During the PC Gamer Show at E32017, Jake Solomon announced War of the Chosen, previously teased as 'The Real War Begins'. It releases 29th of August on all systems XCOM 2 is available on.

Supposedly, War of the Chosen is the largest XCOM expansion Firaxis has ever made, the previous being Enemy Within which wasn't huge but pretty significant.

Some details were given on the expansion's content. It was not entirely clear to me if this was an entirely new campaign, but I would assume it works as Enemy Within; all the additional toys and story lines are just implemented into the main game. War of the Chosen adds three Chosen to the game. These are basically three new Rulers in the sense that they are boss-like enemies that return in different missions over the course of the game. Unlike Rulers, they increase in power and abilities as well from mission to mission, even in certain procedural ways.

Beyond this, three new factions have been added to the game that can be allied by XCOM. These will unlock three new classes. From what I understand these classes are more powerful than base classes, it sounded more on par with Psionic-soldiers. I'm not sure if they are recurring templates or actual heroes, I am tentatively assuming the former as the latter wasn't expressly stated. It is written that they are hero classes. The three new classes are Reaper (a stealthy saboteur and sniper), Skirmisher which is basically a tanky warrior and Templars which build focus by performing certain abilities and can consume Focus on more powerful abilities. Which sounds an awful lot like the one of the most successful class mods made for XCOM 2 (except it looks better).

Lastly, it was mentioned that you will return sometimes to the area's of the first game that are abandoned, instead of the dystopian cities of Advent that you are used to. Here, a new enemy type called the Lost are present. They are humans that have turned zombie by alien interference 20 years ago during the original invasion. They are weak by themselves, but always appear in hordes and are endless. They are not friendly to the aliens, so it was said that if they show up during a battle, both XCOM and the Aliens will scatter to survive the assault.

On top of that, the promise of lots of new enemy types, gear to use and other things.

Clearly, this expansion is aimed at the people that already enjoy and still (want to) play more XCOM 2. As someone who falls into that group, I am extremely excited about this. I like the sound of just about everything so far. The Alien Rulers were by far the best addition to XCOM 2, so having a more expanded version of that alone is real awesome.

I'm a little tepid on this.

Y'know, I kinda just want a new Terror From the Deep...

Seems like a cool expansions, but waiting on a price.

I have absolutely zero idea what the story is but looks like lots of cool toys to play with. X Building off XCOM 2 is really exciting for me (loved the game).

@philosyfee: I feel pretty confident in guessing between 29 and 39 bucks. Enemy Within was 29 bucks at launch, but this sounds pretty expansive compared to it and they also made a big deal out of how large it was for XCOM standards, so it could be a bit more than that.

@artisanbreads XCOM never seemed to be more than a superficial story. This did look cutscene heavy, but I bet we basically saw most of the cutscenes in the trailer. I don't think the story will be a big focus of the expansion. Which is fine by me, I just want to experience that extended campaign.

@zevvion: Yeah it seemed to be more story unless like you say it's all of it. I haven't enjoyed the story part in the last two games really but they both ruled. Not what I come in for.

I WILL PURCHASE THIS. i've been looking for an excuse to get back to xcom2 (haven't played since launch despite having the season pass; kinda ran like butt on my middling pc).

lot's of folks slept on OG xcom2- hopefully this gives people a reason to take another look, i had a ton of fun with it.

Sure, alright. I enjoyed XCOM 2 just fine. New classes sound neat, the prospect of semi-allying with aliens during a Lost horde rush sounds awesome (unless the aliens prioritize the player still), and the Ruler fights were easily the most engaging bits of XCOM 2. These new ones look cool too.

@theht: What I gathered from Jake Solomon's pitch was that if the Lost show up, you basically have to leave because they'll eventually overrun you, and the Aliens will fight them off as well. That sounds to me like they will not prioritize the player, but I am of course just trying to infer something there.

@mellotronrules If you have it already, you should play with Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift on. They are both very cool pieces of DLC, especially Alien Hunters. It's worth playing it again for that.

@zevvion: Good enough! Stuff that shuffles the board are always fun (which is part of what made the Alien Rulers so much fun).

