#xcom assassin

[witharsenicsauce]

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

The Chosen Assassin art by u/pao_briggs

[korbensoi]

When you think of the Chosen as children with divorced parents, suddenly my headcanon about Commander being their 'mother' makes a lot of sense. Bear with me for a moment here:

Warlock is the eldest child and spent, perhaps, most of his time with the other 'parent', who is bitter and tells him just how bad you are, how it would all be okay if you just came back to them. Of course, Warlock is the most loyal child of the Elders, who wouldn't have a grudge against such a 'neglectful mom' like Commander after all those years?

Hunter is the middle child, and true to his position, he simply gives zero fucks. Not as respected as the eldest child, not as loved as the youngest one, he's mostly left to his shenanigans. He's not opposed to any of his 'parents', he just wants to have fun - more than that, he can see flaws of both sides, judging by his comments in game. (Do I need to say he's definitely my favorite child? Hunter is so precious, I never wanted to adopt a sassy alien teen so badly before.)

Assassin, the youngest child, perhaps, the favorite one. Strives so hard to be as good as Warlock in terms of loyalty to the Elders, tries so hard to be a good daughter to deserve their attention. She wants to hate the other parent so bad, scoffing at Commander at any give point, and yet, when defeated... She can see and accept the truth. Maybe... Maybe her 'mother' isn't as bad as the Elders were telling her. And maybe she deserves to save this world of hers.

[ship-garbage-pile]

One of the features I want most to return and be expanded on in Assassin’s creed is that of the recruitment system.

There was something so special about recruiting and saving a random civilian and watching them grow into a master assassin, while I did enjoy them being named characters in AC3 I do feel that took some of the magic out of it, I love that the recruits could be killed. That feeling of ‘failing’ as a Mentor, hits so very hard and I wish the system was expanded on.

Like I think in my mind, the recruitment of soldiers in MGSV is a good example, because you can have the option to play as your recruited soldiers and I think there would be something fun about playing someone other than the main protag and playing a low stat member of the brotherhood.

I think what I would love more than anything is that recruitment should be a center stage mechanic. I think it would be a cool premise where you need to rebuild the brotherhood and can’t go ‘lone wolf,’ like you usually do. I think combat like Mirage is a good example of making the player feel more weak, encouraging stealth over combat.

[dare-to-dm]

There's this running joke HBomberGuy has in some of his videos where he makes a spreadsheet of all video games in order of which ones are the best. There's only like 4 games on his list, because it's more of an exercise in sarcasm than anything else. But to me there's nothing more relaxing than making lists and spreadsheets, so I decided to make a spreadsheet unironically ranking every video game I've ever played.

I tried to approach it with a certain level of structure by rating every game for the following categories: Gameplay, Story, Controls, Visual Aesthetics, Sound Design, Re-Playability, Quality Assurance, and User Interface.

Anyway, I've now rated 407 games, which is not necessarily an exhaustive list, but it does include everything in my xbox and PC libraries as well as other games I can remember playing earlier in life. And according to the aggregate scores, these are my top 10 games:

Mass Effect 3

Hades

Balatro

Baldur's Gate 3

Persona 5 Royal

XCOM Enemy Within

Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

Saints Row 4

Halo 3 ODST

Spiritfarer

This is not to say those are my favorite games (though I do really like all of them). Heck, a couple of them surprise me. But they definitely rank highly in my mind in terms of overall quality.

[yanderes-galore]

2025 Fandom Request Preview

Some people asked, so.... Definitely stopping requests after this for a long while so I can focus on my life.

Alien vs Predator

June 14th - 5:00 PM EST -> 6:00 PM EST

Apex Legends

Arcane

Arknights

Assassination Classroom

Assassin's Creed (Games)

Baldur's Gate 3

Bioshock

Black Butler

Black Clover

Blue Exorcist

Borderlands

Bungou Stray Dogs

Call of Duty

Carmen Sandiego (Netflix)

Cookie Run Kingdom/Ovenbreak

Cuphead

Cyberpunk 2077

Dark Deception

Dauntless

Dead Space

The Devil is a Part-Timer!

Devil May Cry

Disney Mirrorverse

Don't Starve

DOOM

Ducktales 2017

Dying Light

Evil Within

Evolve

Fallout

Far Cry

Final Fantasy

FNAF

Friday Night Funkin

Gears of War

God of War

Gravity Falls

Haikyu!!

