Why does the victory ending have to be the canon one?

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

So, Xcom 2.

The setting for XCOM 2 is that in the first game we lost. The aliens took over and used mind control to take over the world. A lot of people seem to be upset about that. I was kinda annoyed too at first, but then I stopped to wonder why. Its not like losing wasnt an ending, we got to see what was happening. XCOM gets cut off from its mysterious benefactors and shut down.

Lots of people seem to be annoyed by this, so was I at first then I thought about it and its not a big deal. People only ever see Victory as canon, (and usually the good choices in a game with moral choices) Why?

I can see why XCOM did this. Its either this or come up with some contrived reason why all the alien tech we have is worthless to put our soldiers back at 'level 1' in the first game. Remember we unlocked the secrets of creating super powerful psychic supersoldiers with near indestructible armour and plasma weapons. Itd be stupid if they just said 'Oh you guys dont have that gear' Or they could try to come up with some contrived reason it doesnt work anymore like Terror of the Deep(Alien tech doesnt work underwater? What, all of the Alien tech? Titan Armour? Drones? Come on guys just put some silicone on it....

Or, they could just say we never got that stuff because we lost long before researching it, which is the answer they used.. Much simpler.

I mean, its a good way to keep the stakes high, if you keep beating the same opponents over and over in a game series, will they suffer from the Megatron syndrome(start as a badass, end up as nothing to take seriously because the good guys keep beating him.)

 

[Zhukov]

Because that's the ending people play to achieve.

Resetting it is like that game saying, "Nuh uh, you didn't win shit, loser!"

Not that I personally give a damn. As you say, it sets up the next game nicely. Besides, it's not like fucking XCOM is some spellbinding work of storytelling excellence that requires strict adherence to established continuity lest its meticulously constructed narrative edifice be corrupted by the unholy impurity of retcons.

 

[Bad Jim]

Yeah. You don't have to win. In Spec Ops: The Line you go from one epic fail to another, and it's brilliant.

 

[Doom972]

It doesn't have to be the victory ending, but it still might be. Maybe something happened after the victory that caused the "unification". We won't know for sure until more details are revealed or until we play the game, and even then they might decide to keep it vague.

If they do decide that the canon ending is the defeat ending, then I can accept that, as long as it makes a more interesting sequel.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I'd say its just poor writing and a cheap way to raise the stakes.
"How can we make the sequel seem more important?"
"Just make it like Half Life or Resistance!"
"But the humans won in the first one. It's how the game ended!"
"Fuck 'em! They're too stupid to remember that!"

Yeah when I hear the new game assumes we lost when that wasn't a thing, thus negating the entirety of X-Com 1 and my 100+hrs of game play on hard mode without losing a single operative...well lets just say I won't be getting 2 until its on Steam Sale for a buck fifty.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

For me, the confusion stems from the wording used on the XCOM website. "Twenty years have passed since the world leaders offered an unconditional surrender to alien forces".

Does that mean that the alien forces were told they had to surrender unconditionally? Or that the human governments surrendered unconditionally to the alien forces?

 

[SweetShark]

For me, the confusion stems from the wording used on the XCOM website. "Twenty years have passed since the world leaders offered an unconditional surrender to alien forces".

Does that mean that the alien forces were told they had to surrender unconditionally? Or that the human governments surrendered unconditionally to the alien forces?

By the look of the Statue we see in the trailer, I will say the Aliens won the War and the Human Race accept the conditions Aliens offered.
So..........it is like the Combines in Half-Life games.
YES! They are Combines! They enslave other Races and use them for their Army!!!! We even pass the Test for them!!!!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It's what you're going for isn't it? Otherwise the sequel might as well start with TL;DR: You lost.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

meh as much as I'd like for the victory ending to be the canon ending, out of all the things in the first game that I would consider to be it's strength, the story would be on the bottom of the list...so for them to use the defeat ending as the canon one, it doesn't really bug me if it serves the second game nicely. As long as they polish it and used what they learned from the first game to make an even better sequel, I'll be happy.

 

[Elijin]

Usually victory is canon, because victory ensures sequel openings.

Since x-com is based on a concept, more than any set of characters, the sequel settings are either failure on Earth, or success, and counter-invasion.

 

[Zhukov]

Does that mean that the alien forces were told they had to surrender unconditionally? Or that the human governments surrendered unconditionally to the alien forces?

It's pretty clearly the latter.

