#xcom: chimera squad

[narrativehoarder]

Brainrot has taken hold

Well, it's been a hot minute since I last posted here. In the time between now and my last post, I have become obsessed with XCOM, particularly Chimera Squad and all the juicy info it gave us on the aliens. Hell, I even went and got every achievement in the game. In the process of playing through the games, I have grown particularly fond of the vipers because they are Very Gender. (Also, Torque is the best character in Chimera Squad, I will fight anyone who says otherwise.) My brainrot managed to reach critical mass unlike any of my previous brainrots. I've been writing a fanfic set in the XCOM universe, which is unlike anything I've ever done. Fan content is something I usually consume, not create! But here I am, writing despite how unusual it is for me. On the off chance anyone reading this has any interest in the fanfic, here's a link to it: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52199773/chapters/132035278

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

art by EthrkArt

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

i refuse to accept a world without terminal snake shenanigans

[loopyn3]

I can explain

My friends and I got into XCOM and XCOM chimera squad was just a hop skip and a jump away sooooo

God torque is so pretty I’d let her bite me

[exoartmakes]

God, I would love it if they announced a Mass Effect title that was literally any other subgenre than Action/Shooter, at least something mostly different in focus/gameplay than the originals.

My hope would be an XCOM-like, especially if it was more like Chimera Squad which was very character driven.

I wonder if anyone has ever considered a Mass Effect conversion mod for that game…

[etherealvoidechoes]

After looking at Echi's speech patterns your recent fic, as well as the post about ADVENT hybrids having different alien accents, I've been wondering - what are your thoughts on different aliens' speech patterns and accents? Something distinctive about how their species communicate, like the way they form sentences, or prolong certain letters, for example?

I take it Echi is someone else's OC, correct?

Onwards to my thoughts...

I will also say I sometimes forget to portray that in some fics or I'm running off "the translator is making corrections" or "this fic has been translated into something easier to understand." And then I don't want to dig myself down the rabbit hole of conlang again and the grammar structure...

When the Elders aren't stripping the identities of their slave races and changing it to something "better", I can see them as varied as human accents and snytax with cultural influences, but I haven't really put any specific thoughts for each species minus I want to avoid the stereotypical "reptiles, especially snakes, hiss their words" with the Vipers. Some do it. Some don't.

But I've had thoughts that the speech patterns extends over to body movements/gestures, pheromones, etc. E.g. they see colors humans can't see, hear frequencies humans can't hear, smell pheromones humans can't smell, etc. etc. And then psionics, forget for certain species all communication is done that way.

-

Something I currently have the Mutons in the Wandering Souls fic is they are very physical with how they speak and show their emotions. And with most of them being young/perhaps clones, they very much forget that everyone else is not as strong or as tough as them. Yerra avoids this because she's been around for a long time and interacted with a lot of species so she can tailor her speech and actions to fit others.

And thinking of them, I see a lot of their language would also be based on grunts, roars, and the like. And then their non-modified mouths (Fight me on the Muton redesign in Chimera Squad I hate it) would lead to human words(and other alien words) sound odd. Using an example from the Predator franchise, how the Yautja says "ooman" for human. Probably that also causes them to draw out certain syllables or stress an accent upon them.

I also can see the Muton language(well at least one) being straight to the point and very blunt(may sound moronic to some), lacking subtlety. They stress the beginnings and ends of words to get across important ideas. A lot of idioms/metaphors deal with strong wills/controlling aggression, strength, combat, weapons, etc. And then this varies from clan to clan, from dialect to dialect.

Sometimes they may try to "soften" their speech, but if you pissed them off(which you may need to run) it's anvil and hammer.

-

I don't have much to theorize with Floaters/Archons, but will say they have similarities to Mutons since they share some DNA(unless that's been retconned with Chimera Squad.)

And then all the modifications they've suffered and that they were in pain 24/7 because of the Elders makes it harder to judge if guttural sounds and roars would be naturally apart of their speech.

-

Vipers' natural tongue probably does have a lot of hissing where there are subtle differences most won't pick up. Lots of  hard consonants and sibilants, and some that outright sound like they are clearing their throats. But somehow it's also fluid and rich in tones.

And maybe some pheromones thinking of the Viper King's effects on loyal Vipers, but that could also be whatever Vahlen did really amplified that.

So a little hiss here and there slips through when speaking to other species. Since the Elders liked them a lot, they probably have the most varied/unaltered speech patterns depending on which cultures are with the Elders occupying Earth.

But they(if it's not just the double agents) seem to be able to be flexible with learning other languages, so their patterns probably have plucked something here and there from each species they've encountered with the Elders.

