Here's the best deal you'll see this weekend—PC Gamer's 2017 expansion of the year XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is available for a lick over $24/£21 on Fanatical, equal with its historic low. It's 33% off on the store, and if you enter the code 'Winter10' at checkout then you knock off an extra 10%.

What's more, the base game is also at its lowest ever price, with more than 70% off. You can pick it up for a mere £9.44/$16.19. Pretty good for the best strategy game of last year.

The expansion is packed with personality: it adds a new group of enemies, the Chosen, that taunt you at every turn. The new friendly resistance factions are great too, and boast some of the most powerful abilities in the game. If you own a copy of XCOM 2 but haven't picked up War of the Chosen, then now is the time.

It's all part of Fanatical's winter sale, which is worth checking out. I've just had a browse and some of the recently added deals include more than 60% off Tales of Berseria, which is a JRPG that I really enjoyed, and I'm not normally into the genre. The excellent Banner Saga (and the equally excellent sequel) are also heavily discounted.

Update: As one commenter has pointed out, you could actually pre-order the expansion for $10 at one time, so this deal is only the lowest post-release price, not the lowest price ever. I've changed the headline to reflect that.

PC Gamer's Best Expansion of 2017 is XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, as selected by our global team. Below, its biggest fans on the team offer some commentary on their experiences with the game. Find the rest of our 2017 GOTY Awards and personal picks here. 

Tom Senior: In just five years Firaxis has successfully resurrected XCOM and explored a bunch of different takes on the formula. War of the Chosen is the most inventive yet, filling out the world with new friendly resistance factions and bitter rivals in the form of the Chosen themselves. The blue bad guys are obviously a focus point, but I love the resistance heroes even more, though, for their amazing, almost game-breaking abilities. The reapers get the cool long coats, but I came to love the templars the most because they look like they’ve dived out of Mass Effect to stab everything with electricity.

Bo Moore: War of the Chosen took one of the best games of 2016 and made it even better—by adding campy, moustache-twirling villains that mock you at every turn. The titular Chosen give a voice (more than Simlish-like gurgling) to your alien adversaries, and in that voice, the game's enemies finally have some personality. It feels awful when they ambush your squad, taunt your forces, and kidnap your soldiers. But it makes vanquishing them all the more sweeter.

Evan Lahti: Bingo, Bo: XCOM 2's villains needed a voice, and they got three. I love that the Chosen taunt you at every turn of the campaign: in the menus, mid-mission, after they kill or wound a soldier. They permeate the game, but you can also take them on mostly at your own pace. Firaxis's approach here reminds me of some of my favorite board games—instead of treating the Chosen like a separate, vestigial storyline you have to play, they simply become part of the ecosystem of threats, shuffled in with the rest of the cards you can draw.

For me, The Chosen became XCOM 2's campaign—all my tech and personnel decisions revolved around tracking them down and prepping for their multi-stage missions. But another player might be content with taking out one of the Chosen and focusing on the Avatar Project instead. These jerks made XCOM 2 the only singleplayer game in 2017 that I wanted to keep playing after I finished.

Tim Clark: I scarcely see War of the Chosen as an expansion. To me, it feels like XCOM 2's final form. This is the game Firaxis always intended, complete with sneering alien supervillains, sweet new gear to research, and in the resistance factions, some incredibly cool characters to fight alongside. At this point XCOM 2 feels like it's become this delicious, rich, selection box of sci-fi chocolates. I almost never replay the big games, but for XCOM 2 I made an exception, and devoured the lot all over again. If it weren't for the fact it is an expansion, it'd be my GOTY overall. 

Part of my enjoyment derives from the fact I didn't touch any of the intervening DLC drops, which meant my playthrough felt even fresher thanks to the presence of the enemies like the Viper King and Berserker Queen, and the unique armor I could research thanks to their bullet-ridden corpses. War of the Chosen has tons of great touches of its own, though. The new way bonus perks are activated (ie not those part of that soldier's traditional class tree) is smart, if a little hidden. 

On a more cosmetic but no less cool front, the propaganda poster system was super fun to goof around with, and I swiftly decided to make only grim visual obituaries for my fallen meat shields/heroes of the resistance. War of the Chosen is the kind of game that, once you're done with it, you start dreaming about what the dev might cook up next. And then getting depressed because that meal is likely to be a long ways off. 

For more War of the Chosen words, check out Tom's review and Tim and Evan's back-and-forth on the game's memorable villains. 

Will there be an XCOM 3? I have no idea. All I know is: the first two games, and their expansions, were brilliant, and the XCOM formula is just too good to fade. Whether you preferred the sedate, sandbox pace of Enemy Unknown, or the tough guerrilla fightback scenario of the second game, the differences in the two show how flexible the XCOM format can be. There's surely another great game or five in the series, right? Here are a few things we'd like to see in a sequel.

A new setting

We have saved Earth a few times now. Paradoxically we have both saved Earth from being invaded and then liberated it post-invasion. We have broken the alien threat in city streets, sewers and green fields. Could you face doing that all over again, even with a different alien threat? It is time for a change.

