More X-COM is coming soon, and I'm utterly stoked

As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm a MASSIVE sucker for turn-based strategy games. I like how they let me take my time and play chess with an enemy force, and they also tend to deliver some good stories in the intermissions.

The X-COM series is one of those TBS series I totally adore for delivering all the above. Granted, it can be super hard at times, almost to the point of insanity (which is part of the fun, really, it's a game where the random numbers are highly tilted against you so you need to be super careful and save scum like crazy).

And now they'll be releasing a new one in a week or two called X-Com: Chimera Squad.

Set five years after the ending of XCOM2, which had X-COM as a resistance force overthrowing the alien overlords called the Elders, it still left behind a lot of alien soldiers who now had no masters, and while a fair majority of them accepted the humans won and decided to make nice with our race, some of them still aren't happy they are no longer higher on the pecking order than we are.

Thus the plot is that in one post-war megacity, civil unrest is about to hit critical mass, forcing a mixed team of aliens and humans called the Chimera Squad to do their best to keep what is known as City 31 from imploding into sheer anarchy.

This game is going to introduce a concept XCOM2 flirted with to some extent that is now being fully realized: You can now play as the aliens.

This has some interesting potential, given many of the aliens are quite distinct and have cool abilities, like the Sectoids and their psionic powers and the Mutons being giant shock troopers. Also, the ever-popular Viper is going to be playable, which will likely inspire a ton of depraved scalie fanart like she did in XCOM2, but whatever.

Me, I'm more interested in seeing how Earth is faring post-XC2 and want to see how they handle human and alien interaction, especially since many of them can speak Earthling just fine, as was shown with former ADVENT troops in XC2: War of the Chosen.

I personally enjoyed all the modern X-COM titles, and given Chimera Squad is supposed to be a standalone title, I'm interested in seeing where they continue to take the lore and, of course, save-scumming like crazy to avoid getting one of my troopers shot to death even with over 95% chance evasion like every other X-COM fanboy.