From its surprise announcement to the fact that it’s coming out in less than two weeks for a reduced price, it’s clear that the newly-revealed XCOM: Chimera Squad will be doing things a bit differently than its mainline predecessors, and a new overview video goes into greater detail as to how.
Perhaps the biggest departure from the traditional XCOM experience is the fact that Chimera Squad won’t feature permadeath. If one of the game’s distinct characters (another change from the norm) goes down during a mission, they enter a bleeding out state and must be stabilized within a few turns, otherwise they’ll die and players will be forced to restart the mission. Though no longer permanent, critical injuries will still run the risk of hitting squad members with stat debuffs.
Missions will also move at a different pace than normal by including shifting objectives and different phases, like the new Breach Mode where players can plan out where to place their agents outside enemy bases to pull off the most effective infiltration. Combat, meanwhile, will ditch the standard flow of letting each side move all of its units in a turn for a new timeline system that shows which friendly and enemy units will get to move next, a far cry from the XCOMÂ Horror game Jake Solomon wants to make.
Combined with a campaign that players can actually fail should they fail to tackle the unrest afflicting the game’s setting, it looks like Chimera Squad, while hardly the XCOM 3 fans have been eager for, will have enough to make itself stand out, and hopefully in a good way.
XCOM: Chimera Squad comes out on April 24 for PC.