The original X-COM games went to the ocean for variety. A modern take on Terror From the Deep could be interesting, but I need something bigger to really get excited. Could XCOM take the fight to the alien threat on their home ground? Would XCOM work on a solar system scale? It's a dangerous move. The transition from defender to unstoppable aggressor is an important part of XCOM's fantasy, and you risk losing the personal touch that you get managing a small group of elite soldiers. Maybe a move to a smaller city-scale game in the mould of X-COM: Apocalypse would work.

In this regard the series is a victim of its own success. XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 are so replayable XCOM 3 would need to be bold to tear me away.

Even more squad customisation

Firaxis' XCOM has loads of squad customisation, and War of the Chosen added bonds and a surprisingly great poster-making tool to better capture the successes and cruel deaths of our favourite soldiers. XCOM does plenty to let me turn my soldiers into heroes with backstories and relationships, but I cannot get enough of this sort of thing. The squad bonds system in War of the Chosen is a great example of the sort of feature allows the game to tell more complex stories. An outstanding array of hairstyle options is also a must, of course. 

Clearer campaign mechanics

Chances are you've loaded an earlier save in XCOM to undo a horrible turn, or take another shot at a mission because you got wiped by an enemy you'd never met before. 

In the first few playthroughs of a campaign trial and error is an essential part of XCOM. The game wants to tell a story, with surprised and twists, which means holding back information you need to make sensible decisions. I don't mind being surprised by enemy reveals that kill a bunch of soldiers. I enjoy the horror of first contact, and the pleasure of learning how to deal with them—besides, you're supposed to lose soldiers in XCOM. However I wish that the games were clearer about campaign-level mechanics, where ambiguity can waste a lot of time. 

Take the Avatar project. The game very strongly implies that XCOM is screwed if it maxes out, but I found myself wondering what would really happen, and I was unsure about how fast it would grow and how easily I could bring it back down. Likewise the necessity of satellites in Enemy Unknown came as a surprise to a lot of players. These uncertainties can lead to five-hour rollbacks on an opening campaign, or an outright restart.

A changing story

The worst thing about restarting an XCOM campaign is the static story. You can skip cutscenes and breeze through all of the exposition, but you are locked into a series of story missions linked by periods of compulsory research. I like XCOM's characters, world and art style, but I wish that there was a way for campaigns to branch or change to keep the surprises coming after several campaigns.

I think XCOM benefits a lot from the inclusion of a story, beyond the entertainment value of the Chosen's delightfully cheesy intro scenes. Story creates impetus, and on the strategy layer level XCOM is a game about racing the campaign's beats. I'd love an XCOM 3 campaign that allows those beats to change to keep me in a state of terror and despair for longer.

Better base building

The rooms look cool and I like being able to see XCOM members working away in the hive, but hollowing out the Avenger never really felt like I was building a base. The long excavation and build times made it feel as though the base was denying me cool stuff rather than unlocking it for me, and the layout never seemed to matter hugely, even with adjacency bonuses. The base functions felt as though they were spread out over too many rooms. Whatever shape an XCOM 3 base might take, I'd room placement to involve more interesting decisions with less waiting around.

Continued mod support

Another 'more of this please' entry. The Steam workshop has been great for XCOM 2 and The Long War campaign—a must play, comprehensive redesign of XCOM 2—adds dozens of hours of value to the game. There are loads of new enemies and weapons out there, but my favourite mods are the ones that make small UI tweaks to meet my preferences. Here's a selection of our favourite mods for War of the Chosen.

Malleable classes

Firaxis' XCOM tends to give you a choice of two upgrades when you level up. The left and right skill columns represent different builds of that class, which ultimately encourages you to come down one way or the other to hit the best synergies. 

War of the Chosen introduced training that let you unlock a few extra abilities in each class. The introduction of just these few extra options made the classes feel deeper and more flexible. I appreciate XCOM's determination to keep levelling simple, and to carefully define class roles to keep them distinct and interesting, but a degree of class cross-pollination could encourage more build-tinkering and squad experimentation. We'd want to see some new classes too, of course.

Factions, rivalries

War of the Chosen introduced several organisations that existed beyond the remit of XCOM. The resistance factions had their own tactics and fashion sense, and you had to work to earn their trust and get their cool toys. 

It worked great, and there are many ways to expand upon factions more broadly in a sequel. It's easy to imagine mercenary factions that could join the aliens or the humans, for a price. Firaxis experimented with EXALT in Enemy Within, so there's precedent for these shady, ambiguous factions.

I can't ignore how effective the Chosen were in War of the Chosen either. In fact, we reckon they are some of the best gaming villains out there. Having powerful villains that taunt you face-to-face creates great rivalries, and if a new XCOM didn't have a take on this, I think I would seriously miss it. Whether the game generates alien bounty hunters to hunt you down, or adopts a Shadow of Mordor style nemesis generator (a wronged Sectoid ties a bandana around its forehead comes back with a vengeance), I want strong antagonists whose defeat I can truly savour.

A new threat

XCOM's aliens are too familiar to be the sole focus of another game. The second game smartly revamped Sectoids and turned the skinny poisonous men in black into giant orange Cobras. Ultimately, though, Sectoids are going to mind control stuff and Muton's gonna Muton. For a third game I want to face enemies that feel alien again. I want the thrill of watching a unit's intro animation play in a battle and thinking 'what on planet Earth can that thing do?'

