After reading Tom's thoughts on XCOM 2's War of the Chosen earlier this week, I feel a little overwhelmed. With a host of additional technical features applied to what was already a pretty complex game—not to mention a cartload of new customisation options—it looks like we'll have our work cut out for us when the expansion lands later this month. 

Until then, its 'Propaganda Center' photobooth feature can be downloaded now, free-of-charge, on Steam. 

Available to all, the Propaganda Center allows players to craft "war-and-meme worthy" posters using a variety of different backgrounds, soldier poses and filters. From the main menu, players can view and use their Character Pool or opt to create new soldiers entirely. 

A total of 23 different background images await creative hands, alongside 16 different layouts. "Do you want to make it look like you're taking a snapshot of drafting a recruitment poster?" asks this Steam community post. That's up to you to decide—do so in this direction. 

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is due August 29. If you missed the link to Tom's early thoughts above, let me redirect you here. 

As a free tease for XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, Firaxis just released Propaganda Center on Steam. It’s standalone photobooth application where you can create and customize a squad or import your soldiers from XCOM 2, and pose them against a variety of colorful backgrounds and state-sponsored messages. Personally, I’m planning on going for a sinister, soothing purple accompanied by the phrase, ‘I am your dad.’ My rule will be long, and pretty chill, honestly. Pizza night, every night. Dad’s buying. 

But even more sinister than ruthless totalitarian rule are the endless memes Propaganda Center will produce. I don’t have access to the collective subconscious of the teen population to anticipate how the tools will be used and abused, but using the LPC’s advanced meme-cruncher algorithm (which is sentient now by the way and has been crashing on my couch for a few too many weeks) this is roughly what we can anticipate:

It's pretty on-point, if you ask me, but I could be wrong. If you have better examples, we'd be happy to see them. Complicit in meme-making or not, anyone playing War of the Chosen later this month will run into the same tools, though I'm not sure how they'll show up and if you'll be graded on how insidious your message is. If Tom's recent hands-on with War of the Chosen is any indication, you'll have plenty of other problems to worry about anyway. 

I'm a few missions into an XCOM: War of the Chosen campaign and nothing is on fire. Okay, things are a little bit on fire. I just massively failed a mission to slap some explosives on a pulsating alien artifact. The enemy's new colour-coded enemies pack quite a punch when you're unprepared for their abilities.—never underestimate an alien hybrid with a flamethrower.

It has been great fun so far. I was worried that the Chosen would become a game within a game—an annoyance to one side that had to be dealt with while getting on with the important  business of saving the world. They really do dominate, though, which makes War of the Chosen feel like an overhaul rather than a straightforward expansion. New environments like the abandoned cities populated by The Lost (zombies) and ruined underground hideouts make the game feel immediately fresh even as the game's structural changes gradually become apparent. 

I still worry that there will be too much to keep track of once I have discovered all of the resistance factions and I'm under attack from all of the Chosen, but War of the Chosen masterfully drip feeds each element in the early game with some new characters and some surprisingly badass cutscenes. There is plenty more to discover, and I'll get into the new skill trees and hero abilities closer to launch once I better understand their efficiencies. Here are a few points that have jumped out at me so far.

The resistance heroes are the real stars of the expansion

The Chosen are an interesting threat, but so far I have found the resistance heroes to be much more interesting. They are introduced through a great series of introductory videos and missions that build out the world. The idea that Earth has been occupied for a long time is much more convincing when you're meeting people who have survived in the shadows for decades and formed rivalries and alliances with other groups. I would read a series of XCOM comics set in this world.

The heroes' introductory missions mix up the formats we've become accustomed to in 'vanilla' XCOM 2. One mission lets you assign a resistance hero a bodyguard of two soldiers as you travel through a zombie-infested city on the way to a clandestine meeting. This bodes well for the special Chosen-hunting missions to come.

The two factions I have encountered so far—the powerful Reaper snipers and the fast hybrid Skrimishers—are characterful and exciting to use in the game. The Reaper hero can move and fire her sniper rifle, and has a chance to remain cloaked when performing actions, even when one of those actions involves tossing a claymore at someone's head. The skirmisher can obliterate enemies up close and then use a grappling hook to zip away to safety.

