XCOM 2 and the unbearable tenson of sending your best friends to war – Reader’s Feature

A reader explores the mixed emotions of customising XCOM and other games with characters named after your friends and loved ones.

XCOM 2, released back in 2016, as a sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and is a roguelike game typified by turn-based combat and the permanent death of your playable characters. As you complete missions, your soldiers progress in rank, based on experience and your actions, but one bad shot or unlucky turn and you’ll lose them permanently.

The first game introduced a customisation option that allowed you limited changes to the soldiers under your command. It afforded you the option to edit appearances, genders, nationalities, and names, creating a sense of personalisation and connection to these brave soldiers fighting the alien invasion of the world around you. XCOM 2 expands this with a variety of new customisation designs and vocal options, that deepen that level of personalisation and connection.

I enjoy basing my raw recruits on my close friends of many years, there’s a deeper resonance as you plan your missions and strategise with familiar avatars and comrades-in-arms. It does, of course, bite a little harder when a random event occurs injuring or even killing them. It’s of course a game, and your real friends and confidantes are but a phone call away, but it was a sentiment I shared recently on a work-based gaming discussion platform.

Of colleagues and peers familiar with this particular game, many had a similar predilection to name their soldiers after friends and loved ones. But this came with the anguish of sending your partner onto the field of battle, only for them to be taken down in what is already a more punishing experience than the original game.

The customisation options in the sequel added a nice depth of personalisation to your experience, with different variations of regional accent being a welcome addition. It is limited, at least in the console version, to five countries, so it can be a little disjointed when you select a different nationality to the voices available. But still, for a game that’s nearly 10 years old at this point, these relatively simple customisation options are a nice feature that makes your soldiers feel more personable.

You feel a degree of empathy when they sustain an injury in combat, it’s bittersweet when you lose them on a campaign mission or random event. But it’s incredibly rewarding when your friend of 30 years or so, that has survived and been promoted in rank from a raw recruit, is able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with skill and determination. Relying entirely on projection and anthropomorphism, it’s superficial, yes, but great fun.

This type of personalisation is an old concept in gaming, back in the golden days of home computing and role-playing games of old, being able to assign personalised character names and portraits was a common feature. Early shareware games on the Mac, for example, afforded the opportunity to edit certain character information in the extension files to give them different names.

Or the old Star Wars flight sim games had the option to record your own audio files and replace the original pilot voices and interactions with your own inflections. With more recent games it has become less common to be afforded this level of editing in role-playing games. For a game where you are principally a faceless avatar working in the shadows, it’s nice to at least project upon the soldiers you are leading into battle.

I suppose if you want to scratch a little beneath the surface, this type of attachment to old friends in games could perhaps be indicative of the Peter Pan syndrome, a term used in pop psychology to describe an individual who clings to childhood experiences to avoid adult emotions and sensations.

Gaming in its simplest form is merely a series of endorphin rushes simulated by the basic notion of overcoming challenges for that excitement or accomplishment. Roguelike games take that basic concept and adds a little spice to the recipe by adding the feeling of sorrow when you experience a loss. It’s a more ‘real’ interpretation of feelings and emotive states.

You can, of course, decide to take a more creative and less personal approach with your customisation or steer towards more established characters. Over the years of playing XCOM I’ve fought alongside everyone from the Colonial Marines from Aliens to The Expendables. One year over Christmas, watching an old episode of Sharpe, I was even tempted to create a squadron of the 95th Rifles.

Personally, however, I always enjoy that deeper feeling of empathy and attachment when I see my friends progress and hone their skills in combat, surviving impossible threats and challenges one after another. It hurts a little more when a random event or alien move proves a little too much but it also means a little more when the time and energy I’ve invested in their growth and development pays off and they manage to succeed in the face of adversity.

By reader comfortablyadv (Twitch/Facebook/Instagram/X)

The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at [email protected] or use our Submit Stuff page and you won’t need to send an email.

ArrowMORE: PlayStation has to stop keeping its best games a secret - Reader's Feature

ArrowMORE: Nintendo needs to bring back Zelda: Twilight Princess’ best character - Reader's Feature

ArrowMORE: The 5 most perfect video games ever made - Reader's Feature