Part 46: Operation Avenger

Operation Avenger


Polsy



Well here it is, the final mission. The big bang. The last stand. Actually it's a big soft for an ending. It's really more of a exposition mission than some climatic action packed finale. It's a very last minute sort of 'this is why the bad guys were doing things' mission, and kind of a shame that it came at the very end of the game. For the entirety of the game the alien motives were unknown and had to be guessed at through their actions. I was okay with never really knowing why they showed up other than conquest, psi-slavery, or harvesting earth for resources. Here the Ethereal leader will spell it all out, right at the end of the game. Feels sort of wasted, like a little too little too late, like a bond villain spilling the big plan right before he tries to kill bond. It just wasn't the climax i was hoping for.

Should probably watch the video by now if you haven't, as I'll start to break down the actual mission in a paragraph break or two.








The temple ship isn't a final mission like Cydonia or T'Leth was. It isn't even the hardest mission in the game by far. It has two real stumbling blocks and that is all. Guava and many others call the temple ship a victory lap of sorts, but even if that's what it's meant to be, it falls short on that scale too. There isn't enough challenge or action to make it feel like a victory lap to me. It's a series of rooms and isolated fights recapping all the enemies you've seen up until the end of the game and with the Ethereal leaders personal thoughts on them added in.

The first room is predictably sectoids. The good old staple of aliens to shoot. A grand total of four regulars and one psionic, hardly anything threatening in here. The worst is that commander mind controls a soldier and you have to deal with that, but the commander doesn't have any support or any way of stopping you from walking right up to him and murdering him if he does mind control someone. The only danger here is triggering the cyberdisk spawns while the commander is still being a problem. Two cyberdisk's and the commander is a bit more of a problem to deal with. This late in the game though, you should have a number of options to quickly deal with the disks though. HEAT heavies, or ITZ Sniper, or not to mention just to have your volunteer rift something. The worst this room is likely to do to you is make you take a shot from a cyberdisk or two if you're really unlucky.

The second room is the floaters room. Three regulars and one heavy. Still not much of a challenge. If the regulars decide to fly upward on detection then they just become more ITZ fodder. Even if not, three enemies with five HP each are not much of a problem to deal with. The heavy floater may survive a turn, but that's unlikely, and only liable to deal minimal damage if you do let it live to shoot or throw its grenade. The surprise here comes after the floaters are dead and you have chrysalids spawn in the middle of the room, potentially next to your soldiers. That's scary at first, but this is end game and not the beginning. Enemies with 8 HP won't last long against any of the weapons you are currently carrying and you get to take your turn before they get to move. So even if you're really caught off guard by the summoned bugs, you can double move away from them if it's really a problem, but in most likelihood you can just stand right next to them and gun them down with complete safety.

On the way to the next big room you may encounter Thin Men. How novel. You guys stopped being a threat ages ago. They still have their four HP and spit acid, which by this point is only likely to matter under very rare circumstances. Only the Volunteer is likely to be wearing armor that doesn't make them immune to the poison cloud. Other than that, they're encountered at very close range, easily in range to just rush up to and shoot from extreme close range. Or think at them, mind fray is probably a guaranteed kill for your psionics.

Next we come to the muton room. This could be a little dangerous if all the mutons were linked in one group, but they aren't. Each side door has a pack of two and a berserker waiting a little ways back from the middle door. It's entirely possible to activate them all one group at a time and have no problems whatsoever. The only probably you're likely to run into is that the side doors are kind of in a bad place. The mutons are likely to grab high cover while you fiddle around down a staircase and have to deal with the lack of cover down there. Still, mutons aren't that dangerious by this point in the game, and berserkers were never really a threat ever. If you do have a panic moment, remember Rift. Or mind control. You have options.

After the mutons is a big lowered chamber, flanked on both sides by walkways. Down in the pit are two Sectopods, and this is the first legitimately dangerous thing in the mission. Approaching from the middle will put your soldiers on a shelf of sorts, with inadequate low cover to shelter them from the Sectopods. It can be enough in a pinch or if you move fast. In the video I didn't set up nearly quick enough to make that work for me. Cover on the side walk ways is a good bet, offering high cover columns to hide behind and shoot down on the Sectopods. Good positions, but a bit cramped. In any case, dealing with one Sectopod can be difficult, but two is a lot worse. the EMP shock attack is a great idea in this situation, and with a little luck and positioning may be able to stun both sectopods. Other than that Disabling Shot on a sniper is always a good fall back. The obvious tactic is to focus fire on one of them and get it dead ASAP. They're still walls of HP though, so I opted for a shredder rocket as my opening move. These two jerks are a perfect time to use Rift and deal a serious chunk of damage to both of them at the same time.

Speaking of Rift, it gets mentioned in the video but let me say again here; you are in no rush this mission. There is zero reason not to sit around after you kill a room and wait for your skill timers to refresh. I didn't do this for the video because that would be boring or require me to do editing. However there is no reason not to have Rift sitting ready for use at any point in this mission.

Almost at the end and you get two muton elites. They spawn in heavy cover which can make them a real bitch to shoot with their innate defense bonus stacked on high cover. They also get the high ground advantage on anyone that jumped down to fight in the sectopod pit. Still, it's only two of them, they're weak to psionics, and you've had to deal with muton elites for a long time by now. Not really that dangerous. Stay in cover, advance to a better firing position and mop them up.

The final room. After the cutscene you get two muton elites, two ethereals, and the Uber Ethereal. This can be a very scary room the first few times. If things go poorly you're looking at dealing with two heavy plasma shots, and then some mix of mind control and psi lances or even rifts. That is a lot of potential damage and fast. The big thing is knowing where the cutscene line is. You can advance a bit into the room, stand out in the open with out activating anything, and then next turn activate the fight by single moving into strong positions of cover. The absolute worst is activating the room before you're ready for it, or taken most of your turn already. If you really want to, you can fight this room out the way I did. Kill everything one at a time and use good cover. The mutons need to go because they'll drill you for damage or explode your cover. The two regular ethereals may take a turn to get into position to harm you. It's been a while, but on the recording the sight lines in the final room are not generous enough to let them spawn in and start mind controlling you from where they start. Or you can hunker down, eat the incoming fire, and focus fire the Uber Ethereal. He's all you need to kill. He dies, mission ends. And he starts on a raised platform that is dead center of the room, meaning you can leaver your sniper WAY back behind the little low cover piece in the other room and have a perfect line of sight on it. If your sniper has Double Tap, then the fight can be over the moment it begins.





So hey, that is it. We are done here. The earth is saved (Or not... looking at you X-Com 2 trailer) and we can go home. I definitely have a little more content for you folks though. One bonus video of the final mission remains, done as a challenge run by Apostate Courier. Also I plan on posting the applications for the soldiers that got in the LP, as well as nay others I find interesting. I'll be doing a few multiplayer videos as well. MP wasn't a big focus of the game, but it's actually pretty fun. Playing against players is a lot harder than the AI. I don't think I'll be doing long war. I know i said I might, but it took me this long to do the main game and I feel bad I dragged my feet multiple times updating. So I'm going to chill, relax, and think about what I'll do next. Either way, I'm sure I'll see you guys around for X-Com in six months.