Having your enemy surrender unconditionally generally doesn't result in them taking over your government.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Because some people are whiny kids who are like "Waaah, I want my victory to count!"

Dude, it DOES. At least, that's the way I'm seeing it (I won my first run of XCOM).

Just do what I do and see it as a "what-if scenario".

In any case, I like the idea. Makes us even MORE the underdogs. I'm hyped. For me, XCOM is not about the end result, it's about the blood sweat and tears required to get there.

I had a ton of fun on Normal Ironman, barely managing to squeak through after losing almost all of my good operatives in a string of 3 missions halfway through the game. But I had even more fun on Classic Ironman, naming squaddies after friends, and finally getting to the point where I said "Welp, coming back from this is impossible. Let's see how long I can drag this out before I lose", and then losing horribly shortly after the alien base encounter.

I'd say its just poor writing and a cheap way to raise the stakes.
"How can we make the sequel seem more important?"
"Just make it like Half Life or Resistance!"
"But the humans won in the first one. It's how the game ended!"
"Fuck 'em! They're too stupid to remember that!"

According to the devs, they came up with the new mechanics first, then tried to find a scenario that would fit them. And they realized it lent itself really well to a guerilla warfare type setting. And they felt that the "we lost the war because Impossible Ironman is the canon difficulty (lol) and had to go underground as guerilla fighters" was the simplest, most elegant solution while also allowing them to crank up the threat of the aliens so you're not going "oh look, a muton, how cute, I know how to fight these", and instead go "OMFG, Mutons. I'm not ready for this. I need to get the objective done and evac, NOW".

And I'm inclined to believe that's the case more than "hey, let's make it more like resistance or half life, that'll make people hyped! Now let's come up with mechanics to fit that idea we just pulled out of out ass to copy half-life!".

Just pretend that it's an alternate universe where XCOM went "welp, we COULD get SilentPony to be our commander...NAH, let's just let Bradford handle everything...OOOPS, he sucks as a commander, we lost the war because of him."

Because seriously, fuck bradford. He's such a shit commander. He gets basically everyone killed the tutorial by just rushing everyone forward and not bothering to use overwatch.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Oh, also, I love the people who feel they're entitled to a happy ending.

Dude, you're not. And that's a good thing.

Downer endings have the potential to be super powerful. There are several games I've played where the game wouldn't have been NEARLY as amazing if there had been a happy ending.

Case in point, I got one of the faction endings in Etrian Odyssey 3 (the only game in the series so far with multiple endings), and it was tragic as FUCK. And I loved it. It was super memorable and impacted the way I played the next game in the series quite a bit. If it had just been another happy ending, it wouldn't have been that memorable at all.

 

[AT God]

I find the prospect of having less the best endings being canon as a tricky mistress. The most notable example I can think of is the Metro series. Metro 2033 had two endings, a normal ending and a "true" secret ending achieved through certain actions. The normal ending was the one from the book and was ultimately the canon ending for the sequel. Without spoiling things, this made sense because of how the true ending worked, the plot of the sequel was directly related to the normal ending.

However, Metro Last Light has two endings as well and again each ending would have drastic consequences for a sequel and unless a lot of things are ignored one canon ending must be chosen. And I really don't want one of the endings to be canon so I am kinda bummed that the inevitable sequel might have the ending I didn't like as canon.

It would be interesting to make a game and the do a direct sequel that canonizes the idea that the player failed in the previous game. Zelda sort of retroactively did this but I doubt it was intentional and was simply the only way they could make a timeline at least partially coherent. Would be an interesting idea.

Captcha: who you gonna call. Ghostbusters was not a suitable answer.

 

[elvor0]

I'd say its just poor writing and a cheap way to raise the stakes.
"How can we make the sequel seem more important?"
"Just make it like Half Life or Resistance!"
"But the humans won in the first one. It's how the game ended!"
"Fuck 'em! They're too stupid to remember that!"

Yeah when I hear the new game assumes we lost when that wasn't a thing, thus negating the entirety of X-Com 1 and my 100+hrs of game play on hard mode without losing a single operative...well lets just say I won't be getting 2 until its on Steam Sale for a buck fifty.

Or, it's entirely likely that we did not in fact lose against the aliens we fought in XCOM, but rather the "other" force that the Etherials mention in the final level, if you remember that.

