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War of the Chosen's first mission plays out exactly the same as in the original XCOM 2, which caught me a little by surprise. After being treated to a brand new intro cinematic that partly rewrites how the Commander is rescued in the opening moments of XCOM 2, I was expecting something new, something flashy. But there I was, once again, leading four under equipped rookies into Operation Gatecrasher and wishing they'd brought a few more grenades.I knew War of the Chosen would be an expansion that built upon the existing campaign (you'll need to start your playthrough from scratch, by the way), but at first it seems a bit too familiar. Disheartened, I got to throwing my grenades and missing 60 per cent shots. The mission ended, the monument fell, and I returned with my squad to the Avenger. And from that point onwards, almost everything I knew about XCOM 2 changed. A slow start perhaps, but once it gets going, this game never looks quite the same again.
Before you meet the expansion's new antagonists, or recruit any of the three hero classes, you'll first discover a feature called sitreps. These things are fantastic. They come into play during most of the standard mission types, adding some kind of variable for you to deal with on top of its initial objective. This can range from being forced to use a squad of lower-ranking soldiers, to fighting on a map inhabited by the Lost, the undead remnants of the humans first hit by the alien invasions.
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