XCOM 2: The Ballad of Warlord Kelly

I took to XCOM 2 quickly. I understand the bones of it. Move and dash for double move, cover and half cover, actions and bonus actions; it’s a tabletop roleplaying game. But with, you know, aliens and that. I didn’t do the thing people do and make recruits out of all my friends (my likeness was ripped off several times as soon as people became aware that ‘discount-value fauxhawk’ was a hairstyle option). I didn’t even rename my people amusing things. I thought sticking solely to the random generation would maintain some distance for me, and I’d send them blithely into death with the emotional attachment of a First World War Field Marshal. In practice this turned out to be incorrect.

The character generation in XCOM 2 is detailed enough that you get attached even if you haven’t crafted your loved ones. Probably even more so, come to think of it; I’m quite sure that if I’d built a squad from Dave ‘Tails’ Scammell and the like I would have been fine throwing them in the path of insectoids, and the devil take the hindmost. The difference is that Dave exists and will continue to exist outside the game no matter what happens to his avatar. Warlord Kelly and her compatriots only ever lived as a tiny pretend soldiers under my command.  I feel I have a duty of care, and it works well woven in with the new angle the game takes. In XCOM 2 we are not defenders, we are a weakened resistance force staying on the move, creeping around battlefields trying to maintain cover, fire fighting swift retaliatory attacks and making sacrifices because we can’t save everyone. We use the new concealment system and we rely on the element of surprise. If we lose that, it is my fault.

Jane ‘Warlord’ Kelly received her nickname because of, I assume, her propensity for blasting aliens with a shotgun with greater accuracy than sharpshooters do with long range sniper rifles. She was part of the first group of recruits ever assigned to me, the Commander — pause before you say it, so as to give it the same gravitas as would be assigned to the title in an 80s action movie — along with Carlotta Hernández and Katsume Ogawa, a grenadier and a specialist who became known as Big Country and Rascal respectively (the sharpshooter in the original squad didn’t survive long enough to get a nickname).

Jane Kelly became my rock. She became the standard by which all other resistance soldiers were measured and found wanting. Kelly hailed from Ireland, but had an American accent, so I thought of her as maybe a first or second generation immigrant. She was a ranger, so as well as her shotgun she carried a long blade, which was eventually upgraded to a pair of f***-off axes. Her personality was described as ‘by the book’, so during selection she stood tall, shoulders back, hands clasped behind her. Unlike Big Country, who has always been jittery and questioning of my decisions, Warlord executed orders promptly. In battle she was resolute, never missing, always calm. Where other soldiers became shaken after difficult assignments, Warlord never faltered. She faced down terrifying gene-spliced aliens, including ones which for slightly contrived reasons look like giant vipers, and her aim stayed true. In mission debriefings she always had the highest average damage dealt, the most kills. She almost never suffered damage, either. She had some kind of preternatural ability to dodge any bullets flying her way. Warlord was the perfect leader for my guerilla warriors.

Warlord Kelly’s luck ran out on a critical mission.That’s the thing with odds and stats. Events can turn on a dime. Everything was going our way: we’d taken out the higher tier enemies almost without breaking a sweat, although Rascal had sustained some minimal damage, and there were only a few trash mobs left. I got cocky whilst repositioning the squad, and it was at this point that the remaining enemies all moved to surround Lt. Kelly. They all fired on her, and, for once in her illustrious career, they all hit. She was down, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had failed her. Big Country saw the death of her long time friend, her sister-in-arms, the matron of her war family, and immediately became Panicked, running full-tilt away from the objective and into a line of fire. We still completed the mission, but it didn’t feel like a success.

It’s a credit to it that even though it’s turn based, and moves comparatively slowly, XCOM 2 is still unpredictable — though not so unpredictable that I’m not aware losing my best soldier was almost entirely my own fault. But even better, Firaxis identified something that resonated with players of XCOM and ran with it. They’ve enhanced character customisation to the point that you can choose personalities for your soldiers. The attachment you can grow to the squaddies under your command is only just short of being a core mechanic. If I didn’t care then my tactics would only extend as far as getting the job done; I would preserve soldiers lives only because it’s a pain in my arse, and my resource stockpile, to train up new ones again. Keeping them alive for their own sake makes me a more considered commander. I take stock of all the options. I favour full cover over half-cover, even if the half cover offers a better line of fire. I advance my squad slowly, cautiously, knowing the odds are always against us, and that civilians might raise the alarm. It makes it all the worse when I abjectly let them down. Jane Kelly trusted me.