The return of shadowy "Hello, Commanderrr" guy

Other than the G-Man, is there a more ambiguous and intriguing figure in PC gaming than the mysterious silhouette guy who phones up to judge you once a month? I don't even know why he's in charge in XCOM 2, but I'll always pick up the big man's calls to hear him say "well done, commanderrrr", or "you suck, commanderrr". If there is to be an XCOM 3, he must reprise his role, and nobody tell him where the light switch is.

Evan: OK everyone, let's have a civil, sportsmanlike discussion about the PC games of 2017. All jabs at Mass Effect: Andromeda must be above the belt, and aimed directly at its poorly animated face.

James: Thankfully it's quite simple: it's Hollow Knight. It’s everything I love in games: challenge propped up by excellent controls and character abilities that make traversing the huge map a joy. The level design is so subtle that it doesn’t rely on collectibles to tell you where to go next. Every environment is dense and alive, as lively and foreboding as any real forest. And the story uses the form of a 2D side-scroller with utter grace, embedding tiny revelations in the gorgeous art and filling in details through small doses of ghostly dialogue. Seriously, if this game had the marketing reach of The Witcher 3 or Call of Duty, you’d all be in this tiny bug bed with me. Am I sweating?  

Jody: Bless you for suggesting an indie game right off the bat so I don't have to, James. But if Hollow Knight had more marketing reach I would just put off playing it for another year out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Hollow Knight's a good shout-out but I don't think it's going to be our GOTY.

Tim: Haha, it's definitely not Hollow Knight. Good try, though. I actually don't know if I'm allowed to pick an expansion, and I know PUBG is actually going to win, but for me it's XCOM 2's War of the Chosen expansion by the length of a comet's tail. It's not that I didn't love the game first time around, but the addition of these three gloriously annoying antagonists transports the experience to another level. Aside from the brilliance of sparring with them as the campaign unfurls, War of the Chosen also adds a raft of sweet new systems, characters and unique weapons. Sending two of your favourite soldiers out on a covert mission only for them to get ambushed makes for heart-stopping escape sequences, and the waves of Lost which assault you on some missions also create a zombie-style horde mode vibe that XCOM has never delivered before. 

Evan: I'm grappling with the same thing. Moments of War of the Chosen were some of the happiest I've been all year. The Chosen are exquisitely annoying villains that enhance every aspect of XCOM 2. We'll have to talk about how we judge expansions in the context of these awards.

Anyway, is it PUBG? We don't hand out GOTYs based on popularity. It's still in Early Access, and it has plenty of issues. Half a year in, I've stopped playing it. I find the art direction lifeless, and I think they'd have to perform a League of Legends-grade facelift for me to feel differently.

Chris: I'll climb out on that shaky limb and say an Early Access game like PUBG can be GOTY. I played DayZ standalone like crazy during its first year in EA, and at that point it was basically just the framework of a sandbox. But despite glitchy zombies, buggy ladders, and a spotty ballistics system, it spawned so many great stories and interesting experiences for me that it became my favorite game that year (and one of my favorites of all time). PUBG is drawing people into a genre many of them have never played before and it's resulting in lots of fun experiences and stories, too. For my money, that's what makes a game GOTY-worthy, even if it's unfinished.

Jarred: PUBG could've only happened on PC first. I know it's coming to consoles in the future, but most influential genre changes come from PC games. Anyway, I would vote for Star Citizen, just for Chris' stories on the subject, but that's for 2020.

James: PUBG is going to be one of the most influential games of the century, but is it actually the best game of the year? The physics are still in complete rebellion, performance is far from ideal, and in the end it’s still another game about people shooting each other. It’s a very good one and features 100 people, OK, but I’m not sure it’s the game I want to scream about from our collective mountaintop. Are we still drunk on Divinity: Original Sin 2? We’re big RPG people here, what with a nude RPG man as our unofficial mascot. 

Joe: Sort of echoing James, I’d say PUBG is my shout so far as influence and impact is concerned—but I think Divinity: Original Sin 2 deserves it, all told. Totally different games, but there’s just so much to D:OS 2, and everything it does it does so well. As Evan says, PUBG is still an Early Access game. I reckon there’s every chance it’ll top next year’s list, but I’m not so sure it deserves first place in 2017.

Jody: Games like D:OS 2 that come out later in the year and take like 60 hours to play are always going to suffer for it. I mean, my pick is Total War: Warhammer 2 but I know not everyone has time to play through even one campaign of that—let alone try out all four factions and, when the Mortal Empires update comes out, combine it with the first game to play again. That's a shame because everyone should have the chance to summon a swarm of angry rat dudes underneath a unit of archers or charge a dinosaur into some elves. 

Evan: [initiates Steam download]

Jody: Look, I think PUBG is going to top lists when it comes out of Early Access, and D:OS 2 and Warhammer 2 are probably going to make the lists of "Games of 2017 we didn't have time to play until 2018". Or in Warhammer 2's case, "Games that took all of 2018 to actually play."

