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.