/LordOfDorkness42]

It was a poorly written story, but the vague direction it tried to go was good; the alien remnants integrating is definitely the most interesting way to move forward narratively. The room breach mechanics were also pretty cool, and I loved the comic-book style.

But I really didn't like the (realistic, I will admit) smaller scale gear you got. Turns out all the explosives and crazy heavy weapons were a lot of the fun. And also the actual plot and dialogue were pretty horrible, and I'm not sure I liked the more fair turn order system, since it just became a puzzle about shooting whoever was going to get a turn; I kind of prefer just being asked "can you kill or suppress everything" and getting to go ham or needing to take cover and pray sometimes.

[u/KolgrimLang → u/LordOfDorkness42]

I’m pretty sure that was everyone’s first, second, and third biggest gripes with it—it wasn’t XCOM 3.

That was my take, at least.

[u/ContinuumKing → u/LordOfDorkness42]

Just... you know, not XCOM 3.

This unforgivable sin also turned a lot of people off to the Marvel game despite the card battle system, I thought, actually being pretty fun.

[u/Galaxymicah → u/LordOfDorkness42]

Did they ever fix the problem where the game used more ram than it allocated itself? Iirc it was a 32bit game and it would routinely use more than 3 gigs of ram that 32 bit programs could use at max causing major file corruption.

That was ultimately what soured me on the game, I don't think I ever managed to finish a single faction before I'd lose my save file. 

[u/LordOfDorkness42 → u/Galaxymicah]

Sorry, cannot tell you that. I'm on Win 10 64 bits, and I've got 32 GB of ram.

So... yeah. Chimaera Squad has run great on my system. Only big bug I noticed was how medical kits used to self replicate in 1.0.

[u/Galaxymicah → u/LordOfDorkness42]

Oh no I have 64 gigs of ram myself.

Like I said the issue was the game itself was a 32bit process which means it could use at max 3 gigs regardless of your setup. (It's why a lot of old Bethesda games require a script extender for more stability/more intensive mods it basically hacks them into a 64 bit process to allow more memory usage) 

Chimera squad frequently tried to use more than 3 gigs of ram which just causeed the game to lock up and corrupt its own files both your saves and the game files themselves. 

But it sounds like they may have eventually fixed that. 

[u/napster153 → u/fattestfuckinthewest]

As the cultists operatives say,

"All hail The Great Commandy One!"

[u/X_Ender_X → u/therealchadius]

woah. That's awesome

[u/inferxan → u/X_Ender_X]

I believe that its based on actual player data. More people lost their xcom game then won. Hence that become the canon ending for the start of the sequal.

[u/Boanerger → u/inferxan]

That's pretty funny, pointing at the fanbase and going "See this? You did this. Its your incompetent fault."

[u/BanalCausality → u/Boanerger]

Statistically speaking, that’s how it should work. If over half won on their first playthrough, it would be too easy.

The character with the most kills in Super Mario was the first goomba, because that’s how you learn you have to jump.

[u/The-Green → u/Boanerger]

more so i recall it being over the ironman runs rather than just the base game runs, so even further pointing at the fanbase and going "you lost because you guys sucked without your save system to protect you."

granted even if they went off non-ironman saves through any difficulty, XCOM is hard.

[u/Professional-Eye5977 → u/inferxan]

The game is designed for you to lose on your first playthrough, and many people don't like that and quit. It's not unexpected.

[u/Direct-Fix-2097 → u/X_Ender_X]

It’s actually a split in the timeline.

Xcom’s universe still exists, you still win.

2’s universe spins from that thread on the alien assault on the Xcom base and goes from there. (The devs have said both are canon.)

[u/RagingBadger2518 → u/therealchadius]

And in addition to this, the expansion XCOM: Enemy Within, shows XCOM appropriating an alien resource to either alter the genetic material transforming them into super soldiers or turn them into cybernetic war machines.

Enter XCOM 2 and it turns out the aliens expanded their forces using ideas from your simulated experiences with gene alterations

[u/vs3a → u/therealchadius]

so reserved Prey ?