Homestuck/Hiveswap

Honkai Impact

HTTYD

The Last of Us

League of Legends

Left 4 Dead

Legend of Zelda

Lobotomy Corporation

Madness Combat

Super Mario

Metroid

Metal Gear Series (Primarily Revengeance)

Mortal Kombat

Murder Drones

MLP FIM

Mystic Messenger

No More Heroes

Noragami

No Straight Roads

Obey Me!

One Punch Man

Outlast

Payday 2/3

Persona 3-5

Pirates of The Caribbean

Pokemon

Portal

Puss In Boots

Rainbow Six Siege

Saiki K

Skyrim

Solar Opposites

Sonic

Spooky Month

Street Fighter

Team Fortress 2

Terminator

Transformers

Toilet Bound Hanako Kun

Twisted Wonderland

Ultra Kill

Warframe

Walking Dead

Wednesday

The Witcher

Xcom

Yandere OC Ideas

Zootopia

November 2nd - 5:00 PM EST -> 5:40 PM EST

Any previously written fandoms.

[blarrghe]

because I've had a lot of trouble understanding what genres the videogames I like are over the years and have learned some Proper Words, here's a better poll

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH Devlog 0061

I should probably start with the housekeeping. I stream on Twitch now! It’s not always GameDev stuff, but I do plan on doing more streams of me working on this game. I’m also uploading those VODs to YouTube if you want to check them out later. I’m DeusVerve on both platforms. Now onto what I did last week.

Well I managed around eight upgrades or thereabouts.

That being said, those upgrades taught me a lot.

One of the most important parts of game design is selling your game’s Fantasy. I’m not referring to the genre; your game’s Fantasy is the Fantasy the player is living out through your game. For example, Resident Evil is the Fantasy of being an apocalypse survivor, the Hitman franchise is the Fantasy of being an international master of assassination, XCOM is the Fantasy of being a military commander against an alien threat.

All of this is important and closely tied to the more nebulous concept of Game Feel. That’s the bit where how your game feels to play informs the player about certain elements of the game. This is that bit where large numbers of game critics would describe the Arkham games as “It feels like playing as Batman” or Spider-Man as “It feels like playing as Spider-Man.” If you don’t feel like you’re playing into the Fantasy of the game, it doesn’t matter how much set dressing you use. The recent survival horror game, The Callisto Protocol, was criticized for how the combat meant that the monsters didn’t feel like a threat. The Game Feel ruined the Fantasy.

So what am I rambling about?

In Project RBH, the Fantasy is slowly accumulating power until you are basically the boss of a bullet hell shooter. What I have discovered is that small incremental upgrades, while effective, don’t feel good to use. The changes to bullet patterns are too minor.

Luckily this is pretty easily rectified. First, I have access to my drones, which provide players with additional supplementary weaponry, adding to the number of bullets the player fires and producing more elaborate bullet patterns. Furthermore, since I can also have my drones only fire when the player does, I can get around the biggest drawback the drones introduce: the Vampire Survivors Singularity.

(Vampire Survivors is a very different game than the one that I want to make, but the basic setup strongly overlaps with the Fantasy I am selling. Managing that is walking a fine line.)

Additionally, drones are very easy for me to set up, and easy to make distinct from each other.

Second, the upgrades I do have are easily tweaked. I’m instituting some rules for myself of what an upgrade int his game should be. If it affects multiple parameters, it should do so in a big way—both positive and negative. If it affects a single parameter, it should be a minor upgrade to better touch up problems a player might have with their current build.

Until next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[wisdomofanemptyheart]

Kromsian Conflict Game

I should be sleeping, but I have woken up and can't get back to sleep, so; rough outline of a turn-based tactics videogame based on the Kromsian war in Darkening Skies.

You have a choice of two factions - the Kaeri Necrosoviet and the Kromsian Cult. Probably the best way to explain how they'd work is with a force composition breakdown.

Playing as Kaeri, you choose either a Necromancer or Commissar as your leader unit. Both have loadouts and gain XP and skills like XCOM. You'd probably be able to pick any units for both but some perform better with each type.