The Chosen patrol areas of the world map

Once the three Chosen have been introduced they pick a continent and camp down there. If you fight in their zone there is a chance they harry you during missions. The Chosen are tricky to deal with and they are a significant threat, but they have specific weaknesses that make them more manageable. The Assassin takes extra damage from Reapers and explosions, so you're encouraged to mix up your squads to incorporate some anti-Chosen options when you're battling in their territory.

If you don't disrupt the Chosen using covert actions and missions they can enact some nasty plans. The Assassin I'm battling at the moment is working towards "Retribution—a brutal crackdown on the Resistance, permanently lowering XCOM's income." The Chosen need to gather 'knowledge' before they can put a plan into action, which they accrue by kidnapping and holding XCOM soldiers. They give you a strong incentive to take a mission to break them out of prison.

I was worried The Chosen collectively would be too disruptive, but they are actually competing with one another for the favour of their alien overlords, thank goodness. That at least gives us the chance to pick them off one at a time.

Covert actions are an integral part of the expansion

You periodically receive a list of covert actions you can undertake from each resistance faction. You add the required soldiers to the mission, they vanish for a few days, and then automatically complete. Covert actions are essential if you want to hunt down the Chosen in that resistance faction's region, but they are also a vital source of supplies. You get a lot more rookies than you do in a standard XCOM 2 campaign, but it can be hard to scale up your economy to keep up with the demands of the campaign. 

You can also use covert actions also increase your influence with resistance factions. Doing this unlocks more resistance 'orders', which give you strong, specific upgrades. I have 'lightning strike', which gives units +3 mobility for the first two turns of battle while they are concealed. It's hard to tell at the moment whether it's worth pursuing these at the expense of other covert actions.

There are so many facilities to build now

This feels like the most unfocused part of the expansion so far. You need a resistance ring to enact resistance orders and manage your covert actions. You need a training facility to manage your soldiers' skills, in addition to the guerrilla tactics school, which you absolutely have to build at some point to expand your squad size. Clearing out rooms in the Avenger, spending money and assigning engineers doesn't involve much interesting decision-making and it feels like I'm being charged in-game currency to access some of the expansion's coolest features.

Your scientists get inspired

There is so much to juggle in War of the Chosen that the game has to give you a hand every now and then. Sometimes your science team will get excited about a particular technology upgrade. If you select that 'inspired' upgrade it completes extremely fast. They complete so fast it feels stupid to select any other upgrade.

You can check whether you will flank before you make a move

One of my favourite additions in the expansion is a small one. When you have a soldier selected you can press alt while mousing over a square to see if you will end up in a flanking position or not. This certainty is great for the game. War of the Chosen rewards you with skill points for tactically astute moves like flanking and attacking from high ground. You can use these to give your ordinary soldiers special abilities that normally belong to resistance group specialists.

There is a huge amount to the expansion, including more customisation options, maps, ordinary mission types, Advent variants, propaganda posters, resistance radio, dodgy "we're not so different, you and I" Chosen banter. We'll bring you more as I get stuck in. War of the Chosen is out on August 29.

It's that time of year again where we round up our absolutely, positively, empirically-tested, definitive list of The Top 100 PC Games. Spread across a whopping 27 pages, our global team has assembled to rank and share the best of the best you can play right now. But the question is: do we have a new number one? Find out within.  

Elsewhere inside, Chris reports back from his exclusive hands-on time with version 3.0 of Star Citizen's Alpha, while Andy takes an in-depth look at XCOM 2's game-changing War of the Chosen expansion. Samuel jumps into Assassin's Creed Origins, the soft reset of the open world series, while Steven Messner takes Final Fantasy 14's Stormblood add-on for a whirl. 

Fancy some extra reading this month? Of course you do, and we've got you covered with our 52-page Blizzard special supplement—a celebration of the studio's past, present and future. 