Tyler: Wait, Original Sin 2 is supposed to take 60 hours? I've played 66 hours and I'm maybe halfway through. I've also put 32 hours into the Divinity Engine 2, learning how to make my own levels. They give you everything you need to mod the campaign or make your own, if you can bear the crashes. It's so good. It's my game of the year for sure. 

Jody: I looked it up on howlongtobeat.com and apparently a completionist playthrough averages 102 hours. Please talk me out of committing to that. Tell me some reasons I shouldn't spend more time in Original Sin 2 than Sunless Sea and Prey combined.

Tyler: I can't do that. I mean, it could probably be debugged forever, but most of Original Sin 2's problems stem from its commitment to freeform play. There are a lot of incongruities, like how my friends think necromancers are evil but never seem to mind when I raise a bloated corpse, but that's the price paid for how often it makes me say, "Wait, that worked?" Even if we don't all finish it, I hope everyone plays enough to have at least one or two experiences like that, where they accidently do a quest backwards and it all somehow works out amazingly.

Jody: Tyler, that is the opposite of what I asked for.

Tyler: Let me tell you about the time I got into a fight with a bunch of undead guys, and then realized a few turns in that I was carrying jars containing their souls in my backpack. I'd picked them up in a cave hours earlier and forgotten. So I defeated them by chucking their own souls at them. Perfect.

Steven: Listen, I would love nothing more than to take this moment to begin shouting madly about the virtues of Final Fantasy 14: Stormblood and how bonkers it is that an MMO expansion almost made me tear up at one point because the story is so emotionally captivating. But who are we kidding here? No one cares. And that’s fine, because Original Sin 2 is clearly our GOTY. The only way I’m changing my stance is if Jody agrees to go all in on Total War: Warhammer 2 with me (maybe after the mortal empires campaign is out?)

Wes: I'm still enamored with Divinity, but let's not forget about Nier: Automata, one of the most weird and creative games of the decade. Also, if Shaun was here, he'd remind us all that the Nazi sniping in the underappreciated Sniper Elite 4 is extremely good.

James: [Gives everyone voting for D:OS2 a wedgie] It’s Hollow Knight, nerds. But because your dragons and dungeons and wizards and whatever will always win, I’ll at least drop a few names before dipping out. What Remains of Edith Finch just about made me cry from chopping off fish heads. Cuphead looks incredible, but also contains some really intricate boss design and the best soundtrack of the year, easily. And Thimbleweed Park was one of the funniest games I played this year, and it’s a throwback point-and-clicker. I’m going to close by typing OIKOSPIEL in all caps here too, because it’s my actual GOTY. Describing it is futile. (Psst, dog opera.)

Tyler: Fine, I'll play Hollow Knight. But I'm not sure anything could pull my vote away from Original Sin 2 at this point. I did enjoy Absolver and Rising Storm 2 this year, but only enough to nominate them for awards in their genres. On that note, the shooter category is going to be a tough one. PUBG was already mentioned. I don't want to forget about Sniper Elite 4 from February—it was really good, though I don't think Evan believes me. I'm betting he'll pull for LawBreakers.

Steven: I’m sure that vote will be appreciated by the eight people still playing it.

Evan: PC gaming isn't a popularity contest, buddy. Anyway, I'd actually give my FPS vote to Quake Champions, even with its imperfect netcode. It's the second coming of the railgun and rocket launcher!

Tim: On the topic of second-comings, if you'd told me earlier this year I likely wouldn't be voting for Destiny 2 when GOTY rolls around I'd have assumed the explanation was that I had died. (RIP me.) But the truth is that although it offers a peerless alien-shooting experience, having sunk ~150 hours into the PS4 version I've been startled by how hollow the endgame feels. A huge part of that is due to the switch from random rolls on loot drops to static perks, which as I feared has all but completely sucked the grind for gear out of the game. It's far from the only issue too, and this video by Destiny YouTuber Datto sums up a lot of them neatly. I expect Bungie will gradually rectify the problems with patches and the December DLC, but it really is baffling how for every quality of life improvement the sequel makes, another system has been made demonstrably worse. Be warned I'll be writing quite a bit more about this towards the end of the month.

James: I’ve already put about 100 hours into Destiny 2 on PS4 because I couldn’t wait two goddamn months, but I’m ready to put hundreds more in on the PC in a few weeks. It’s going to really land with PC players, I think. Finally, we get to complain about a thing we begrudgingly love on the best platform there is. 

Tyler: Aside from Destiny 2, there's a lot still to come this year. Looking forward to anything?

Tim: Tom's piece on how the new Assassin's Creed is now a bona fide RPG has me interested in that series for the first time since Black Flag, particularly as Origins is being developed by the same team. Plus I'm a sucker for the Anubis-flavored setting, as Evan can confirm. 

Evan: Who doesn't love Anubis, wolf god of the afterlife? Anyway, speaking of canines, I think Wolfenstein 2 is probably going to be great, given that BJ will have Inspector Gadget-style extendable stilt-legs. And though we've played a bit of the multiplayer beta, Battlefront 2's Empire-focused campaign could be special.

James: Well, I’m glad we decided Hollow Knight is the winner so far. Great work, everyone. Until next year! 

