Aedwynn said:
You know, I actually missed that about the gene splicing in the trailer! Several times! I'm good at this...
I like your reasoning, though. I didn't play Terror from the Deep or Apocalypse very much, but I do remember you could have half human/half sectoid troopers in Apocalypse. (They were your psi troopers, I think?) So that fits.
The MELD in Enemy Within; I did wonder why they were just leaving that lying around and only really making the Mechtoid with it themselves. It's like they wanted you (and EXALT) to play with it...
That could indeed be the answer, in any case, I do hope the sequel works off of the canon established in Enemy Within, rather than using Enemy Unknown. The meld and EXALT are nice editions, and the events of Enemy Unknown just aren't as well fleshed out as the expansion.
Speaking of EXALT, what were they up to? I got that they had been around for a LONG time, and they were as interested in psionics as XCOM were, but I'm not sure what it was exactly they wanted (unless I missed that, too). If their goals were different at all...
You've got it essentially right, EXALT's motives are never explored in depth, the only thing we know is that they are a conspiracy of many rich and powerful people that believed working with the aliens would be a greater benefit than fighting them. They are like the cultists from the original series that saw the aliens as a way to bring humanity to the next level. Reading into their intentions a bit, they come off as doing it for social Darwinist reasons, they believe in sacrificing the majority of humanity to elevate the elite to the next level, which includes them of course, which is why we see them go much farther than Xcom in using MELD for gene modification, making themselves closer to the aliens rather than just superhuman.
I'm guessing there's going to be human 'collabo's' in the game from the trailer, but it might be interesting if there are other factions around. Hey, if XCOM lost canonically, we could *possibly* be seeing the result of an EXALT victory? With humans as something less than equal partners, but more than slaves/lab rats. Maybe not, but I'd like it if EXALT were still around in some form.
It's possible, the display boards in the trailer show humans in armor next to the ADVENT symbol, much like the Overwatch from Half-life 2, the aliens are recruiting humans to act as the face of the new government while the aliens hide in the background playing puppet master.
My guess would be that if EXALT is still around, depending on how the destruction of their headquarters plays out from Enemy Within, EXALT could end up like Doctor Breen from Half-Life 2, the puppet leaders of the new one world government, EXALT was already made up of powerful financial and political leaders, so it's not a stretch to see them being placed in positions of power within the new government. Even the naming convention seems similar, the one world government is called ADVENT, which could very well just be EXALT with a new name after teaming up with the aliens to negotiate earth's surrender.
They could also go a different route and make EXALT a rival guerilla faction, one that works nominally with the aliens but still tries to steal and horde their technology to try and meet their own goals, essentially working with them until they achieve their own goals for humanity.
I'm just spewing badly-thought out headfluff now, I guess. But I love thinking about crap like this, as inept as my reasoning is. Thanks for the reply!
Same here, as fun as the reboot and expansion were, there is a lot of wiggle room to interpret events, and Enemy Within proved they were willing to just turn everything from Enemy Unknown into an alternate universe in order to expand canon. So the sequel may go either way depending if they are working off of the EU timeline (no Meld, no EXALT) versus EW (Meld and EXALT as well as the expansion mission rescuing psionic people the aliens were experimenting on).
