XCOM: Eternity

[Seperallis]

So after warming myself up on a game of XCOM where I replaced the normal name generator with Caprecia/Oracia/Eternity names so I could kill you all (you may have seen the posts) and promptly murdering the aliens (I'm still playing that game without finishing the campaign, just to get certain achievements), I've decided to up the ante - and the difficulty - and start a new campaign.

I also want to record it with commentary. Yeah, I know, the quality of commentary on my RTK11 videos is....yeah, pretty shit, but XCOM gives much more opportunity for better quality just by virtue of the gameplay. Just fair warning, I'm not a funny guy, so it'll probably just be me talking about my tactical decisions. I'll be using your names again, though I think I'll cut the list from the ~150 names it currently has down to about, oh, 50, just to give a chance for people here on this forum to actually be selected instead of Joe McRandompants who made 30 posts before disappearing 6 years ago.

But do you want that? Should I even bother?

I mean, I'm going to make the campaign either way, but recording/editing takes time, and I'm not going to spend the time if no one cares about this kind of thing, especially when I already have another commitment I've been neglecting I need to work on.

So yeah, poll at the top.

[Seperallis]

So I guess the overwhelming response is that I should do this. That's cool. I'll probably get to starting on it sometime within the next couple weeks, most likely while Sal's away on her business trip.

In the meantime, I've been flip-flopping between doing a vanilla (unmodded) campaign, and doing a campaign using the Long War mod. The two offer to very distinct viewing opportunities:

Vanilla:
With the Vanilla campaign, everything moves as normal. Research happens at its normal pace, there's a handful (usually 3-5, sometimes more) missions per month and the story tends to progress relatively quickly; generally I'll get through at least one major plot point per month. Usually the campaign ends around/before December (it starts in March). Vanilla is easier viewing, because - assuming I don't flat out lose - a campaign victory comes relatively quickly, maybe in about 30-40 hours of gameplay.

Long War:
Long War is a beast. It is a mod that seriously lengthens the time it takes to complete a campaign by lengthening the time it takes to complete research/foundry projects, and then balancing the game around it. It also includes a loooot more content, and addresses several community complaints with the base game, such as making it so only one abduction pops up instead of three at a time (and you only being able to get one of them), more missions per month, expanding the complexity of what used to be a very simple UFO combat mechanic, introducing all new sets of weapons and armor, new skill trees, a larger squad size, the ability to liberate countries that fall to the aliens, more enemies, and a lot more. Of course, the thing I like the most is that the progress of the aliens is no longer linear and predictable; the aliens must also gather and use resources in order to perform research and launch attacks, though theirs is obviously performed (mostly) in the background.

By far the most notable change is the introduction of fatigue, whereby soldiers that go on a mission come back "fatigued;" while a fatigued soldier can still go on another mission while still fatigued, they'll become "wounded" and be out of action for a certain time. This is a huge change from vanilla, where solders can go on mission after mission as long as they don't get hurt, and means it is pretty much a necessity to have a couple dozen troops on your roster that you can cycle in and out of combat...which means you'll get to see more names and more different people in action, instead of the same 6-8 people every mission.

So yeah. I'm kinda torn between the two. If you have an opinion one way or the other, please share it so I can make up my mind.

[Seperallis]

Conversation with Ikarius in the chat reminded me that, using some optional features before starting the campaign, I can get the Long War campaign time down to about the same length as a normal campaign. I have no opinion, honestly; I can play either.

So then, I guess the question comes down to whether or not you'd rather see a long campaign, or a "short" one.