Despite James' manipulative last-word, this is only the beginning of our GOTY discussions.

If you’d asked any of us if XCOM 2 would be better with mustache-twirling villains when it came out, we’d likely call the strategy game police. As goofy as XCOM’s Advent enemies are—a motley crew of little green men, snake people with boobs, and shape-shifting slime monsters—we’d cry out, ‘Strategy games are driven by cold, hard logic, not emotion!’ And yet, here we are, all angry at our own purple bad guys. Now we can blame our losses on the Chosen, three characters introduced in the recent War of the Chosen expansion that have hijacked XCOM 2 completely. They’re the best thing to happen to the series since its reintroduction, and some of the greatest videogame villains since Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system. We had to talk about them. 

Tim Clark: I've honestly been blown away by the Chosen. Literally, on many missions, but figuratively by how fun they are to fight. Prior to jumping into the expansion, I had vague concerns that being menaced on already stressful missions by super aliens would be like getting sand in your spacesuit. But although the Chosen are irritants by design, there's such a thrilling build-and-release of tension to beating them that I actually looked forward to the encounters. Like all the best pantomime villains, the Chosen are chatty sallys—yammering on during missions, and even spilling over into the menus, telling you how much you suck and how you're doomed to failure. 

And it's far from just talk. XCOM has always traded on the attachments you build with your favourite squad members, so the fact they can now be kidnapped during missions—and potentially rescued later—is a brilliant addition. I swiftly developed such a delicious mutual dislike for the Chosen, and burning desire to mount their heads in my trophy room (another brilliant addition), that even early on I was happy to call them the best bad guys since Shadow of War's Nemesis-enabled Warchiefs.

Evan Lahti: Their best feature is that they don't shut up. The Chosen finally give XCOM's bad guys a voice, an identity. The Advent are squawking clones; The Chosen have personalities. They harass you. They rub salt in the wound when you lose a soldier on a mission. When you steal one of their weapons, they have something to say about it. Their lines are often cheesy arrogance, but I love the way they perpetually interrupt your world-saving.

James Davenport: It’s funny, because I think in any other medium I’d be annoyed by how overtly Bad™ these villains are. They’re remorseless, cruel purple bullies and the planet is the schoolyard. Rarely do they say anything that gives them some kind of redeeming quality (that said, I haven’t finished the campaign), but I don’t care. Finally, I have some faces to attach my certain and plentiful losses to besides my own. The Chosen appear and mess my life up with such frequency that everything is their fault, surely. Right?

Tom Senior: Top tier enemies and heroes in XCOM 2 are so powerful they feel as though they are breaking the game—the Alien Hunters bosses can move every time one of your squadmates move, for example. The Chosen bring that illicit tomfoolery into the game at the very beginning, and keep raising the stakes throughout the campaign. 

They also hit you where it hurts, not by blowing up the Avenger (though that is on their to-do list), but by kidnapping your soldiers, which is somehow worse. XCOM 2 does a great job of making you care about your troops, and just when you’ve forged that attachment, the Chosen teleport in and steal your precious heroes away.

The Chosen also show how flexible XCOM’s combat spaces can be. When you fight the assassin, there is no point in taking cover because she always strikes with her sword. That encourages you to form a close formation so your soldiers have each other’s backs. You get the fantasy of a bunch of soldiers standing back-to-back to face down an invisible foe. 

Their power is perfectly tuned as well. They are difficult and cause problems, but you still regularly take small victories off them. One of the best moments of my campaign involved one-shotting the assassin with a reaper, who targeted a nearby piece of explosive scenery. For a Chosen that’s weak against reaper attacks and explosions, this meant game over and a swift retreat to her sarcophagus. 

Bo Moore: The thing I love most about the Chosen is that they reliably translate the mechanics and combat of XCOM into an interesting boss fight. Too often, games with great regular-mission combat totally fail to produce interesting boss encounters (many immersive sims like Deus Ex and BioShock have this issue). XCOM had this issue too, as most of the "boss fights" you come across are just giant enemies like Sectopods—essentially giant bullet sponges with devastating attacks. Sure, they're difficult encounters, but they don't really feel like XCOM. Meanwhile, the Chosen move around strategically, take cover and flank you, and strike when you're most vulnerable. They're exciting enemies that I genuinely fear coming across—and absolutely love killing. 

James Davenport: That’s part of a bigger reason they’re so fearsome to me. Besides feeling as capable as me, the Chosen give the impression of someone else playing the game against you. And I’m not just talking about combat encounters. While the days fly by in the strategic map as I research new technologies, so too are the Chosen researching their own ways to weaken my forces. The race to prevent the completion of the Avatar Project used to feel like a race against time, but now it’s a tug of war over efficiency with three gruesome jerks. 

Evan Lahti: Three tall gruesome jerks. They're very tall, James.

Tim Clark: Lean in and let me tell you about my first kill. It was the Assassin, who'd previously kidnapped Alison Brie and Shailene Woodley, and had been indirectly responsible for the death of Clive Owen. (All my soldiers are named after actors and actresses.) This was a substantial score to settle. After meticulously picking my way through all the surrounding rooms—draw your own conclusions about how often I was saving—we finally found the sarcophagus chamber. 

