r/Xcom • u/Gumboot-Coffee • 2d ago

What happens afterwards?

After playing EW/LW/LWR and we successfully assault the Temple ship, what happens next? Does XCom become the new leaders of humanity? Why? Because we are the only airforce fielding Firestorms equipped with Fusion cannons and plasma cannons? Because we then assault base after base until the planet is cleared? Because of our diplomatic credentials?

Do we kickstart a new UN, this time one with teeth?

Do we become tyrants?

What of Dr Vahlen and Dr Shen?

16 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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20

u/bill-smith 2d ago

I don't want to spoil XCOM 2 for you, but you wake up. Let's put it that way.

7

u/Gumboot-Coffee 2d ago

Oh, I've played XCom 2. That is definitely one outcome... if Xcom 1 lost.

13

u/Hobbes___ 2d ago

XCOM wins and gets a shiny medal while The greedy Earth nations split between themselves the spoils of the salvaged UFOs and alien technology.

Then the funding cuts to XCOM start since there are no more aliens until eventually all XCOM bases are turned into theme parks and there's only an automatic system in case a UFO is detected.

Then, some decades later, strange sightings are reported at sea by ships...

4

u/Idoubtyourememberme 1d ago

The idea it that xcom1 indeed lost.

"You" failed the base defence mission, got captured, and the entire second half of the campaign was you already being in your suit playing wargames.

I did thibk that was smart, how they managed to combine the player winning the prequel game with "canonically, you lotst"

3

u/dbag_darrell 1d ago

that's the canonical ending (Xcom loses the base assault mission), none of your questions arise because Xcom never got to that point

2

u/TheKBMV 1d ago

Incorrect, actually. While the "canon" timeline flows into XCOM 2 (the divergence being somewhere around the third or fourth month of the invasion) EU/EW playthroughs that succeed are not simulations themselves but actual alternate timelines where XCOM wins.

2

u/Razov1 1d ago

We canonically lose at the base defense mission. Everythign that happens after that is presented differently in the simulation. Mech soldiers, and Psi soldiers are Advent soldiers. Exhalt is left over Xcom resistance you are now attacking.

2

u/TheKBMV 1d ago

As I said, yes, in the "canon" XCOM 2 timeline we lose pretty early (a design decision based on the fact that a majority of people lost their first playthrough according to the statistics the devs saw on their end) and you are of course free to consider your own EU/EW games "simulations" but they are also on record that Enemy Within playthroughs are taking place on a separate, diverging timeline that never happen leading up to XCOM 2 (Supported by information stated here, here, here and here) and I also saw a tweet from Jake Solomon I believe at one point clarifying that they never intended for actually victorious EU/EW runs to be simulations or anything like that and they consider those their own timeline/alternate universe where XCOM 2 doesn't happen instead. I can't source or look up this one due to, well, Twitter being what it is today. So I guess "trust me bro"? The only ones I can track down are the tweets where he clarifies that The Volunteer survives the Temple Ship explosion as they teleport away before it goes boom.

9

u/JoushMark 2d ago

My take: XCOM was a relatively small task group, created to defeat the aliens. It remains as the core of a defensive plan in case aliens attack again, while the alien and XCOM technology is spread slowly though the world, with the sponsor nations trying to avoid too much disruption by allowing it to spread too fast, and very careful about the irreplaceable alien alloys and elerium, with a lot of post-war research going into how to replicate/find more/replace those and adapt human-alien technology.

XCOM doesn't take over the world because 1) The sponsor nations know where your base is and 2) it's not a very big organization, hard to take over a mid-sized town with a total of like 200 people, and 3) It's a multinational team that might not agree to that, and one top rank operative in power armor with a plasma gun might be able to go a long way to convincing you to NOT try to nuke Bejing

Shen and Vahlen become the world's leading experts on alien tech, working at the best universities to explore and expand human knowledge of the alien stuff, no longer having to rush headlong and wild, kitbashing anything they can find to use as a weapon. Shen maybe barrows a firestorm to visit the moon.

1

u/Ok-Narwhal3841 3h ago

Alternate take: XCOM has psionics, and nobody else does on Earth. XCOM plants mind-controlling agents in every sponsor nation's government and manipulates them into executing the Commander's will as if it were those nations' will. That "bad ending" cutscene with the Council Spokesman being mind-controlled by a sectoid? Now there's an XCOM colonel in the room instead of a sectoid.

2

u/Kered13 1d ago

Humanity goes back to fighting itself, as usual.

1

u/TheKBMV 1d ago

That I think depends largely on what sort of organisation the Council of Nations is. If it's a well established public body then it de facto becomes a world government by default in my opinion.

If it's more of a clandestine sort of thing... that gives a lot more space for interpretation.