Previews this month include Tropico 5, Metal Gear Survive, Crackdown 3 and much more; and an extra gift by way of a free pet for Runescape should see you right.  

Issue 308 is on shelves now and available on all your digital devices from Google Play, the App Store and Zinio (they may be slow to update—look for the red-eyed alien on the front). You can also order direct from My Favourite Magazines or purchase a subscription to save yourself some cash, receive monthly deliveries and enjoy our exclusive subscriber covers. Check out this month's beauty:

This month:

• The Top 100 PC games you can play right now.
• Andy takes an in-depth look at XCOM 2: War of the Chosen.
• Chris gets an exclusive hands-on with version 3.0 of Star Citizen's alpha.
• Steven Messner rates FF14's Stormblood expansion.
• Our 52-page Blizzard special supplement.
• Caveblazers, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, Get Even and more reviewed.
• Assassin's Creed Origins, Metal Gear Survive, Crackdown 3 and more previewed.
• Our keyboard group test.
• And much more!

I recently sat down with XCOM boss Jake Solomon and played through a mission from War of the Chosen. This expansion adds an enormous amount of new stuff—both frivolous and game-changing—to Firaxis’ brilliant sci-fi strategy game, to the point where it almost feels like a sequel.

And while I was taking notes on my laptop as Solomon explained the expansion’s new features, I noticed he seemed to be remembering something new every few minutes. So here are as many things as I managed to scribble down during my demo, between actually trying to play the thing.

If you want to read a thorough rundown of everything I got up to in my playthrough, diving deep into the new enemies and altered campaign structure, you can read all about it in the next issue of PC Gamer.

The Chosen are crazy powerful

These powerful new enemies aren’t just regular grunts. They have distinctive personalities, weapons, and powers. And they’ll even remember previous battles, similar to Shadow of Mordor’s nemesis system. You’ll fight them multiple times in a campaign, and they’ll get stronger as you do. You’ll come to hate these guys in the same way you grow to love your own soldiers.

The Assassin is a master of stealth, able to appear from nowhere and knock your soldiers out of a battle, temporarily, in a single action. Hunters are alien/human hybrids with a more cynical personality than you might expect from an XCOM enemy, and use long range rifles. And Warlocks can summon additional enemies to the battlefield using their psionic powers.

Assassins can kidnap your soldiers

Don’t get too attached to your soldiers in War of the Chosen. The Assassin can actually kidnap them directly from the battlefield, leaving you a man short in the middle of a fight. And if you want to get them back, you’ll need to secure intel to find out where they are and mount a potentially costly rescue operation. You’ll have to decide whether getting them back is worth the resources, or if you should just leave them in alien jail.

The Chosen have traits

The Assassin I fought in my demo had two positive and two negative traits, which will be different for every Chosen you encounter. This will determine how you fight them, and present weaknesses for you to exploit.

My Assassin had Blast Shield, which made her immune to explosions, and Shadowstep, which meant she could move around without triggering Overwatch. But to balance them out she had Bewildered, which means she takes additional damage if she’s attacked more than three times in a single turn, and Adversary, which makes her take extra damage from Reapers.

There are friendly heroes too

It wouldn’t be fair if you had to face The Chosen alone. You can recruit three hero classes from resistance factions that are similar to their alien counterparts, but with a few key differences. Reapers, the opposite of the Assassin, are nifty with a sniper rifle and can kill enemies from an incredible distance. And if they fire a shot while cloaked, there’s a chance they’ll remain hidden. 

Skirmishers, equivalent of the Hunter, can use a grappling hook to reach high ground and get a large number of actions each turn, making them extremely mobile. And the Templar, like the Warlock, can use psionic powers. As they kill enemies they build up a resource called Focus, which makes them stronger.

Heroes have their own upgrade tree

Each of the three friendly champions have their own bespoke upgrade tree, containing some very useful, and powerful, abilities. But to balance things out, they don’t level up the same way as your regular old soldiers. They have to spend a new currency called Ability Points, which you earn during battles by playing tactically. Flanking, using cover effectively, etc.