I am down for an excuse to play XCOM 2 again.

Could not agree more. Better than the first game in every way.

@zevvion: I haven't even played the DLC myself... if I get the expansion could I have it all at once? I might just wait for that, sounds fun.

Also the info I'm seeing about the expansion sounds great. While I liked the idea of the strategy layer (and think it was better than the first game hands done even with its issues) it needed more going on and more interesting dynamic factors to deal with as a player. The factions and zombie enemies sound like cool additions. Sounds like the DLC did as well.

@artisanbreads: They haven't really specified what War of the Chosen is exactly. I am assuming it will be an augment to the base game like Enemy Within was. In which case you will be able to play the DLC when this comes out.

I want it to be a separate, individual campaign OR continue after the events of the game where I could load my last save.

Played this game earlier this year and enjoyed it but I don't want to go through the story stuff again, thought it was subpar compared to EU and EW

I bought the DLC but haven't played XCOM 2 since finishing the campaign the first time around. I really liked it. I think XCOM: EU made more of an impact on me, but XCOM 2 is still fantastic. I need to get back to it.

Yeah that's pretty much me.

Even as someone who slogged through an entire LW2 campaign and was ready to barf out Xcom out of my system towards the last half of that experience I am still super interested in what addition Xcom2 team proper can make and dive into the new stuff that's paced for sane people.

Need to finish Xcom 2 already. This looks interesting, it seems like there is more story/cutscenes then the first two games combined.

In my campaign, everybody died except the commander avatar...so I sure hope this jumps off on a new main character.

@tennmuerti: Are you saying you didn't enjoy Long War 2? Finally someone with similar tastes. Doubling down on turn timers, overwhelming you with aliens to artificially bring up the difficulty... I didn't enjoy it. You should check out Spectrum Green which was recently released on the marketplace. It is by far the best overhaul mod for XCOM 2 so far I would say.

@zevvion: LW2 has some great ideas and interesting mechanics, I'd say I like their take on the tactical layer for example to make it more active, and their overhaul of mechs to actually make them useful. But it's also a case study in what's different about game design as a product meant to sell to an audience that's providing a curated experience and a mod with runaway ambitions and little to no concern for game flow or the players time. Aside from many minor-medium issues, at the end of the day LW2 just becomes a gigantic boring mindless grind, and I truly mean gigantic. Ironically "Long War is way too long" is a phrase I thought out loud probably 50 times over while playing it.

I mean it was fun seeing a bunch of strategy streamers try to hop into LW2 and seeing pretty much all of them quickly abandon that idea. And in regards to that I wonder how many people actually had the patience to finish the damn thing proper vs. starting numbers. At times it even feels like the people testing out the mod themselves never did a full proper playthrough from start to finish, considering some late game mechanics I saw.

LW1 had a lot of similar problems actually.

I'll give Spectrum Green a look next time I feel the Xcom itch. I definitely enjoyed some of the other community mods, like extra customization options or some of the Better Advent mods that overhaul the AI and create more diverse enemies.

Looks great, seems like i must have not got far enough into 2 to see wtf these new aliens are unless they are new to this game? I really need to finish it but the game is LONG and after losing my first campaign i couldn't get through my second as i got burned out.

Interested in this, but their DLC so far has left me iffy... well, mainly the elite boss thingy one (Alien Hunter, I believe it was called), the system they used for that was horrible, broke the system(had to use special gear on special random enemies so they didn't attack outside of the turn system, in order to just get some armor), and ruining the game (imo). If they fix that for these rulers, than am in, but if its just like those elite boss thingys, well, I have a rather long backlog of games, and I see no reason to go back to play something that I didn't enjoy.

@oursin_360: They're new enemies, at least to the base game (haven't played the DLC).

@tennmuerti: I didn't like the early things I heard about LW2 sounding like a terrible grind and you made me glad I didn't start it and just waited for all this stuff to play XCOM 2 again. Although I guess I would have quit it lol.

To me it does seem like hitting the limits of that game being modded. Without more work or just the limits flat out.