-

Sectoids, poor things, their speech is more mutable since their psionics seem to have made be able to feel the imprints of those around them. And by all means, being a slave race twice over(taking from the Bureau) for so long they've probably lost everything of what their original patterns were. Probably some chittering still permeates their current tongue, especially for those that haven't been more refined/had gene therapy to give them more human-like mouths.

A lot of communication for them is through psionics anyway with the chittering accompanying it. Straight thoughts and emotion with no words and body gestures to muddy it.

-

Elders... same-ish with how the psionic communication works with the Sectoids.

Their speech tends to be naturally fluid, a little echoing hiss here and there, and sometimes overly flowery, especially if they're being "nice". Still stays fluid when given commands in a neutral tone, but can quickly become harsh and very guttural when things are not going their way. You'll hear a torrent, like a rushing wind followed by many voices, with important words being stressed and sometimes dragged out by the other voices. Example for the many voices - The Many from System Shock 2.

Hunter probably hears the latter more than the formers nearly all the time when he's not at those important meetings in the chamber with his siblings.

-

Hybrids, we know how that sounds in-game and I imagine the syntax is an "easy switch" when they have to communicate with the other slave races due to the Psionic Network. Well maybe not when dealing with non-ADVENT city humans. Oh goodness, that's another can of worms there.

However, once freed they still have a bit of an alien grammar structure, so some sayings/metaphors/etc. come off odd to humans.

Those who've been indoctrinated and in service longer have it the worst. It'll take them years to get out of it compared to the younger members or those who didn't go through the indoctrination.

[enkisstories]

Only now discovered they each have a little intro videos on Steam.

[jaebird88]

Jumped back into Chimera Squad as a palate cleanser from XCOM: Enemy Unknown. While still challenging at times, Chimera Squad is way more fun and easier to manage, and a lot less stressful. Also, I never before recruited Zephyr, and she's a fucking boss.

She can dominate my heart the field by being the big punchy woman that she is.

[laurarolla]

So almost done with Pre-Sequel's main campaign. Claptrap DLC will be next, then it'll be time for something new. So, new poll!

I may feel as though there is an objectively correct answer this time. Let's see if everyone picks it!

[doolallymagpie]

terminal, you’re not mind controlled anymore so this is just weird

[appealingtonobody]

[tomatoats]

Yeah When Xcom chimera squad came out i would always have torque on my team, her ability to zone out particularly nasty individuals by squeezing them in one turn and spitting poison to groups of enemies the next.

also i mean come on. just look.

would u smooch her

y/y

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

The Harkness Vahlen Test, mandatory review material for all XCOM recruits in the post-ADVENT era.

Original meme source: unknown

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

im dying it's a viable strategy to have Torque "local lethal snake lady soldier with anxiety issues" flick out her tongue and LICK (tongue pull) a possible target to check if they're the right flavor for Slowly Crushing To Death in her Muscular Coils (putting in a bind)

sometimes actual game mechanics are just adorable

[rose-by-every-other-name]

i've been seized by the urge to write an essay (i now realize i already wrote a mini-essay in this post lol) about why the story of Gray Phoenix (one of the main enemy factions in XCOM: Chimera Squad (which is a story i have... mixed but leaning positive feelings on, maybe more on that in another post, but the tl;dr is that the worldbuilding is a really cool premise but the implementation is you playing as a police force in a way that could've been handled worse but also could've been handled better)) is, more than anything else, a tragedy, particularly when considering that (spoilers, also cw for semi-dark story stuff)

a lot of the more morally ambiguous things they did, are quite possibly things they were manipulated into doing by Shrike. Not that this absolves them of responsibility for the things they did but considering that Shrike was pulling the strings behind all three enemy groups, it seems very likely they saw Gray Phoenix going "we want to leave" and manipulated them into being more violent than they would otherwise have been. And also like... look at the stuff Gray Phoenix gets up to in the investigations compared to the other groups. Sacred Coil kidnaps humans, uses them in gene experiments to make a pandemic spread to multiple species, and then disposes of them. The Progeny kidnap people in order to brainwash and mind-control them, as well as stealing technology to take control of aliens living peacefully. Gray Phoenix, uh... helps their friends and family secretly join them in their plan to escape the planet, and steals food resources and redistributes them. Is anyone else seeing the contrast here? and I'm gonna be honest, I really think Reclamation and Chimera Squad could've handled the situation better. Like, as soon as you realized "wait, they aren't kidnapping aliens, the aliens are going along with them willingly," maybe reconsider some of your other assumptions about the situation??? maybe??? at least on the plus side you've got plenty of options to non-lethally defeat enemies so you can make sure that no one in Gray Phoenix dies (outside of Xel sacrificing herself to save the city if you do their investigation last, and THAT'S definitely going to come up in the essay if i write it.)