Long War (video game mod)

Long War

Long War is a fan-made partial conversion mod for the turn-based tactics games XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its expansion, Enemy Within. The mod first appeared on NexusMods on January 4, 2013, and left its beta phase with version 1.0 on December 28, 2015. By July 2015, with beta 15f2, the developers stated that all new features were complete, and later updates would focus solely on bug fixes and balance adjustments. When the mod exited beta, its core development team consisted of four people: JohnnyLump (John J. Lumpkin), Amineri (Rachel Norman), XMarksTheSpot, and Ellatan (Alex Rozenfeld).

They were supported by four senior contributors, 20 voice actors, and 29 additional contributors who handled programming, art, sound, translations, research, and porting to Mac and Linux. Three employees from Firaxis Games, the original game’s developer, also lent assistance. Until the end of 2013, separate versions were released for Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within; after that, only Enemy Within versions came out. The mod has been downloaded over 1,090,000 times by more than 395,000 distinct users.

Its goal, according to its creators, is to offer “much deeper strategic and tactical play and a greater variety of problems to throw at the player.” Long War alters many existing game systems, introduces fresh concepts, and revives ideas from the original UFO: Enemy Unknown by Julian Gollop. A typical campaign runs much longer than the base game’s, with Eurogamer’s Chris Bratt estimating around 150 hours, though an option exists to shorten it significantly.

Long War 2

In mid-2016, the creators of the Long War mod rebranded as Long War Studios and helped Firaxis develop launch-day add-ons for XCOM 2. By January 2017, the studio changed its name to Pavonis Interactive and collaborated with Firaxis on a new mod, Long War 2, which came out on January 19, 2017. This mod heavily alters XCOM 2, stretching the campaign to roughly 100 to 120 missions. It allows more soldiers per mission, speeding up promotions, and introduces several new classes, some inspired by Pavonis’ earlier add-ons. New systems include infiltration missions requiring multiple squads, resistance haven management, two extra weapon tiers (lasers and coilguns), fresh enemy types, and a revamped enemy AI for tougher, more adaptive fights.