The optimal Necromancer force has: * Necromancer: Spell-casting commander - they can assume control of constructs to give them orders, up to a per-turn limit. They can boost their units power temporarily, and cast powerful offensive and supportive spells, but they're fragile and the whole force collapses if they die. * Thanatomatons: magically animated skeleton robot soldiers, armed with a variety of weapons but mainly trench knives and stakerifles. They can't take complex actions without Necromancer control, and the Necromancer can only command so many per turn. Without direct control, they just sit around on overwatch but are less accurate. Mass produced and durable, a lot can be fielded and treated disposably. * Shells: More advanced thanatomatons inhabited by a soldier's ghost. They can act independently and use advanced tactics. When destroyed their ghost can be recovered and retains XP to be resleeved. * Osseomech: Human-piloted skeleton mecha, very powerful and versatile, but if the pilot is killed it's just a hunk of bone and metal.

The main flaws here are that these units need a Necromancer or necrotech to repair them, so it's very hard to deal with damage during combat.

The optimal Commissar force has: * The Commissar: A powerful fire mage, leads from the front. Buffs living allies, burns enemies, wields a sword and pistol - usually. * Kaeri Soldiers: Human soldiers equipped with a variety of ranged weapons; stakerifles, entropy cannons, flamethrowers, grenades, etc. Gain XP, can be treated medically in combat, have battlefield roles like medic, sapper, etc.

I could maybe think of more but this feels like enough since they can be mixed and matched. The Kaeri benefit from disposable constructs and heavy weapons platforms, backed up by ready access to spells.

Kromsian forces are much, much smaller, but each individual is far more powerful. I'm thinking they're comprised of five core units generally but maybe it could be more flexible.

*Twlight Guard: Warrior-priests of the vampire cult, humans empowered by the Dark Gift, garbed in biomagical power armour. One of these Savaan is the commander, and each is a powerful combatant with a variety of augumentations and weapons. It's very possible for a heavy-build Savaan to charge a Kaeri gunline and kill a dozen soldiers barefisted. If their Commander is killed, it's a coinflip if they go on a berserk vengeful rampage or have their morale devastated. Gain XP and new gear across a campaign, very durable. Mainly use melee weapons. * Twlight Surgeon: A member of the Savaan who has manifested the power of the Dark Goddess, able to mold and meld flesh. At once medic and technician, they can heal allies and repair their armour. Technically a non-combatant but you could spec one to be pretty scary in close quarters. * Shade of the Divine: Sacred assassins of the cult, these Savaan have specialised armour and augmentations to be fast, stealthy, and lethal. * The Venerable Guard: Savaan who've suffered fatal injuries, sealed into their sacred armour, bigger and bulkier than their peers. Use heavy ranged and chemical weapons. * The Horde: Large, ape-like creatures armed with clubs. The cult produces them en-masse but they're fragile and expendable. A blunt instrument of situational use, like diversions and screening more valuable units from fire. * Beasts: A variety of biomagically engineered weapon creatures with distinct purposes, like monstrous hunting hounds. * Titans: Huge, monstrous creations born only to destroy. Of little use beyond being bullet sponges that force Kaeri to engage - if one lives long enough to close with the enemy, it would nearly win by itself. * Special Unit: Vampire: only available if the Kaeri breach the Kromsian capital, for defense missions. Can basically solo an entire enemy force.

The typical battlefield is basically Area X from the film adaption of Annihilation - an area devasted by magical warfare, twisted and strange. Small skirmishes, I think.

The forces are pretty asymmetric, the Kromsians playing a bit more like X-COM2's protagonists, with low unit counts using ambush tactics. You use your big monsters to keep the enemy busy while trying to find and kill the Necromancer. Meanwhile, the Kaeri have the numbers and faceless grunts, and five priority targets.

Missions would have to differ too. Kaeri would have to be more defensive, as the Kromsians try to sabotage their installations and prevent them from advancing on the Citadel. Meanwhile the Kaeri are trying to advance across the Bordermarches to reach the Citadel, and would be subject to ambushes along the way.

Maybe it'd be fun to let both sides hire mercenaries from the rest of the setting? I think a 4X style game with a tactical layer across all of Darkening Skies would be cool since there are points in time where the setting is too stable for total war but has room for small-scale skirmishes.

[kriosv]

Know My Interests

Various Top 10 Media Lists under the cut

Favorite Movies

Oscar(1991)

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Godzilla Minus One

A Goofy Movie

Shazam!