The battle went better than hoped, thanks to the double Reaper team comp I'd picked, and grenadier Maggie Qs disgusting damage output. But by the time the Assassin did its cheeky Jason from Friday the 13th respawn, a lot of my heavily armed thespians were badly hurt. Step up the hero of the hour, Jean Reno, a specialist who'd become renowned for missing every single clutch shot, but still made the cut on big missions because he'd rolled a bunch of good bonus abilities, including automatically going into overwatch even after dashing. Up he pops and: BLAMMO! A gigantic crit, the first I can recall him landing before or since, cleans the Assassin out in one shot. You better believe Jean got a poster that day. Bien joué, you sexy French bastard.

James Davenport: I skulljacked a Codex before my big fight. That was a bad idea. No one got a poster that day.  

Tim Clark: Oh, and one more thing on the Assassin kill. How good are their unique weapons you then get to research? Hugh Jackman is now running her shotgun and katana plus a Wraith suit and absolutely wrecking shop with it. I love that Firaxis give you what's effectively a substantial loot payout for pulling off the big kill. The glow of victory should be satisfaction enough, but truthfully I'm all about sweet new guns.

Bo Moore: Oh hell yeah, the rewards are so rewarding. I slapped the Assassin's Katana on one of my star Rangers, modeled after FFXIII's Lightning. Another of my Rangers, LCD Soundsystem drummer Pat Mahoney, was stuck out of position on a VIP extraction when a group of ADVENT Mec troopers ambushed my team. He was pretty much boned, especially since I was out of grenades and all my shredders were out of moves. 

All I had left was Lightning and her bondmate, but they were both out of range from impacting the fight enough to save poor Patrick. Luckily, Lightning's bondmate was able to lend her an action, which combined with Run and Gun gave her enough legs to get in range of the ADVENT squad and do some damage. She queued up her Reaper ability, which refunds actions if you score a melee kill, and went to work. The Assassin's Katana ignores armor, letting her slice through all three heavily-armored ADVENT Mecs in three fell swoops. Mahoney lives to drum another day. 

It hasn't taken long for modders to start tweaking XCOM 2 mods to work with War of the Chosen. You can find all them using the War of the Chosen tag on the Steam workshop. To install, make sure you are logged in with your Steam account and then click the 'subscribe' button on the mod page of your choice. When you start the Steam client mods you've subscribed to will automatically download. When you start XCOM 2: War of the Chosen you can then turn individual mods on and off using the mod checklist. 

Always check the workshop descriptions for details on bugfixes and additional mods you might need to keep things working smoothly, and bear in mind that turning mods on and off in the middle of a playthrough can cause problems with the save, as you might expect. Without further ado, here are my favourites mods so far, featuring a mix of quality of life changes, AI overhauls, and cool character and gear mods.

Stop Wasting my Time

One of the very best XCOM mods returns for War of the Chosen. Stop Wasting my Time gets rid of all the little pauses you'll see in battles after soldiers shoot, throw grenades, get a kill, hit cover and so on. Unskippable Bradford VO has been snipped. The mod also speeds up the Avenger on the strategy map, increases the speed of your Gremlin drones by 150%, and even makes colours on the colour picker appear faster. The mod doesn't affect game balance in any way, it just speeds everything up by cutting sluggish movement throughout the game.

For even more time-saving measures, consider installing Instant Avenger Menus, which removes the dissolving holo globe animation during transitions from the Avenger to the world map, reduces pauses during Avatar updates, and instantly snaps between rooms in the Avenger so you can get to building upgrades and equipment quickly.

Resistance Firearms

I love XCOM's big chunky futuristic weaponry, but if you prefer a more realistic suite of firearms, this adds a collection of 60 weapons with custom animation and sound effects. To apply the mod you need to download the main module, the assets, and the Missing Packages Fix + Resource update.

XCOM EU/EW Helmets and Armour

Remember the top-tier of armour in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. You don't get back-of-the-neck humpback protection like that these days, unless you install XCOM Helmets and Armour series of course. It adds each armour tier from Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within in three separate mods: tier one, tier two and tier three. You'll need the Empty WOTC Deco Slots update to see the armour pieces properly.

A Better AI

Whether you think this suite of AI changes is 'better' depends on the XCOM experience you want. A Better AI removes the safety catches that stop an entire map of enemies wandering into a battle at the same time. If you enjoy that level of challenge, you may also enjoy the other changes, which stops enemies from roaming about if they're safer where they are (that means fewer overwatches for your soldiers). Enemies will also shoot at panicked soldiers and get more creative when trying to get out of positions where they're flanked. One for XCOM experts.

Gotcha Again

Perfect Information for XCOM 2 hasn't been updated for the expansion yet, but if you're looking for a UI update that gives you more information about the battlefield then Gotcha Again is a good stand-in. War of the Chosen now lets you see when your soldier will be in a flanking position when you press Alt, but Gotcha Again gives you more info about which enemies exactly will be in sight range before you make a move. The mod also adds indicators that let you know when you're about to move through an enemy's overwatch. Plus if you have revealed an enemy but not caught their attention yet, Gotcha will show you if a move you're making will alert them.

