"Those difficulties probably still harder than the unmodded game in the sense that we've added a bunch of mechanics for the player to figure out and master, but the gameplay is set up to be more forgiving to players as they learn the ropes. This go-round, we've tried to broaden our appeal by keeping the lower difficulty levels of Long War 2 more accessible to casual players who would still like to take part in an extended campaign experience. "And while we made plenty of effort to open it up for a wider playerbase once its popularity grew, it kept its reputation as being very challenging. "The original Long War's DNA was that of a hardcore mod," said Lumpkin. Very few people have completed a full campaign on Impossible difficulty, as it requires such consistent, smart play over such a gruelling number of missions. And as with the original Long War, we added lots more problems for the players and also lots of new tools to solve them, but this time they are heavily influenced by the game's guerrilla war theme."īut let's be honest, when we talk about the Long War mod, we inevitably talk about its difficulty. "Taking the game in the direction we took XCOM: Enemy Unknown - going for an extended campaign that keeps you on the knife's edge between victory and defeat for the duration. "In the most general terms, our goal is to tell the XCOM 2 story in our own way," explained Lumpkin.
So what's different this time around? The original Long War mod for XCOM: Enemy Unknown transformed the game's campaign into something much longer (surprisingly) and offered a whole range of new toys, abilities and enemy designs to play around with.
"They've been a great help to us when we're sorting through the code, making new maps, that sort of thing." "We are frequently in touch with the XCOM team at Firaxis," said Lumpkin.