History Headscratchers / XCom2

** There is absolutely no evidence of any kind of "bleedthrough" in the psionic network or that this was a false memory.
** there are two other possibilites, Xcom lost support but continued the fight, until the base assault which the aliens succeded in doing because they had "upgraded" their soldiers, hence the Xcom 2 muton)or the surrender happened because the Aliens did they base assault and won, holding the Commander as proof of victory.

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[[folder: Avatar project is such a mystery!]]
* As the folder title shows why was there a whole "we don't know what the avatar project is" mystery in the game? I played it on the release, and the second avatar came up i was like "its a new host body for something, probably the ethereals" anyone with even slight knowledge of, I don't know, WORDS, would be able to make an educated guess, there isn't even a big mystery of how they are doing it, people are going missing in gene therapy clinics, there is a project named after an artifical host body to contain a god, I wonder what those missing humans could be, os why was it a big mystery amongst someone so intimate with the invaders?

[[folder:Tutorial facility.]]

** The ending cinematic shows the resistance being crushed mostly by regular troops. There are a couple of factors related to this. First, they need humanity as long as the project is going on. Once it is completed, humanity has served its purpose. It can be crushed completely now-just "nuked from orbit" if they feel like it. Second, to win they only have to find the Commander. With the vast psionic power of a completed Avatar, they can track him wherever he goes and defeat him with an endless wave of troops, UFOs, and whatever else they decide to send. Finally, the Avatar project was taking up an absurd amount of Advent's resources. Once it is complete, it can focus entirely on crushing X-com, when added to the above factors making it a loss.

** From a Doylist perspective, this is a reflection of the slight change in underlying description for the alien forces. XCOM had "organic things with implants" (most of the enemy types), "weird silicon-based lifeform with extensive implants" (the Cyberdisk and the Seeker), weird energy being (the Outsider) and "wholly mechanical" (Sectopods). XCOM2 seems to want to simplify things (whilst introducing its own handwaving about what "psionics" actually is), so the Cyberdisks and Seekers are removed, to be replaced with a more obviously horrific "organic thing with implants".

* Minor one, but one that's been bugging me since I noticed. Why did Advent leave a Sectopod in a garage (also an issue) on the roof of the facility? Yes gameplay reasons it works but in story you would think having a walking death ray in a location it can't escape from would be problematic and less than tactically sound than just having more pop-up turrets (also odd choice to have so many turrets in an seemingly unimportant area) and have your walking tank walking the perimenter. In short the security was oddly designed, almost like it was purposely created to kill the people in the building rather than protect them...maybe there is a in-universe reason afterall?

** It is not too implausible considering that during the event of XCOM: Bureau Declassified, the American government managed to build an elerium power system hidden right under the Hover Dam back in 1962. If an earth government could cover something that big, what can the Alien do?

** But that's the point being made above: it's made clear that Archons (like Floaters) don't have a "natural state" which looks anything like a thing with armour and jets attached to it. (And Berserkers are heavily implied to be as far from the natural state of the protoMuton as Mutons are, just in the opposite direction of "more angry" rather than "more soldierly"). What Vahlen did with both samples was to make them much less like their "natural state", and in the case of the Archon King, apparently by developing additional technology to implant into it!

### The Ethereals would leave Earth, having [[spoiler: found their cure and now seeking new races to subjugate in their fight against what has destroyed the world of all those alien races they have in their arsenal.]] This, of course, would leave humanity to fend for itself against an enemy we have no way of stopping in our weakened state. Our race [[spoiler: in the form of the Avatar]], would only live on as part of the Aliens' armies, in the same way the Mutons and sectoids are, genetically perfected individuals with no deviation from each other.

** honestly I don't really get what is supposed to be so powerful about the avatars. My death squad killed one, and [[spoiler: in my own avatar I managed to kill 4 at the same time.]] I mean, as I understood it, the avatar was never really about making the ethereals MORE powerful. They are already psionic gods. [[spoiler: The point of the avatar project was to genetically engineer a physical form sturdy enough to contain the immense psionic power of an ethereal mind/soul, since their own bodies were slowly being destroyed by their immense power. its a cure, not a weapon]]

** It's possible that it can be a "training ground" of sorts for Thin Men/The Speaker(s), by getting them immersed in a human environment before sending them out into the world. Either that, or the enclosure is for [[LesCollaborateurs some human scientists working on the Avatar Project]], [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere who either ran away]] [[YouHaveFailedMe or were executed]] by the time to play gets there.

** Related to that, unless I missed it we have no idea exactly how long the aliens had been observing Earth before the invasion, only a few passing mentions of people going missing. For all we know they could have been watching the Earth for hundreds of years, and simply placed that facility down there in a time before the advent of satellites, RADAR, and frequent ocean travel.

* The Skyranger. It's completely different from the previous iteration, seeming to incorporate some alien technology, but it has a dramatically shortened range, and bears no physical resemblance to the original (aside from being a capable troop transport.) So why still bother calling it a Skyranger?
** Why the crew are still wearing their flag on their back or using Central codename even though his grade and occupation kind of changed? Lot is made so that X-com looked like it still alive while actually it's just a remnant of what it once was to keep morale.
** My headcanon is that the wearing of national flags is a way of flipping the alien-controlled world government the bird, and demonstrating loyalty to the way the world was, with humanity in control of its destiny. As for why Bradford kept the callsign "Central"... it's his callsign. Those things are like a name. You don't just change it. Besides, Bradford may have wanted to keep it as a reminder of happier times.