Even More Backstories

Even More Backstories introduces 77 backstories to fill out the biographies of new recruits. The pack includes 18 reaper backstories, 11 Skirmisher ones, 14 Templar, and 15 engineeer and scientist stories. It's a small aspect of the game to update, but it adds more flavour and personality to the rookies you're sending into danger every mission.

Flawless

It feels good to complete a mission with no losses having killed every alien in the vicinity, but wouldn't it feel even better if you got a prize as well? Flawless rewards flawless victories with items and resources to let you get more out of your greatest victories. The rewards aren't extreme so there's little chance it will unbalance the game, it's just a nice way for the game to tell you you're awesome.

Camera rotation config

Another simple, useful update. Camera Rotation Config sets the default camera rotation to jump in 30 degree increments rather than 90. It's not quite free rotation, but it still provides the extra control that many players expect. The modder says that the rotation can occasionally align slightly out of sync with the grid, but you'll find instructions for correcting that in the mod description if that starts happening to you.

Wrex, Grunt, Liara and Mordin

Recruit your favourite alien Mass Effect companions to defend the earth as members of your XCOM team. The XCOM 2 mods for Wrex, Grunt, Liara and Mordin have all been updated for use in War of the Chosen. Give Wrex a shotgun and a sword and see how he takes to being threatened by the Chosen.

The modder recommends a couple of additional mods to help you get the most out of the character mods. Be sure to grab Empty Deco Slots and Invisible Parts for Hero Units. These let you set certain clothing slots as empty or invisible to let the custom armour pieces appear.

That's a few to be getting on with, but more will appear as modders update their XCOM 2 projects and start whole new ones especially for WotC (brand new Chosen, anyone?). If you're really enjoying a War of the Chosen mod, feel free to share it with everyone in the comments.

The [WotC] Overwatch Mercy Squadmate cosmetic mod adds a very convincing Mercy facsimile to XCOM 2: War of the Chosen with custom colours and wing variants. In the name of authenticity, "this mod adds Switzerland; Mercy's country of origin."

Check the description section of the Steam Workshop page linked above for a choice of downloads and some recommended mods that help Mercy to work smoothly. Missing Packages Fix + Resource sounds like an essential one, while the Mercy Voice Pack ought to be a fun addition.

It's a purely cosmetic mod, so don't expect the mod to add any of Mercy's abilities into the game. It looks good though. Check out a few of the colour variants below.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is a massive expansion for XCOM 2, and you can get it for cheaper than normal this week. It only released on August 29, but you can already save 15 percent on the DLC over on Bundle Stars. 

Tom's review of War of the Chosen says it's a "comprehensive expansion that touches every aspect of the game." There are three new nemesis bosses with great characters, new resistance factions, heroes, and most importantly, sweet new shoulder pads. If you're well versed in XCOM 2, this expansion shakes things up.

War of the Chosen is full price everywhere else today, and the 15 percent discount lasts until Tuesday, so this is probably the cheapest you'll find the game for a while.

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. 

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is officially great. Look, our review says so. It adds loads of new systems, classes, abilities and gear to play with. So much that it can be hard to cut through to the good stuff. Which of the new rooms is it best to build first? Which covert actions should you prioritise? Should you hit those guys that explode with a sword, even if you really really want to? Here are a few things I wish I'd known before I started XCOM 2's massive War of the Chosen expansion.

Build the Resistance Ring

There are a bunch of new buildings in War of the Chosen, such as the troop-healing Infirmary and the Training Center which lets you spend the ability points you accrue in combat. The Resistance Ring is the most important initially because it lets you manage covert actions. These missions are the only way to hunt down the Chosen in the long term, but in the medium term as you connect with resistance factions more missions unlock that give you scientists, engineers, supplies and intel. The Resistance Ring is the gateway to a lot of the cool new features in War of the Chosen, so get it built and start sending soldiers on missions.

Look out for the soldier bonuses you can get on these missions too. It's a good way to give a soldier a free promotion, which in turn lets you more quickly unlock the squad size upgrades in the Guerilla Tactics School.

Mo' problems, mo' money

I wish I had worried less about money for the first few hours of my War of the Chosen campaign. You still regularly take a 'wage' from zones you have contacted on the world map, and there are many more ways to generate a payday if you're starting to get low. Supplies seem to be a more regular mission reward, and you can use covert actions to generate some extra green. Plus digging out rooms in the Avenger still gives you materials.

Alternatively, there is still the black market, and you will be harvesting more alien corpses from those extra missions you're taking in War of the Chosen. Likewise, there are plenty of ways to grab intel if you really need it, and I found it easier not to worry too much about those red warnings at the bottom left of my campaign map telling me I'm poor.

You can always bail on minor missions to protect your best

It's tempting to take every single mission in XCOM 2, and you probably should in most cases. However if your roster is short and you know there is a big alien or Chosen counter attack due, it can be smarter to save your powerful soldiers from exertion. Even if they avoid injury, soldiers can get tired in War of the Chosen, which increases the risk of them developing OCD or some other negative condition induced by the stress of constant battle.