Hero abilities include Banish, which is one of the last Assassin unlocks and sees them emptying their entire magazine into a single enemy in one turn. For the Skirmisher there’s Battlelord, which grants them an action every time the enemy moves. This should give you an idea of how helpful these characters will be when you reach the late stages of a campaign.

Your soldiers will have more personality

Personality traits are new too, adding more nuance to your soldiers, but also having a tactical impact. One guy might only be happy when his gun’s fully loaded, and so if he’s low on ammo and you go to take a shot, he might disobey your order and reload instead. Another soldier may be afraid of a particular type of enemy, making him flee in terror if they show up.

Soldiers can also get tired after especially long, gruelling missions, affecting their performance if you bring them on the next one. And if they’re shaken they can’t enter the battle at all, and need to rest up for a while. As a result of all this, soldiers in XCOM 2 feel more fragile and human, which will surely make their deaths even more heartbreaking.

Soldiers can form bonds

Soldiers who fight together can eventually become friends, unlocking new shared abilities. One example is a free action, which a bonded soldier can ‘gift’ to their partner. And the more they work together, the greater their compatibility will become, earning you further rewards. But you can bet that when one of them dies, the other will suffer the loss in a big way.

Sitreps make things more interesting

These modifiers affect missions in increasingly unpredictable, interesting ways. It could be a limit of three soldiers, or a level littered with dangerous explosives. These are designed to make campaigns feel more dynamic.

There’s a new enemy type called The Lost

These zombie-like enemies were once human, but now stalk the crumbling, infected cities—a new environment in War of the Chosen—attacking anyone who crosses their path. Hordes of zombies might sound tedious in a relatively slow turn-based game, but Firaxis has a clever, and satisfying, solution to dealing with large groups of these pale-skinned, skull-faced fiends, which clamber out of the shadows and charge towards you.

Hit percentages for the Lost are high, rarely dipping below 70%, and when you score a headshot you get a free action. So if you’re lucky, and as long as your soldier’s weapon has ammo, you can repeatedly chain kills, taking out dozens of them in one turn. This is an elegant solution to having to fight so many of them at once, which would otherwise be a real chore.

There are three kinds of Lost

There’s the regular, shambling kind, which behave much like traditional Hollywood zombies. Then there are the Dashers, which can move much more quickly and easily surround your troops. And the Brute is a bullet sponge, able to soak up a huge amount of damage. And it’s worth remembering that they’re attracted to the sound of explosions, so if you toss a grenade or blow a car up, more of them will emerge from the shadows.

The Lost are neutral

If there are any ADVENT nearby, The Lost will attack them as eagerly as they’ll attack you. And you can use this to your advantage. Try throwing a grenade near some entrenched ADVENT and watch as the Lost descend on them, providing a convenient distraction. Just about every new feature in War of the Chosen adds to the tactical richness of the game.

You can create your own propaganda

A new mode called Photobooth lets you create custom propaganda posters for your soldiers—including bonded pairs—which you’ll see plastered up in levels later on. I’m not sure if this has any benefit besides being fun, but that’s probably enough, to be honest. It’s a good way of celebrating your favourite troops, and the editor is surprisingly feature-packed.

Like the first XCOM's expansion, War of the Chosen is designed to inject a pile of additional content to experience over the course of a fresh playthrough. Among a long list of other stuff, the expansion brings new missions, enemies, and resistance factions you'll encounter in your fight against the alien menace. Last week at 2K Games' office I played The Lost and Abandoned, a new mission from War of the Chosen that introduces many of the expansion pack's new characters and mechanics.

Chronologically, The Lost and Abandoned takes place near the beginning of a new campaign. You have to facilitate a meeting between two of WotC's three new resistance factions: the Reapers, who specialize in stealth, snipers, and explosives, and the Skirmishers, a warrior faction of former Advent soldiers who get extra actions when enemies do stuff, and can attack without ending their turn. The two don't exactly see eye-to-eye—the Reapers take a hard-line stance on anything alien, and the Skirmishers are, well, alien. 