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Kung Fu Panda

Jingle All The Way

Missing

Sinners

Favorite Video Games

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Mortal Kombat(2011)

Saints Row IV

Luigi's Manion

F Zero GX

Star Fox 64

Tekken 7

Injustice

XCOM 2

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Favorite Superheroes

Superman(Clark Kent)

Wonder Woman(Diana Prince)

Robin(Damian Wayne)

Superman(Jon Kent)

Green Lantern(Jessica Cruz)

Ms. Marvel(Kamala Khan)

Quentin Quire

Human Torch(Johnny Storm)

Spider-man(Peter Parker)

Nightwing(Dick Grayson)

Favorite Visual Novel/Adjacent Categories

13 Sentinels

Steins;Gate

Danganronpa

Zero Escape

Persona 5

Favorite Anime

Akudama Drive

Kaguya-sama: Love is War

Mob Psycho 100

Assassination Classroom

My Love Story!!

Spy x Family

Angel Beats!

Chio's School Road

My Hero Academia

Black Clover

Favorite TV Shows

Game of Thrones

Smallville

Agents of Shield

Star Trek Enterprise

Once Upon A Time

Heroes

Dr. Who

Legends of Tomorrow

Hercules The Legendary Journies

Hotel Del Luna

Favorite Songs

Keep You To Myself

In The End

Every Storm

Stupid Cupid

Dream of the Sky

How Do You Like Me Now

Remember The Name

Angel With A Shotgun

Kryptonite

This Ain't My Day

Comic Book Writers

Tom Taylor

Ryan North

Peter J Tomasi

Brian Buccellato

Eve Ewing

Geoff Johns

John Byrne

Kelly Thompson

Jed MacKay

Mark Waid

Comic Book Artists

Dan Mora

RB Silva

Jorge Jimenez

Jim Lee

Daniel Sampere

Daniele Di Nicuolo

Iban Coello

Francesco Mortarino

Jim Cheung

Jamal Campbell

Favorite Musicals

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

Thrones! The Musical Parody

Epic The Musical

Event;Horizon

We Are Tigers

Heathers

Twisted

Turnabout Encounters

Little Shop of Horrors

Black Friday

Galavant

West Side Story

Midnight Channel

Prom

Me and My Dick

Favorite Showtunes

The Way I Do(Starship)

Thank You Very Much(Scrooge)

There's a Fine Fine Line(Avenue Q)

Finale(We Are Tigers)

Gee Officer Krupke(West Side Story)

That's Just The Way It Is(Desperate Measures)

Wherever I Fall(Cyrano)

I Feel Pretty(West Side Story)

Come Out of the Dumpster(The Wedding Singer)

No More(Tick Tick Boom)

For Good(Wicked)

Wait For Me(Hadestown)

A Thousand More Words(Emojiland)

Blue(Heathers)

One Knight(Wonderland)

Favorite Bands/Artists

Sheepwave

Bowling for Soup

Sinewave Fox

Seckond Chaynce

Linkin Park

Queen

Halestorm

Avril Lavigne

Beach Boys

Alex Melton

Favorite Comic Book Supervillains

Dr. Victor Von Doom

Baroness Paula Von Gunther

Magneto

Mary Sue

B.R.O.D.O.K.

David Graves

Vanadia

Mad Hatter

Atrocitous

Batroc The Leaper

Favorite TV/Film/VG Composers

Ramin Djwadi

Bear McCreary

Nobuo Uematsu

John Williams

Blake Neely

Gustavo Santaolalla

Michael Giacchino

Favorite Books

Hunter's Run

Artificial Condition(Murderbot Diaries)

American Gods

Tuf Voyaging

Age of Ra

Fire & Blood

And YA/Childhood Faves

Warbringer(Wonder Woman)

Percy Jackson Series

Seventh Tower Series

The False Prince(Ascendence)

Kane Chronicles

[lasersquad]

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

Chosen Assassin fanart by Lewdreaper

[korbensoi]

It's... funny? Alarming? How do I even react to that??? But if I treat Xcom:EU/EW like anything from slice of life to a serious military universe, the xcom 2 game have one singular theme I can't stop associating with it. And it's religion.

Not any specific religion at that, more like the undertones and everything that comes with them (though, I'd admit Christianity is very close to what I think about all that). No, really, it's not me, it's devs who started that! Just look at all the important character groups: they all come in three. Bradford-Tygan-Shen. Reapers-Scirmishers-Templars. Warlock-Hunter-Assassin. For crying out loud, we even have THREE alien kings/queens! You know what else have three images? Holy trinity. Boom.