The punishment for disregarding an ordinary mission is usually a supply penalty to that mission's region. Not ideal, certainly, but bear in mind the extra opportunities you have to grab supplies in War of the Chosen. The risk/reward calculation can be a little different. Naturally if you have a deep roster and you're looking for promotions, send those rookies out to die. I mean win.

Pursuing 'inspired' research isn't always the best move

Sometimes your scientists get inspired in War of the Chosen, which lets you grab a new technology in a few days. This is a very shiny and tempting option, and useful most of the time. But I had to remind myself that the vital armour upgrade isn't going to research itself, and unless you have a few scientists, that research is going to take a while to come good. The system seems to be designed to give you encouragement to try a piece of tech that you wouldn't normally go for, which is cool, just don't neglect the vital upgrades that keep your heroes alive.

Don't hit Advent flamethrower troops with swords

And be careful when you shoot them too. I lost a good ranger to a close combat attack on these flamethrower experts. Their tanks ignite and everything nearby takes a ton of damage. It's great if you get one near some aliens with a sniper shot, but don't send your ranger in unless you want him to suffer a particularly badass death taking out multiple enemies and Chosen in a suicidal swing of the knife.

Make contact with the resistance groups quickly

You need to use a covert action to discover the third resistance faction in your opening playthrough. Try not to put this off like I did. Making contact with the group grants you one of their warriors, and they are ridiculously good. Likewise, if one happens to get imprisoned, break them out ASAP. I haven't found the breakout missions to be particularly difficult, the main expenditure goes into the covert action you need to find their prison.

These heroes are worth it because they are good at blowing up the Chosen, as well as any other aliens on the battlefield, and you won't be able to recruit more until you've invested a lot in a resistance faction. Until you're at that point, deploy them carefully when you need a power spike. You don't want to lose them.

Ability points can unlock great upgrades for ordinary soldiers

Once you have the Resistance Ring and you have built up a nice cache of ability points for your ordinary XCOM soldiers, consider building the Training Center. This lets you convert ability points into extra skills for XCOM soldiers, but spend them wisely. Ability points bypass the binary ability choices you make when a soldier is promoted, so you can create jack-of-all-trades archetypes.

Alternatively, focus on powerful 25-point abilities such as Serial, which refunds all actions to grenadiers that kill a target with their cannon.

Expect the Chosen to turn up at the worst possible time

Heading into a tough blacksite mission? Expect one of your new Chosen nemeses to turn up. Each has a set of weaknesses and only tends to attack in the area they are patrolling. Use this information to build anti-Chosen elements into your squad. Each Chosen takes extra damage from one of the new resistance heroes, so recruit them all as quickly as you can and deploy the counter hero in situations where the Chosen are likely to appear. Chosen also have weaknesses to certain types of damage, so alter your gear loadouts accordingly. Luckily the Chosen hate each other so you only have to face one at a time.

Those are a few basic pointers. I don't want to get into the mad skills you get at higher levels, or to ruin any of the other enemies you will run into. All these things will kill you in good time. Hopefully we've brought some clarity to your opening hours at least.

One day ahead of the rollout of the XCOM 2 expansion War of the Chosen, creative director Jake Solomon, designer/programmer Joe Weinhoffer, and lead producer Griffin Funk hit Reddit to take part in an AMA, with questions ranging from specific details about gameplay to thoughts on the best game of all time. 

Solomon seemed to find that one easy, selecting Minecraft above all others, while Weinhoffer hedged his bet somewhat, declaring it a tie between Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, his choice for greatest game, and World of Warcraft, his greatest time sink. 

Back to War of the Chosen itself, Weinhoffer said Firaxis has "buffed a bunch of the late-game ADVENT enemies" in order to maintain War of the Chosen's late-game challenge, and warned that "if the Chosen survive that long they become VERY tough." They also confirmed that two versions of the SDK will be available: "The default will be a bare bones SDK, but if users want all of the content as well, then there is a beta branch set up for the SDK that you opt in to that wiil provide everything." 

A point I thought was particularly interesting came in Solomon's response to a question about playing as the aliens in some future XCOM game. "Here's the thing I've never been able to get over when thinking about 'Playing as the aliens.' Is my emotional connection to my avatar/soldiers/base going to be strong enough to propel me through 30 hours of gameplay when it's not recognizable as human or earth?" he said. "There always has to be some projection of the player into the game world, and to make a narrative that's compelling (both the scripted narrative and the narratives that the player makes up in their head) the player has to be able to emotionally connect with the actors in the narrative."

"Being an invading alien race could definitely be fun for a few hours, but more than that and sustaining emotional interest in the fantasy would get hard. Not saying it can't be done. Anything can be done. But I personally think it would be very, very difficult, and might require more scripted narrative than we typically like to do in order to foster some emotional investment from the player." 

Interestingly, he also said that XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is "is the best narrative work of the XCOM series by far," thanks to the efforts of writers Scott Wittbecker and Chad Rocco. "Narrative was really challenging this time because of the Chosen and all the permutations, but having actual characters to write for was a lot of fun and not something we've had a lot of in XCOM." 

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen comes out tomorrow, August 29. Find out more about what it's bringing to the game right here.