At The Lost and Abandoned's mission prep screen, I formed two pairs of soldiers to each escort a Reaper and Skirmisher operative. The resulting three-man squads were formidable, as the resistance factions come with powerful new abilities. The Reaper faction, for example, utilizes stealth throughout the entire mission, thanks to "Reaper Shadow," a more powerful form of concealment that is both harder to see through and has a chance to not be broken when taking a shot at an enemy. Undoubtedly, advanced Reaper talents will allow their soldiers to get into and stay in stealth throughout several waves of combat.  

In addition to stealth, Reapers carry a Claymore mine that can be thrown and later detonated, both without breaking concealment. I also encountered a talent that would let me remotely detonate environmental explosives like cars and gas tanks—again without breaking stealth. Finally, Reapers attack with the Vektor rifle, a sniper rifle that can shoot on the same turn as moving. Powerful stuff.

After reaching the rendezvous point with my Reaper team, control switched over to the Skirmisher soldier and his two escorts. The Skirmisher faction plays differently from the Reapers, employing an in-your-face surge of attacks rather than calculated strikes. Skirmishers are outfitted with a Bullpup rifle that can be fired without ending the turn, meaning that with the base two actions, Skirmishers can attack twice, or attack then move, reload, or enter overwatch. I didn't encounter it myself, but I was told that advanced Skirmisher talents grant them extra actions when enemies move, shoot, or do pretty much anything. 

Skirmishers are also equipped with a grapple gauntlet that provides both offense and mobility. The grapple lets Skirmishers hookshot to higher terrain, as XCOM soldiers have sometimes been able to in the past—the new functionality is the ability to grapple enemies and pull them in close for a melee strike. It seems later talents will also unlock a ranged shock attack through the grapple wires.

Land of the lost

While escorting the two factions to the rendezvous point, my squads encountered one of War of the Chosen's new enemy types: the Lost, which are basically just zombies. The Lost appear in droves, are attracted to the sounds of combat, and individually can be dispatched relatively easily. 

Unlike most XCOM enemy squads, which appear in groups of three or four at a time, the Lost would appear in groups of four to six or more, often in rapid succession. But they can be removed from the battlefield just as easily. Any weapon-based attack against the Lost is called Headshot, and securing a kill in this way grants the attacker an additional action. 

This means you can chain together attacks on the Lost, so long as you secure a kill with each shot (the ones I encountered had, at most, four health). But when you're attacking multiple times, ammo becomes a factor. My sniper was able to cut down several Lost in a turn, but stopping to reload broke the free-action streak. And while The Lost and Abandoned never pitted me against both the Lost and other, more conventional enemies at the same time, I imagine fighting both in tandem will open up interesting new battlefield strategies.

Speaking of non-zombie enemies, let's talk about the newest big bad aliens: the Chosen. In our previous coverage, we talked about how the Chosen are Firaxis' take on Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system—smart enemies that adapt to your playstyle over a series of battles. In the Lost and Abandoned, I got to see the first of one of those encounters.

After reaching the rendezvous point and brokering a tenuous alliance, everything went to shit. The Assassin swooped in and abducted my Skirmisher. The resulting fight showed off the Assassin's skillset—stealth, a powerful melee strike, will-crushing psionic attacks, and immunity from reaction shots (so no abusing overwatch to set up an ambush). She's not without weaknesses, though—landing multiple hits in a single turn deals bonus damage to the Assassin's massive HP pool, and each Chosen takes additional damage from a corresponding resistance faction (in the Assassin's case, the Reapers). That second bit struck me as a bit odd, though—why should affiliation with one faction or another cause a soldier to do more damage to this particular alien? Maybe there's an in-universe explanation that I missed—otherwise, it's one of the few times I can think of that XCOM has implemented a 'gamey' mechanic without a logical reason. 