Okay, but seriously, though, it's... too fitting to not explore further. The way Bradford straight up idolizes the Commander, the way the Commander is viewed as some sort of messiah by the Resistance, and the way she feels about that. It's really tough to be a god, when you're only human, after all.

Little fact: it all started when I noticed, how much I was using "atone for his sins" when speaking about Tygan. It made me think, hey, but what if he IS a religious person? I love me some good contrasts, and having a character who is both calculating and logical and religious at the same time is ohhhh so very delicious. The angst! The mental struggle! The way he does whatever he's tasked to do during the day and prays for his sinful soul at night, Lord, have mercy, I am not immune to that. And after thinking about this I started noticing the trinity patterns, and then thought about "when does blind trust in Commander become a bit too close to worshiping", and here we are now.

[tastytofusoup]

The XCOM 2 Chosen Assassin

Would.

[treemotan]

Got slightly burnt out replaying 3h so I've started a new XCOM 2 run, but because I hyperfixate on characters and someone made a voice pack mod with (almost) everyone, I decided fuck it, I'm making the Black Eagles in XCOM and future recruits (aside from the story-provided faction units) are going to be random characters from other houses.

Anyways, some highlights of the run thus far:

Bonded soldiers thus far include: Edelgard and Dorothea, Hubert and Ferdinand, Linhardt and Caspar, Bernadetta and Yuri, Petra and Claude, Balthus and Hilda, Hapi and Dimitri, Sylvain and Felix, and Lysithea and Lorenz. A couple were deliberate (Caspar/Linhardt and Bernadetta/Yuri), but the rest just kinda happened on their own.

I've somehow only had a single Covert Op get ambushed and OF COURSE it was the one Ferdinand and Hubert were sent on.

Me forgetting how PSI Operatives work so all the people I WANTED in that class are already other classes so as of right now Sylvain and Annette are filling that niche. Basically Sylvain can read minds and make people's brains explode now. And both rocking the white hair and glowing purple eyes.

On that note, RNGesus absolutely BLESSING Sylvain with the move pool.

Seteth soloing an absolutely MASSIVE horde of The Lost with a plasma pistol, and then him and Lorenz proceeding to beat down the Warlock (with a Teamwork assist from Lysithea) and eliminate him on the same turn he spawned in on that same mission.

Bernadetta suffering a panic attack and almost team-wiping the whole squad and having to be put in Stasis time-out by Sylvain.

Dimitri getting punched in the head and knocked unconscious by a Muton after accidentally blowing up the VIP that was ideally supposed to be captured alive in his very first deployment and Felix having to drag his unconscious body back to the Skyranger.

The entire mission to raid the Assassin's base and put her down. Lots of close calls and drama with the final fight with her having everyone on their last legs and no medkits left, Caspar goes down with the bleeding out status. Linhardt goes Berserk and charges the Assassin with only a couple pips of health left on himself, opens fire, and manages to crit her and eliminate the rest of her HP, bringing her down for good and winning the day.

The game's random nickname/callsign system decided to bestow "King Crab" to Edelgard and I found that so funny I kept it. Can only imagine the incident that led to that.

Anyways. Part of the fun of XCOM is the stories you make for yourself and I'm having a blast right now.

I will continue to share more shenanigans as they happen.

[mr-deep-downer]

don’t know what it is about xcom 2 but I kinda hate how even with the tutorial shit turned off it seems like there’s a lot of rail roading with prescripted missions from the war of the chosen dlc and I’m just like -_-. It’s not egregious enough to make me actively dislike it but it’s interesting to note the subtle focus on premade characters and personable antagonists. The same mission you’re introduced to the chosen assassin is the same mission you recruit Mox and Outrider, characters with unique voice lines who while just as mortal as any other xcom operative stand out enough to make me wonder if this where they got the idea for chimera squad from (haven’t played that yet btw.)

XCOM 2 also highlights my biggest complaints about the battletech game. because XCOM is all about asymmetric warfare between humans n aliens, it lets the devs have a much easier time balancing the two sides since they’ll never have access (under most circumstances) to the same units. It’s fine that I’m up against superior odds because it’s easier for me to get an understanding of how each enemy fights because they’re crafted in a way that’s purpose driven and it’s fine that my individual soldiers are usually stronger/more versatile because I don’t have to worry about the enemy pulling out the same bullshit I use. It’s a nice ebb and flow of fairness and challenge.