XCOM: Enemy Within Isn’t Part of XCOM 2 Timeline

XCOM’s fiction isn’t the main draw for those games, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people that are interested in its details. Which is why I think our readers might be interested to learn that, talking with the folks at PC Gamer, Firaxis’ senior producer Garth DeAngelis revealed that in the XCOM 2’s timeline the XCOM organization never managed to research and produce the advanced technology added by the XCOM: Enemy Within expansion. In his words:

Mechs? Genetically modified super-soldiers? Nope. In this world, the XCOM unit didn’t reach any of that. “We wanted a clean slate with that,” DeAngelis says, “and just build off of. If XCOM had to go underground pretty early in the Enemy Unknown game, how would that be handled?”

Despite this, some of the design philosophies of Enemy Within will be carried across. “We really liked how meld worked in Enemy Within,” DeAngelis says. “We thought that was a cool wrinkle. Narratively it doesn’t make sense to have meld in XCOM 2 because the scientists haven’t advanced to that stage, nor have they found the resource. But, we liked that mechanic a lot.

While the additions to the story won’t be referenced in XCOM 2, the design philosophy of Enemy Within will still influence the new game. DeAngelis cites the new loot mechanic, which will put a time pressure on the players in a way not dissimilar from the MELD resource in Enemy Within.