Either way, I finally managed to catch the Assassin out of stealth a few times and delivered enough damage to trigger a retreat. The difficulty was tuned to easy at this demo event, but the Assassin still was a formidable opponent. I can only imagine the nightmare she and the other Chosen will cause when they show up in missions on higher difficulty. I mopped up a few remaining Lost waves and made it to my extraction point, bringing the introductory Lost and Abandoned mission to a close. I didn't get my Skirmisher soldier back, but a rescue mission became soon available on the world map, granting a chance to bring him back into the fold. I was also met with a warning that most of the available map was under the protection of the Assassin, meaning she would be working to disrupt my progress and could show up at just about any time. 

All told, the Lost and Abandoned offered a great introduction to the new mechanics and story of War of the Chosen, but it's just that—an introduction. Like vanilla XCOM 2's intro mission, you can choose to forego the mission altogether, which will be nice for players on their second or third WotC playthrough. Doing so also means you'll encounter the resistance factions and Chosen enemies in a possibly different order, whereas completing the Lost and Abandoned will always set you up with an alliance with the Reapers, a Skirmisher rescue mission, and the Assassin as your first Chosen enemy. 

War of the Chosen adds a lot to make one of the best PC games even better, but more than anything I'm excited for all the personality it breathes into the alien conflict. The Chosen mock and taunt you at every turn, while the resistance factions—with their personal squabbles, individualized expertise, and unique outfits—add some nice variety to the hundreds of soldiers I've sent into battle before them.

Following its reveal at the PC Gaming Show at this year's E3, XCOM 2's War of the Chosen expansion has teased its stealth based melee unit, The Assassin, and its human Reaper faction. Now, its the turn of The Skirmisher to command the spotlight.

Billed as a group of former Advent devotees who, as noted in the in strap above, can be recruited during the DLC's campaign, The Skirmisher have figured out how to remove the chip that otherwise keeps them under our most formidable enemy's control. They're now ready to roll, and look pretty good for it. 

Here's a wee look at the soldiers in action:

As the aptly gruff-voiced man notes in the trailer above The Skirmisher make use of a Grapple Gauntlet that allows them "extreme mobility" on the battlefield, while granting them stronger attacking power. Unlike previous iterations of XCOM grappling, though, these guys can pull enemies from cover, launch themselves towards unsuspecting targets, and deliver shock attacks at will. 

Most interestingly, The Skirmisher can employ multiple actions during turns and can even react to their enemies' moves. "In other words," says the narrator above, "The Skirmisher is an army of its own." Quite. 

XCOM: War of the Chosen is due August 28. Till then, have a read of Tom's conversation with Firaxis' Jake Solomon about the incoming expansion.

The quote featured above may sound poetic, but it seems War of the Chosen's Assassin has the skills to back up her words. Announced at our E3 PC Gaming Show last week, the new XCOM 2 expansion will come with three distinct alien adversaries—the first of which Firaxis has chosen to showcase is the sword-wielding cyborg Assassin. 

As you'll see in the Inside Look trailer below, she's pretty cocksure. Which is the last thing your squad needs when staring down the blade of a razor-sharp katana.

A stealth based melee unit, The Assassin has the ability to vanish before your eyes which helps her sneak up on her foes. That's you, unfortunately, which means you'll want to be extra careful in sidestepping her preferred close combat approach. That said, The Assassin poses a threat from distance too: her 'Harbor Wave' ability strikes a wide-reaching beam of brutal psionic force.  

And as if that wasn't bad enough, The Assassin can also kidnap your soldiers. 

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is due August 28. Read Tom's conversation with Firaxis' Jake Solomon with regards to the expansion in the meantime.

At the PC Gaming Show creative director Jake Solomon outlined War of the Chosen, a massive expansion for XCOM 2 that adds three nemesis aliens, other resistance organisations, new soldiers, new abilities, new gear, zombies, cities full of zombies and too many other features to fit in one sentence. I spoke to Jake Solomon to learn more, and discovered that almost every aspect of the game has been retouched and expanded upon.

Let's start with the Chosen. The team saw the nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor and wondered how those persistent rivalries would work in the context of an XCOM 2 campaign. The result is three distinct alien heroes that will dog XCOM's efforts in battle and on the campaign map. They can run operations on the strategy layer to disrupt your campaign, and they will even taunt you in the command centre. Solomon felt that the strategy layer was a little cold in XCOM—"this is my fault," he says—so expect loads more chatter. In the ship between missions you'll hear Advent news reports spinning your missions. In the bar aboard the Avenger, if you zoom in there's a radio station playing with its own DJ.