 

[DrOswald]

I see absolutely no reason the "victory" ending isn't the canon ending in XCOM 2. We have been taken over by the aliens, but lets be realistic here. You "fought off" the aliens with 6 dudes in a scramjet. If the aliens had just sat in orbit they could have bombed the earth into submission without even breaking a sweat.

The aliens were not here to conquer earth. They had an agenda, and that was to assess humanities potential as a soldier race. They wanted soldiers that had high combat potential, had powerful command over psionics, and had the creativity to adapt to new situations. By stealing alien tech, rapidly developing a psionic program, and destroying the temple ship XCOM proved beyond any doubt that humanity was exactly the soldier race the aliens were looking for. We also proved that unchecked humanity could become a serious threat. Do you really think that the aliens were just going to walk away from that? And even with the full support of all of humanity and the combined might of every military on earth, could we really defeat a civilization with orbital bombardment and stealth tech? Remember, XCOM never manages to detect aliens outside of the atmosphere. The could just sit up in space and drop bombs on our cities until we surrendered. It would take days.

This is the problem with the stories of XCOM like games. Earth never stood the slightest chance. Destroying the temple ship might have bought us some time and it might have ensured that the aliens saw us as far to valuable to just eradicate. But it was never going to be enough to protect us from an actual invasion. I personally like it, as this is the logical progression of the events from what happened in XCOM:EU.

I mean, imagine there is some tiny country out there that has only 1850s war tech. Lets say they get into a war with the US, but the US is just kind of amused at it, because really? Muskets? But then they manage to sneak 6 dudes onto one of the US's aircraft carriers and they blow it up. Does the US just say "well I guess we lose!" and surrender? No, they bomb the ever living shit out of this country from 500 miles off their coast until their government gives up. Or they send in a single combat division and wipe out their military and install the government of their choice.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

That's really petty. It's a strategy game, not a story based RPG where the ending actually matters. The story of XCOM was kinda shit too. It'd be like refusing to buy Civ 5 because it's not a chronological sequel to Civ 1 through 4.

If the ending means that much to you, you could always split the timeline in your head, with the ending where you won in one timeline, and the new XCOM 2 scenario in the other.

But why bother having a plot if it's literally meaningless?
Why bother with characters, archs, personalities and any of it if it's all subject to meaningless change between games?
They don't even have the decency of Blizzard in Heart of the Swarm. If you're going to reverse the entire last game, at least do it within the second one!
Don't just call a mulligan because you can't come up with a better story idea.
How would people like it if in...Oh Warcraft 4 they retcon it so Arthas never became evil because of reasons. And that he and what's her face got married and had kids and the game is about their kids doing things.
Or if Valve says that well since Portal is a puzzle game, they decided Chel died in Portal 1, Bill the new guy died in Portal 2 and now Portal 3 has a completely new person.

I dare say some people might be upset.

Look I get that its their stories and I get that the game play should be more important than the plot. But if the best idea they have is to negate Enemy Unknown to artificially raise the stakes of the 2nd...
I'm sorry, that IS bad writting. the plot may not have been horrifically important but it was over-arching and singular. Discarding the entire thing...

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, I never finished the previous game, but I can imagine it'd be a bit of a sour pill to hear that all the work you'd put into not losing is kinda thrown to the wayside for the sequel.

It probably wouldn't bother me too much, but then I've got to wonder why they choose to go with any sort of canon period. I mean, XCOM seemed like a pretty cut and dry strategy game with barely any narrative at all, except for 'Aliens are attacking Earth; Stop them!' Did this really necessitate any sort of canon ending. It's like making a canon ending to chess.

 

[DrOswald]

Well, I never finished the previous game, but I can imagine it'd be a bit of a sour pill to hear that all the work you'd put into not losing is kinda thrown to the wayside for the sequel.

It probably wouldn't bother me too much, but then I've got to wonder why they choose to go with any sort of canon period. I mean, XCOM seemed like a pretty cut and dry strategy game with barely any narrative at all, except for 'Aliens are attacking Earth; Stop them!' Did this really necessitate any sort of canon ending. It's like making a canon ending to chess.

The story of XCOM:EU was very minor, so minor most people ignored it completely. I think Firaxis felt like they had to come up with a reason why the aliens were not sitting in orbit bombing the shit out of us. That reason was that the aliens were here to assess the potential of humanity as a warrior race, and this was just a tiny expedition force sent for that specific reason.

And, you know, we kind of absolutely proved that humanity would make a fantastic warrior race by defeating that expedition force with like 20 soldiers and a scramjet.