When Crazy Works Out

I finished X-COM 2, as I said I would last post. The final battle was a bit of a gong show in challenge, and I was down to two of six soldiers at the very end. It might had been worse, if my favorite hero (Jill Kelley) didn’t go berzerk.

In the “perfect storm” of good skill selection, squad bonding, and bad luck, this happened. To set the stage – Ms Kelley “Ice” to her squadmates, and “Deacon”, are bonded soldiers. They started together, and during battle formed a “bond”. You get bonuses when you pair bonded squadmates together and using resources and various methods can strengthen that bond to get further bonuses.

One of Ice’s selected skills is “untouchable” – which she got at the Major promotion and says this: ” If you score a kill during your turn, the next attack against you during the enemy turn will miss “. She also has some neurotic negative effects due to her time in the field, and sometimes panics around psionics (being the victim of a devastating psionic attack that wounded her for 30 days recovery.

Stage is set. Here is how it played out.

My Avatar is a psionic, and there were 7 enemies, clumped relatively closely together. We were in trouble. My Psionic casted a void, huge area attack damage ability that does initial damage, and then explodes the next round.

After it was cast, it was an enemies turn, and they shot, and killed “Deacon”. The death of a bondmate made Ice go bezerk. She is a ranger. They specialize in close quarters combat (with a sword) and sure enough, she runs right into the void explosion area and starts slaughtering enemies. Quite successfully.

Now, she will probably die when the the next round starts and that thing explodes. Guess what. Her “untouchable” skill negated any damage. Got lucky! Well, this time, anyway.

In the final room, it happened again. She “Panicked” and became “Obsessed”, which also resulted in her going on a huge slaughter of the room, fear be damned.

Hilariously, without her shortcomings and the death of Deacon I probably wouldn’t have been successful in the final mission. I just found it fun and interesting that things considered “bad” for a soldier in the game was to my benefit.

I always was in favor of randomization because it provides opportunities for the unexpected result, which can be quite fun. Even if it would have happened the other way (she has panicked and ran and hidden before), at least that is a reasonable result from a soldier with PTSD sent on a suicide mission. Both are understandable outcomes.

1 comment / Add your comment below

  1. Great story! 🙂

    I wish stuff like this would/could happen more often in video games in general.
    Although I suppose when such more or less random events would happen regularly but not turn out in the player’s favour more often than not it might get frustrating. It’s a fine line I guess.

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