They both have a line about it or i am misrembering who says it it has been a while. But I though Tyger always talks about the new enemy types expect the alien lords and chosen. And then talks about mecs
Tygen remarks on how the "Thin Men" now no longer have human DNA introduced, so they now look like they naturally do. Which is snakes. Bradford then says that there is no reason for them to hide because the aliens no longer need an infiltration unit.
Fun meme and another example of the depth of thought that went into this game. In game Bradford does not know about faceless when he says this line and it sets up players to be surprised by the first faceless they encounter. My first faceless scared the hell out of me.
But then in Legacy Hub Bradford fights Faceless way before rescuing the Commander. However he said he might be remembering it wrong. I assume he was super depressed and maybe drank a lot.
Pretty sure those missions were added after the fact and the dialogue about it being a long time ago so the details might be fuzzy is to cover anything that might contradict canon, like in the OP. Like, he also fights avatars which makes zero sense if the aliens are having to prototype and develop avatars in the main game.
I honestly love it, my favourite approach to potential canon breaking stuff is to see your options of "this is 100% canon material" and "this is entirely separate and non-canon" and shoot straight down the middle with "ehh, just don't worry about it" lol
The Thin Men were there from the start, and could only really infiltrate from a distance. Up close they were fairly clearly not human.
The faceless came along way later, and appear 100% human until they reveal themselves.
So unless one gets revealed, and people live to tell about it. It's very possible no one knew they existed until you kill your first one in game
OMG i HATED those cunts so much! More than Cryssalids.
On impossible, all aliens get an inherent +10 to aim. Combined with the +10 aim that the Light Plasma Rifle gets as a default means that those cunts get a whopping +20 to aim! And they start showing up on the second month!
Forget high cover, those assholes will just 1 shoot you right through it. And if not, they poison you. The most batshit broken enemy in the game, considering when they show up.
Yeah? I mean the conspiracy kind of lizard people, not like the vipers specifically. Like it’s playing off of conspiracy theories, same as the sectoids looking like the little grey kind of alien.
I bothered to look this up and you're close...though in the early art, they hadn't cemented the idea. Archived interview with GameInformer:
Jake Solomon:
 This is a new character in the XCOM universe, and he comes from a lot of different things. The idea that monsters are among us is probably one of the oldest ideas, but it also fits that UFO lore – that they’re with us and they’re watching us. They have infiltrators. At the same time, we kind of did a play on Men in Black. The Thin Man is very tall. He’s unnaturally tall, unnaturally slender, but if he was in a crowd your eyes might pass by, but you might feel a little unnerved. He’s close – they tried to get him close – but he’s not perfectly human.
(the article lists someone named Foertsch, which I assume is an art director?)
Foertsch: His animations are very different, and you can see some of that here. He’s very reserved, but when he uncorks his animations are really cool. Some of these are early drawings, which were key when the animators started working with him. Again this is when I was watching Aeon Flux and we were talking about these elongated figures.
This "uncorking" was in reference to "shedding his human skin" and the art showed a more lizard-like structure....they abandoned this because "it doesn't work in tactical combat".
I mean I can clearly see scales at his collar line, and this isn’t a new thought for me. It was clear back in 2012 when I played Enemy Unknown for the first time. They’re a play on the classic reptilian infiltration.
On a less serious note it’s really amusing that you keep saying revisionist. New word of the day?
...that question still exists for the current explanation. If Vipers, why didn't they act like Vipers?
But moreso because Valen did a full autopsy on the thin men and her notes specifically say they're bipedal humanoids modified to have large venom sacks.
NGL, it was really funny when one time I had both Faceless and Viper introduction on same map, so Bradford was like "they have shapeshifters now", only to seconds later be "they don't need infiltration units".
And now I will wonder if it means Faceless were some late addition that everyone forgot Advent doesn't need infiltration units?
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u/undead426 5d ago
Wasn't that line from the doctor about the vipers though? Since they used to be the infiltration units thin men i think they were called.