Initially your alien nemeses are hunting 'knowledge', which they can acquire in a few different ways, including kidnapping yours soldiers from the battlefield and imprisoning them (you can break them out later). The more knowledge they gain, the more powerful they become. The Chosen ultimately want to find the Avenger, shoot it down with a huge gun and attack the wreckage to recapture the Commander and destroy the XCOM project. If the Chosen get the upper hand in a campaign you will have to play this mission to save yourself. If you manage to keep the Avenger safe, the Chosen will turn up in the game's final missions to make things especially hard. You're going to want to take at least one of them out.

To track down and kill the Chosen you need the assistance of the three new rebel groups— Templars, Reapers and a rebellious human-alien hybrid faction called the Skirmishers. Each Chosen is being hunted by a corresponding resistance faction. You send soldiers to aid resistance activities to improve your standing with a given resistance faction, unlocking leads on the Chosen along with strategic orders and resistance soldiers for hire. 

Solomon likens orders to policies in Civ, you enact them to activate a particular effect on the strategy layer or the battlefield layer. One order reduces the Avatar Project count by one bar per turn. Another pauses the countdown timer in a stealth mission until your squad has been revealed. There are dozens of orders themed to fit their associated resistance faction. You can cosy up to multiple factions at once, but obviously it takes time and resources to do so.

Befriending the Templars, Reapers and Skirmishers gives you access to the best soldiers in the game. Resistance heroes are insane.  The hybrid Skirmisher heroes are extremely quick, and can take multiple actions in a turn, for example, and they only get better as they level up and gain ability points to spend on powerful new skills. A low-level Reaper skill gives the hero a chance to remain concealed if they fire from stealth. A high level skill lets a hero fire their entire clip in one go, which is potentially amazing. A top-tier Templar skill lets them absorb corpses from the battlefield to create a clone of themselves. Solomon says it will take a long time to unlock the most powerful abilities, but they will be incredibly destructive.

But what about your normal soldiers? XCOM has its own pool of ability points. Clever tactical moves such as successful flank shots  in combat have a chance of generating points. If you build a training facility, you can then spend these points on your standard XCOM-trained soldiers. You have to be careful with them, though. In War of the Chosen soldiers become tired if you use them in multiple successive missions. You can send a tired soldier into battle, but there's a chance they will earn quirky traits. Jake Solomon gave the 'obsessive' trait as an example. If an obsessive soldier's clip is empty there's a chance they will use their first action in a turn to reload—anyone who mashes the reload key constantly in an FPS will sympathise. The system is designed to add more character-forming foibles to your squads, and to encourage you to diversify by benching tired soldiers to develop others.

Perhaps my favourite addition in War of the Chosen is the soldier bonds system. As your soldiers fight alongside one another in battle, pairs will be flagged as 'compatible'. If you nurture this compatibility your squaddies can form bonds that come with battlefield effects. Superfriends can potentially fire simultaneously on targets. If one goes down to panic, the other can run over and remove that status effect (Jake also mentioned new types of panic, but we'll have to wait and see what those are). The expansion also adds covert missions that let you send scientists, engineers and soldiers off to a location for a while to earn resources and help out resistance factions, and bonded soldiers will complete these more quickly. The system makes your soldiers more effective and realises the sort of battlefield dramas XCOM players have been crafting for years. I know what you're thinking, are these soldiers just friends, or something more? "It's up to players to decide what a bond represents" says Jake Solomon, diplomatically.

After all that I feel like I've only learned about a fraction of what the full expansion has to offer. The Chosen and the new resistance factions sound like an interesting challenge to manage, but I'm especially glad to hear about the smaller features—crew bonds, soldier traits, alien banter—that should bring more personality into the game. Firaxis says War of the Chosen is their biggest XCOM expansion yet. It already sounds essential.