* In the final cutscene. [[spoiler: How did the resistance fighters at the check point pick up Advent guns? Didn't a research project explicitly state that doing so caused, in some cases lethal, damage? Isn't this the exact reason you can't do so in-game?]]

** Maybe the biometrics were tied in to the psionic network, so when you took down the Advent broadcast tower they all became safe to use. I'll admit that's a silly way to design them, but it wouldn't be the first time alien hubris trumped logic.

** Perhaps the Cyberdisks ARE the Gatekeepers. It's never really revealed in Enemy Unknown if the Cyberdiscs are wholly mechanical or not. Maybe there is an organic component, and that was re-engineered by the aliens using human DNA to create the Gatekeepers. We know [[spoiler: the Ethereals' endgame is to create psionically powerful Avatars to house their consciousnesses, and defeat their species-wide deterioration. Perhaps the Gatekeepers were one of the experiments leading into the Avatar Project, seeing just how adaptable human genetics were, and just how far humans could be pushed psionically.]]
** From a Doylist perspective, this is a reflection of the slight change in underlying description for the alien forces. XCOM had "organic things with implants" (most of the enemy types), "weird silicon-based lifeform with extensive implants" (the Cyberdisk and the Seeker), weird energy being (the Outsider) and "wholly mechanical" (Sectopods). XCOM2 seems to want to simplify things (whilst introducing it's own handwaving about what "psionics" actually is), so the Cyberdisks and Seekers are removed, to be replaced with a more obviously horrific "organic thing with implants".

** There is absolutely no evidence of of any kind of "bleedthrough" in the psionic network or that this was a false memory.

** Even more confusing is that in XCOM:EU the Floater is implied to be genetically related to the Muton. Which means there's no Archon embryo, but Muton one. Then again, Berserker is also related to Muton, which implies a genetic similarity between Berserker and Archon. Maybe they do start as the same specimen, but Vahlen make them to Berserker and Archon ForScience.
** It's also implied that the natural state for a muton is closer to a berserker. Therefore if you reverted the wrong part of an archons DNA you could end up with an archon with the extra strength, endurance and aggression of a berserker.

* Why can't you find MELD anymore? Considering the fact that the aliens are running gene therapy clinics, you'd think there'd be a ton of it laying around [[spoiler: Ignoring the fact that they probably didn't want to have to program the Enemy Within stuff, and may add it in future DLC]]

* Exactly how does the avatar project = the apocalypse? Everyone is so sure that if the project is completed, it will be "the end, for all of us" but why? HOW? Alright so [[spoiler: millions of people were melted down into soylent green.]] But thats not the apocalypse....

### The Ethereals would leave Earth, having [[spoiler: found their cure and now seeking new races to subjurgate in their fight against what has destroyed the world of all those alien races they have in their arsenal.]] This, of course, would leave humanity to fend for itself against an enemy we have no way of stopping in our weakened state. Our race [[spoiler: in the form of the Avatar]], would only live on as part of the Aliens' armies, in the same way the Mutons and sectoids are, genetically perfected individuals with no deviation from each other.
### The Ethereals [[spoiler: having found their cure]], choose to make their final stand on Earth. If they're unable to convince X-com and any resistence to stand with them, X-Com and the rest of humanity would be wiped out easilly by the [[spoiler: ''Ethereal-controlled'' completed]] Avatars so they wouldn't have to fight a war on two fronts. In neither case, humanity survives as we know it.

** The ending cinematic shows the resistance being crushed mostly by regular troops. There are a couple of factors related to this. First, they need humanity as long as the project is going on. Once it is completed, humanity has served its purpose. It can be crushed completely now-just "nuked from orbit" if they feel like it. Second, to win they only have to find the Commander. With the vast psyonic power of a completed Avatar, they can track him wherever he goes and defeat him with an endless wave of troops, UFOs, and whatever else they decide to send. Finally, the Avatar project was taking up an absurd amount of Advent's resources. Once it is complete, it can focus entirely on crushing X-com, when added to the above factors making it a loss.

* So the plasma weapons in the game are stated to be able to melt through at least a few inches of alien alloys, but why doesn't anyone ever consider shooting at a sectopod's legs when its in the high stance mode? I feel like losing a leg would be extremely detrimental to a bipedal robot, especially of that size.

** In the real world, soldiers are trained to shoot center mass at any target, even tanks and IFVs. Heck, even ATGMs will aim for the whole tank and not go for specific parts of the tank. Sure, it'd be easier to punch through a hatch, but a Javelin isn't that accurate, and it's a OneHiteKill anywhere it hits anyway. The point is, it's better to score a garaunteed damaging hit, than waste ammo going for something more vital that you might not hit anyway.
** should also be pointed out.... trying to hit the part of the target that moves the most, and isn't carrying a team-slaughtering RAPID-FIRING MAG CANNON and an even larger BFG is probably not the smartest decision.

** They were likely either not viable for the Ethereals' plans in the first invasion, since the Faceless probably needed more extensive conditioning and training and the Andromedons feel more like some kind of heavy support or engineering machine that happens to be able to kill humans well. Alternately, they were new forces either engineered or brought in after Earth fell. The Ethereals and ADVENT had twenty years to occupy Earth, that's more than enough time to develop new weapons and designs and bring in new troops from elsewhere.

* Fairly minor nitpick, but... why is XCOM still calling the alien spacecraft UFOs? The aliens have ruled Earth for two decades, they're not unidentified anymore.